Are coming home to roost…
The Navy has admitted it cannot maintain AND upgrade all the ships currently on the books. Sequestration has come back to bite the congresscritters where they live… The Obama/Biden limits and the Dems refusal to cooperate with Trump has crippled the Navy Fleet through deferred maintenance, skipped upgrades, and lack of support for shipyard time to conduct the work, pushing ‘much’ of it back on reduced manning crews.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is considering requiring the U.S. Navy to better defend its requests to retire ships before the end of their expected service lives.
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With tight budgets during a decade of sequestration-related limits, and now with expected flat defense spending in the coming years, the Navy has made many requests to retire existing ships — which cost money to operate, maintain, man, arm and more — and free up money for other priorities, such as developing more modern weapons and platforms.
Full article, HERE, from Defense News.
As usual, this was the ‘Peace Plan’, at the end of the cold war. “We don’t need no ‘stinkin Navy eating our budget. There isn’t any requirement for all those ships now that we’re at peace with everybody”, yada, yada, yada, no study of history, or listening to the Intel folks.
I know a number of years ago, the determination was made that the Navy would ‘no longer’ plan on one major and two minor conflicts at the same time, as there were not ships/personnel available to ‘meet’ the requirements of the basic plans, much less any surge capability.
And now it’s even worse, and NOT getting any better, even as the congresscritters ‘try’ to point fingers at the Navy, saying it’s all THEIR FAULT… As the Russians and Chinese make MAJOR moves into various locations.
SMDH…
