29 Replies to “The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire”

  1. With the proper mindset it could be a good idea. Drones and guided missiles have made these ships and their escorts more vulnerable than ever before.
    I disagree with the liberal/leftist approach to war. The idea is to kill your foe, and defeat him so that you don’t have to fight him again for a long, long time. The idea of winning hearts and minds prevents the defeat of the enemy, and ‘nation building’ has only benefitted the enemies we have gone to fight.
    When we have to close and do combat with the cowardly moslem curs that infest the middle east and the fly blown desolate hell holes like Afghanistan – our involvement should be limited to drone and missile strikes and that’s it. No humanitarian aid should even be on the table until surrender documents are on the table. Given that betrayal and deceit are a way of life for these savages, the better course would be just to drop one big bomb on them and walk away – cleaning up the mess afterward will give them something to do other than attacking us.
    The manned fighter/bomber aircraft is obsolete now too, folks.

  2. Why invest in outmoded defense technology? The Chicoms want to control the oceans and are spending a large chunk of GDP o do so – let ’em have it – control the controllers from skynet – easer to control their communications than face off with conventional equipment. I see a new satellite defense system coming to cope with Chicom aggression.

  3. Certainly ideas worthy of being wargamed very intensively.
    The entrenched interests in the navy will however, bitch an moan.
    Also, there is s amll question, given how broke the USA is whether they can afford either option. That’s what happens when you blow multiple TRILLIONS on….uhm, something, and then have to pay back the debt.

  4. Boots on the ground or ships on the seas cannot be written off lightly. Defending enhanced strike technology will, I am sure, be developed.
    In WW II, especially in the Pacific, it was thought that the Japanese could not withstand aerial and ship bombardments made prior to troops landing. As it turned out in most cases the impacts were very muted.
    I am not suggesting that these technological advances are not becoming dominant. Anyone who saw what happened in Desert Storm knows that. The financial incentive to abandon naval task forces is certainly there. My argument is for a retention of capacity.

  5. Being the skeptical guy that I am, I ask the question “Who benefits?” Who builds the carriers and who builds the destroyers and littoral ships? The critics and the skeptics have always held that modern ships are obsolete, all the way from ancient Greece and Rome through Britain and the US. Ask Hitler if he wanted another half dozen battleships or submarines if he could have them. Ask Tojo about carriers. It is true that we don’t need as many ships today as before the nuclear age, such as colliers and oilers. Our destroyers today are as big as some WWI battleships. But the one ship we have today that nobody else has is the super-carrier. Sure, a few countries have WWII sized carriers, most with jump decks. But no one has a George Washington sized carrier.
    Occam, you aren’t seriously saying giving up control of the oceans to our great friend and international good guys, the Chinese, are you? I know that if you hit me with a computer or a transistor radio, you won’t hurt me as much as I you with an iron bomb, a 100 kiloton carrier or nuclear bomb. Now if we would spend that money on a couple of armored orbital stations, I would agree with you. But skynet, on which your premise is based, is a easily reduced soft target.
    There are always those who, being bought off by Bath Ship yards and their ilk, and convinced by the anti-American left to be more fair to our enemies and fight them on more equal terms, want us to build down. I have a proposal Admiral, when the ROE changes where our soldiers and Marines can kill ANYBODY who attacks them, then go back and kill their families, then we might consider down-sizing a super-carrier or two, by selling a few to Japan and The UK for a dollar apiece.

  6. While reading the link I came across this:
    https://medium.com/war-is-boring/f281fbc518fd
    Submarines are about as difficult to track 100% as terrorists. They only need to succeed once and it’s a lot of hardware and prestige sunk.
    And kudos to the Canadian subs: HMCS Corner Brook took the British carrier Illustious in a 2007 war game.
    As technology changes, the carriers may take on the role of the Hood in the pre-WWII British navy. Great at projecting power, but too vulnerable.

  7. if you cut welfare and government to “reasonable” size you would have money to burn, and the fiscal aspect of the debate would be redundant. So is there a logical (technical/warfare) argument for these cuts. And no, I do not take blathering idiot’s nonsense as credible.

