Finally!!!

The Navy (and all services) are still paying the price for sequestration under Obama…

It has been five years since the attack submarine Boise returned from its last patrol, and this whole time she has been waiting on some loving care and attention in the shipyards.

Full article, HERE.

Things like this crap are why the ships/crews/subs/aircraft are beat to crap, tired, and frustrated. When you can’t get maintenance done, this has a rolling impact on scheduling as ‘somebody’ has to pick up the slack and take that cruise. There was a big push under Bush to get the OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO mismatch under control, and that was starting to work until sequestration hit.

Can you imagine being stationed on a sub that can’t go anywhere??? FOR FIVE YEARS??? While watching other crews have to do your job?

We need an effective, efficient military now more than ever, with the Russians becoming more active again, the Chinese expansion, etc.

It’s gotten so bad in the ASW community, that the Navy has had to do ‘exercises’ to find out just how much capability has been lost…

As U.S. Navy brass continues to sound the alarm about Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic, the sea service kicked off an exercise this week to hone the sort of anti-sub warfare skills that fell by the wayside in the post-9/11 world.

Full article, HERE.

Comments

Finally!!! — 24 Comments

  1. Seem to recall a quote that was approximately:

    “Having the best military is expensive, but not nearly as expensive as having the second-best military.”

  2. For the folks who don’t have experience, that is an ENTIRE sea tour for both forward and nuclear sailors. That is completely unacceptable, hopefully the squadron rotated crew off the boat onto active units so the sailors didn’t completely lose experience. Let alone being in a privatge shipyard had to impact morale and professionalism. I have more to say, but it isn’t fit to print.

  3. Pat’s quote is a good one, reflecting the bottom line of the disastrous Obama-Biden years. Military readiness in the toilet, but at least their pronouns were correct – expect more of same if the Harris administration comes to power. Maybe worse.

  4. I know a whole bunch of Gearing-class tin can vets whose only role was anti-sub warfare. Many of us would be ready to step right back in & help out.

    Yeah, I know. But it felt good to say it.

  5. ASW has been crumbling for years. Ever since the first collapse of the USSR. They did away with the S-3’s. They closed or severely limited forward operating bases. They reduced training and deployments. Operational/Training funding reduced resulting in less effective crew readiness. For anyone that was involved in this arena, all this is not news. It seems that whenever the budget needed to be trimmed, ASW was a prime target since submarine activity in the 1990’s and 2000’s seemed to disappear. Then around 2010, low and behold, the Soviets are suddenly back in the submarine game. The Chinese are expanding in the South China Sea. And the Navy is caught with it’s proverbial pants down around it’s ankles, again.

    I know that this is an overly broad representation, but it’s not the first time this has happened to the ASW community. And it probably won’t be the last.

  6. A while back the Navy was claiming it couldn’t find Mexican submarines full of drugs despite ASW aircraft and observation satellites.

    Maybe the Russians and Chinese will be kind enough to put radio beacons on their boats, because the Navy was either lying outright or is now operating at a level that justifies a white canes and guide dogs.

    • The construction of the semi- and fully- submersible drug boats lends themselves to not being detected as easily by conventional means. Fiberglass and plastic hulls, reinforced by wood cut at the construction location, with exhaust from the internal combustion engines filtered through water.

      Doesn’t help that the US is assigning Coast Guard elements to detect said subs and semi-subs rather than using them as ‘good training’ for existing fast-attack sailors.

      • Beans – don’t forget that some 25 years ago someone ‘decided’ that the Coast Guard no longer needed any ASW capability – the Navy could handle it. So now they have to ‘make do’ with Mark 1 Eyeballs and such high tech gear…………….

        • Oh, I haven’t forgotten who exactly made them ‘Cops of the Sea!’

          There’s a lot I haven’t forgotten about that reign of terror.

  7. We used to be the best at sub stuff. Let us hope we have not lost the advantage, for sure as God made little green apples, if the ChiComs get frisky in the Pacific, the Russians will come out to play in the Atlantic.

    Little known fact – most of the ‘Russian’ Pacific commercial fleet – fishing vessels and such – are actually based out of… ChiCom ports. Earlier this year the whole of the Russian crab and fishing fleet, and much of the ChiCom’s fishing fleet, were trapped in their northern ports by heavy ice flows. Muhahahahaha.

  8. The operational tempo problem is navy wide. We are trying to deploy at a wartime tempo at the expense of sailors and equipment and we are not building new ships at a wartime tempo, nor are we retaining sailors the way that we need to.

    I’ve heard a lot of sour notes from friends in service, and second hand from their sons & daughters.

  9. How much longer will we pay the price for 8 years of Obama. Decades more if President Trump isn’t re-elected.

    The cynic in me says all officers promoted past O-6 under Obama should be retired. That might bring back professionalism.

    • WSF – we are STILL paying for 4 years of the peanut farmer, 8 years of slick along with 8 years of barky and all of their disastrous policies regarding all aspects of military preparedness, training, designing of systems, and acquisition along with diminishing maintenance capabilities.
      IIRC the US had the 34th rated military world wide in 1940 – looks like we might be challenging that statistic…………..;-(

      • The decline i saw started in the 80’s with decommissioning ships without replacement. I served on the decommission crew for the USS Henry L. Stimson SSBN 655 in 1993. My last sea tour. After shore tour there were no billets to go back to that I had not already filled so I saw no point in staying and retired.

  10. All- Your comments are dead on. Vitaeus- I’m not sure if they did anything other than ‘fast cruise’ the crew to allow them to get their quals…

    Posted from my iPhone.

  11. Back in my day, “fast cruise” didn’t count.

    Most likely, what they did was have everyone complete the qual card and then send them TAD to get the requisite sea time.

    I completed my dolphin qualification while in the shipyard. However, I was not awarded the “Qualified in Submarines” until after the yard when we had been deployed long enough for the sea time. About 20 of us on that crew all got our dolphins on the same day.

  12. NFO, I’m distracted because of Kentucky. But maybe the Navy will become the fighting force it should be if it, finally, takes on transgender quotas?

    Grrrr.

  13. I just read that the Eisenhower is doing a second 9+ month deployment in 3 years. And in the days of COVID, there are no port calls. I bet retention looks great.

    It also means, because of deferred maintenance and high operational tempo, that she will have to go in for a 3 year availability after this deployment. Or more likely decomm.

    At least the investigation on the two 7th fleet ships found that increased operational tempo, reduced maintenance and training, and crew fatigue and high turnover were not factors in getting the sailors killed. /sarc and a LOT of anger.

    ET1/SS

  14. In the Coast Guard we had “FRAM,” affectionately known as “Midlife Crisis,” where our high endurance cutters, the “378’s,” went in for refitting. Unfortunately for us, the shipyard went bankrupt with half our 378’s sitting in drydock, huge holes in their sides for removing and replacing their engines. They weren’t going anywhere. That left only two cutters to do the patrols… for several years… Of those two, the one in Hawaii seemed to always break down a day out of port, and would have to return home. That left… one cutter… for the whole West Coast… from the Mexican border to the Arctic Circle… Yeah… That’s the one I was on… The ship was out of Alameda… We were rarely there though…

    • Tom – my dad retired off of the Taney – one of the ‘original’ WHEC Secretary class – pre FRAM when she was still a west coast boat. She is the last surviving warship from Pearl Harbor – from either side. One of my favorite tales (sea story?) was from when they made a port call in Tijuana during REFTRA. But that’s a story for another time.