Surface Ships Need More Offensive Punch, Outlook

Desertfox said:
Can you make up the lost capability of the Ticos by just building more Burkes? Say 3 Burkes to 2 Ticos? Can quantity make up for quality?
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If you buy that distributed radar gives you an SNR improvement that's quadratic in the number of nodes (ships) it comes down
to 9 * (SNR of one Burke array) vs. 4 * (SNR of one Tico array).
 
Desertfox said:
Can you make up the lost capability of the Ticos by just building more Burkes? Say 3 Burkes to 2 Ticos? Can quantity make up for quality?
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If it were just a matter of VLS cells, sure, and it would help overall numbers. But the fleet would still lose the command facilities and associated spaces the CGs have, the gigantic Ship's Mission Centers on the 3 Zs will be the only decent command facilities not on a carrier or LCC. Whole lotta people, even many who should know better, try to handwave away the problems of cramming Alpha Whiskey, or a SAG command staff, into a Burke's CIC for the long term. I'd also point out that command hulls should have additional survivability, which an overloaded DDG-51 hull would not.

Then there's the generational problem of new, larger, more power-hungry systems coming into the fleet. Even if we're not going to do "cruisers" anymore and don't care about the command issues, we can't stick with a 1980s hull much longer if we hope to carry 2030s and onwards weapons, sensors, ECM, etc.
 
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So the next question would then be, can we go back to the era of "single-purpose" frigates? Can you build some Burkes as "command" destroyers and some as BMD destroyers and the rest as multi-purpose ships? Don't cram everything into one ship, distribute it among the fleet. The BMD destroyers for example wouldn't need the ASW suite of the other ones.
 
Sort of related question, how come the Valley Forge was decommisioned and sunkas a target after 18 years of service? Apparently intended for a 30 year service life, what was the thinking behind this? Best I could find was a meaningless suggestion that the missile systems were not up top scratch but, with an intended 30 years service life an update was always on the cards. I do wish the military around the world could find a manual on joined up thinking, and read the muddy thing.......
 
Foo Fighter said:
Sort of related question, how come the Valley Forge was decommisioned and sunkas a target after 18 years of service? Apparently intended for a 30 year service life, what was the thinking behind this? Best I could find was a meaningless suggestion that the missile systems were not up top scratch but, with an intended 30 years service life an update was always on the cards. I do wish the military around the world could find a manual on joined up thinking, and read the muddy thing.......
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The first 5 Ticonderoga class were built without VLS because Mk41 wasn't ready in 1980 and the Navy didn't want to wait until it was. The plan to re-arm these 5 hulls with VLS during a major refit ran into a lot of cost issues, and keeping them as-was would mean keeping the MK26 supply chain and the production line for Non-VLS Standards going. The Gordon England-Donald Rumsfeld-era Navy decided they'd rather retire the non-VLS combatants way ahead of time to save money than pay for a comprehensive refit plan. To make matters worse, right around 2003 they suddenly fell in love with SINKEXing modern combatants. There's plenty of good reasons to sink a recent ship once in awhile, but it became something of a fetish for the mid-to-late 2000s navy. Valley Forge and twenty five Spruance class were sunk in half a decade.

This has also lead to some theorizing, which may not be far off, that the mass retirements and rapid sinking/scrapping was part of a campaign to pressure Congress to keep money flowing into LCS and the DDG programs.
Desertfox said:
So the next question would then be, can we go back to the era of "single-purpose" frigates? Can you build some Burkes as "command" destroyers and some as BMD destroyers and the rest as multi-purpose ships? Don't cram everything into one ship, distribute it among the fleet. The BMD destroyers for example wouldn't need the ASW suite of the other ones.
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Not all that easily, the Burke class is well designed as a multi-mission combatant but doesn't have the designed-in flexibility or reconfigurable spaces that some more modern concepts have. A "Command" version needs additional command space that doesn't really fit anywhere easily, which is why the Japanese and Korean command destroyers descended from the Burke both are larger (longer, wider, taller) and have additional decks.
 
