Greg Jaffe and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that Trump has been frustrated by Phelan’s inability to fulfill his demand for the first of his new battleships by 2028, an inability caused by the fact that the U.S. shipbuilding industry doesn’t have the capacity to do it. At a Wednesday meeting with Trump, Hegseth and Feinberg convinced the president that Phelan had to go.
The idea that the shupbuilders could deliver a large capital ship in three years or quicker is just a crack-smoking fantasy.
If you feel like taking the time online, look up how long it took to build battleships back in the day. From laying the keel to commissioning, the USS New Jersey, partially built during wartime conditions, took 31 months. The USS Tennessee, built during World War One, took four years, the USS California almost five. One of the reasons why the first years of WW2 were fought with CVEs was that it took longer to build fleet carriers.
Even then, with a far larger shipbuilding industry, we couldn't just poop out capital ships. It's not happening now. It took seven years to build the USS Nimitz fifty years ago and the Navy's trying to get the Ford-class down to eight years' construction time.
Dimbulb Donnie and Whiskey Pete seem to be operating on the mindset that if you want to plow the field faster, you need to beat the mules more. Building complex ships doesn't work that way. That's a fact that's obvious to anyone who can take even a short span of time to educate themselves about building things.
Which is neither one of those fools. The United States has the dumbest, most vapid and mercurial leader of any major power since Kaiser Wilhelm II.
One wonders if someone in the design department will get the bright spark to steal an existing design hull to “build the USS Defiant upon”, realizing that the times of construct will result in a hull that could be repurposed after Donnie’s a memory? It would take a careful tightrope act to keep any changes away until then, but…
ReplyDeleteUSS Trump, sunk as an artificial reef next to a windmill.
DeleteBigger issue is most now are built in whatever time and the shipboard
ReplyDeleteelectronics system are antiques by time the keel is laid. Building the
ship is one part filling in the systems is a whole other task. Then you
get to train the people that will make it work.
Even the military suffers from if you can buy it, its obsolete!
Eck!
Delivery by 2028? It takes 2-4 years just to create the plans after the concept is approved. And don’t get me started on the supplier bidding process.
ReplyDeleteNine women can't make a baby in a month
ReplyDeleteI work in defense industry. It's a fucking mess. What I'm hearing is that many of the civilians in procurement who knew what they were doing were DOGEd. Those left don't know what to do, because they're being asked to do whatever crazy-assed shit bubbles up in Whiskey Pete and Demented Donnie's addled minds.
ReplyDeleteBut they watched a wartime ship building program on the History Channel and it only took an hour. So, it's easy-peasy, to go see sea.
ReplyDelete