Observations on Shipbuilding
Chapomatic posts his thoughts today on U.S. Navy shipbuilding policy and process, and there are some priceless nuggets:
- 2003 was much like 1973 in that the number of surface ships are dwindling fast and nothing really new is coming out now. It’s also a great time to talk about high-low mix, but the “prisoner’s dilemma” logic of the low part of the high-low mix guarantees that the lower capability ship does not get love and dies on the vine.This is just a taste, and the whole thing is not to be missed. Go read it. Now.
- USN does relatively badly at small ships on the operational level. The ships get ignored until we need them desperately, they don’t get the attention of the bigger ships, et cetera. Look at PGM, PC, you name it; look at the maintenance pipelines and how much attention gets paid to them.
- The current world environment requires us to be everywhere at once. If you buy only high mix ships you do not have enough ships to be everywhere at once and you don’t get effective use of resources when you send a cruiser to operate with the Maldives navy.
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