  8. In the Pacific a couple of years ago a Chinese diesel sub surfaced about 10km from the carrier at the center of the 7th fleet, claiming that it had ‘lost’ its way and surfaced to show no ill intent. Bullocks! A simple sub had penetrated the protective screen and surfaced to show everyone that he (I’m quire sure it was a ‘he’) had. The US admiral lost his command. My point is that as powerful as these beasts are, they’re quite vulnerable to subs with SSMs.
    Another point about CVNs (Nuc carriers) and SSNs (Nuc subs) is that they cost a whack of $$ to decommission. As such, the navy brass has been deferring such decisions into the future. The problem becomes one that there are only so many facilities that have the expertise to perform such work and there will be a backlog of ships to ‘breakup.’ Which is to say that there will be enormous hit on the navy budget sometime down the road.
    Lots of discussion on this subject at http://www.strategypage.com

  9. If we owe the ChiComs a thousand dollars we are under their thumb. Since we owe them a trillion dollars who is under who’s thumb?

  10. Soon we will have drunk Chinese sailors in every American port.
    Spending all their money on whores and beer..

  11. From the article:
    “A thousand-foot-long nuclear aircraft carrier costs $13.5 billion to build—a 100-percent increase in just the last decade—and no less than $500 million per year to operate, repair and upgrade”
    The Fed is buying $65 BILLION of worthless loans from the banks each MONTH.
    That’s a budget of nearly 5 brand new carriers each MONTH.
    Each MONTH the Fed spends enough to keep a carrier running/repaired/upgraded for 130 years.
    Whatever the reason, it ain’t a shortage of money.

  14. Supertankers and supercarriers keep submariners very happy.
    Soviet navy doctrine was that supercarriers were vulnerable in transit, though not so much when their full
    defensive screens were deployed. But that is why one doesn’t talk about a carrier but a carrier task force. Given
    the capabilities of submarine-launched missiles, the area which the defensive screen must control is large.

  15. Carrier task forces are good for power projection to the fuzzy-wuzzies (provided said fuzzy-wuzzies haven’t
    been given a few anti-ship missiles).

  17. Glenfilthie, well said. The first objective of any commander is to destroy or incapacitate the opponent. This thinking disappeared after WWII and we will pay a big price in the future for being remiss in destroying radical Islam when we have a chance to do so. You sing kumbaya after the war has been won.
    The type of weapons change over time.

  18. @ 8:20
    “The manned fighter/bomber aircraft is obsolete now too, folks.”
    The reliance on computers to attack, destroy or defend could easily cost us a war and a country as long as hacking into the system remains a possibility. As long as our potential enemies are as adept in computer technology as we are, that’s a gamble with horrendous consequences.
    Our reliance on sea power already has deficiencies where we have fallen behind on technology. Carrier groups may well be a thing of the past if our enemies get these submarines :
    http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/new-type-of-silent-submarine-poses-threat/

  19. Hmm.. so it costs $500 million per year to operate a carrier. Canada could really use 2 carriers and it looks like firesales could be on their way for Nimitz class ones. If only there were some way of finding an extra $1 billion per year in the federal budget..

  21. Real shame considering we only have 77 CF-18 Hornets up and running. The Nimitz class usually carries about 98 combat aircraft. So Canada would need to effectively triple or quadruple it’s combat aircraft to load out two carriers. Can’t see the Libs, or Dippers going along with that.

  22. There’s some mention of acquiring a flattop. In jest I’m assuming. Acquisition would be the easy part. Manning it would be an altogether different problem. Right now our navy has 17 major ships (12 frigates, 3 destroyers and 2 tankers.) At an estimated 250 pers per ship that’s 4250. That’s about the same as the number of sailors posted to a carrier. The air wing adds another 2000 or so. So we could man a carrier but it would have no consorts. Holding onto the sailors we already have is a major issue – adding thousands more would be possible only in our dreams.

  23. “Hence the recent news that the Navy might propose an early retirement for the 22-year-old flattop USS George Washington”
    Sell it to Japan,then they can conduct their own war against China over those f***ing islands.

  24. Hate to throw a pail of water on all you strategists, but all our hardware is controlled by Chinese made chips.

  25. And let us shed a tear for the great battleships of the past, while we are at it.
    What the next war among first rank nations is something only people with real military ability can tell; that
    and time.

  28. The US Navy recently sold the old carrier Forrestal for a penny.
    If the rest of the carriers are sold at the same price, the Navy
    will have ten cents to spend on more modern weaponry. Maybe the
    Chinese will be able to help.

  29. Behind every cloud…..
    At least we’ll never have to worry about an SS Obama. Now THAT would be a sign of the ultimate decline.

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