Moose said:
Not all that easily, the Burke class is well designed as a multi-mission combatant but doesn't have the designed-in flexibility or reconfigurable spaces that some more modern concepts have. A "Command" version needs additional command space that doesn't really fit anywhere easily, which is why the Japanese and Korean command destroyers descended from the Burke both are larger (longer, wider, taller) and have additional decks.
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Is there a reason we can't use the bigger Japanese and Korean designs as the base for the Flight IV Burkes instead of the current hulls? That should go part way into solving the problem.
 
Desertfox said:
Moose said:
Not all that easily, the Burke class is well designed as a multi-mission combatant but doesn't have the designed-in flexibility or reconfigurable spaces that some more modern concepts have. A "Command" version needs additional command space that doesn't really fit anywhere easily, which is why the Japanese and Korean command destroyers descended from the Burke both are larger (longer, wider, taller) and have additional decks.
Click to expand...
Is there a reason we can't use the bigger Japanese and Korean designs as the base for the Flight IV Burkes instead of the current hulls? That should go part way into solving the problem.
Click to expand...

IIRC they're built to commercial standards, not military.
 
Desertfox said:
Moose said:
Not all that easily, the Burke class is well designed as a multi-mission combatant but doesn't have the designed-in flexibility or reconfigurable spaces that some more modern concepts have. A "Command" version needs additional command space that doesn't really fit anywhere easily, which is why the Japanese and Korean command destroyers descended from the Burke both are larger (longer, wider, taller) and have additional decks.
Click to expand...
Is there a reason we can't use the bigger Japanese and Korean designs as the base for the Flight IV Burkes instead of the current hulls? That should go part way into solving the problem.
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It comes up somewhat regularly. The short version is, the cost of American-izing them would essentially run the same as taking a Flight III and inflating it to the same size and would produce largely the same end product. While there's appeal to that idea, the resulting destroyers would be so distinct from the existing Burke variants as to have an impact on the budget and logistics similar to that of having an entirely new class of ship, but without the future-proofing baked into an all-new ship.
 
bobbymike said:
news.usni.org

CNO Gilday Calls for Budget Increase to Reach 355 Ship Fleet; New Battle Force Count Won’t Include Unmanned Ships - USNI News

ARLINGTON, Va. – If the nation wants a 355-ship fleet in the next decade, the Navy will have to see an increase in its shipbuilding budget, the head of the service said on Tuesday. “355 in 10? Sure, if we get the dough,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told the audience at the […]
news.usni.org news.usni.org
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Obama had a 308 ship goal which Maybus upped to 355 with the 2016 FSA. The Trump administration started with 350+ and now we have 357. All this appears to be mostly talk. Unless they buy more Destroyers, more Frigates, and more Submarines within annual budgets it is highly unlikely we ever go beyond 315-320 or so as a best case scenario. Without an increase in budgets you have to make cuts either in the type of ships you buy or in readiness. Thankfully, the CNO seems to have drawn the line and is not prepared to gut readiness to buy more ships..though that will be the option that would appeal the most to politicians so it remains to be seen whether this position changes. The other alternative is to buy different classes..Less carriers for more destroyers etc etc etc. Short of a budget increase those are the only options I see..
 
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Carriers can carry a more diverse and flexible airwing, but only if the Navy buys the aircraft.
 
www.defensenews.com

Esper backs a bigger Navy fleet, but moves to cut shipbuilding by 20 percent

The U.S. Navy's fiscal 2021 budget request includes a Columbia-class submarine and a cut to shipbuilding.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com

www.defensenews.com

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on how the Navy can get to 355 ships

In an exclusive interview with Defense News, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper makes the case of how and why the Navy can hit 355 ships by 2030.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com

A bigger, but much lighter, naval force he says. Has he learned nothing from the disaster of LCS to name but one. Ye Gods.
 
And backs cutting the shipbuilding topline. Ye gods, have none of them learned anything?
 
I guess an LHA with F-35s fits the definition of this thread. 7th Fleet, Phillipine and East China Seas.

Impressive to see a flight deck packed with aircraft that should have never been built.

 

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