While organizationally one does not want to be accused of consistency feeding hobgoblins, consistency is important for planning purposes and keeping on message.
Let’s back up a bit 10-months to NAVSEA’s memo outlining their desire to shift ships’ service to the right. One can assume that is the desire on the CVN side of the house as well being that USS ENTERPRISE (CVN 65) served for 51 years.
It has been the mantra for the pro-CVN side of the house, and a cornerstone of the Big Navy Club-355, that we need more carriers.
Back in January of this year, we signaled this requirement in spades with the announcement, like in the Reagan Era, we wanted carriers so much, we are buying two at once.
Then today, clanging on the deck like a well corroded pipe, this came out;
Amidst rising anxiety over whether the US Navy’s thousand-foot-long flagships could evade Chinese missiles in a future war, the Pentagon has decided to cut the aircraft carrier fleet from 11 todayto 10.
By retiring the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Truman at least two decades early, rather than refueling its nuclear reactor core in 2024 as planned, the military would save tens of billions on overhaul and operations costs that it could invest in other priorities.
And so, the carrier battles continue apace.
If you think this doesn’t quite seem in line with the Trump Administration’s years long rhetoric about building a larger Navy, well, you are correct.
“The decision to skip the Truman’s RCOH [Refueling & Complex Overhaul] was part of the deal to fund two new carriers,” said former deputy defense secretary Robert Work. “We would end up with a smaller, but younger fleet…. Secretary [Bob] Gates made a decision to move to five-year [gaps between carriers], which would ultimately result in a 10-carrier fleet around 2040. So we are still on that path.”
So there you go. It’s Obama’s Navy.
TRUMAN was commissioned in 1998. Retiring her in 2024 puts her out to pasture at 26 years.
My Royal Navy friends will see what may be going on here. As we’ve seen there and in Europe, such short-lifeing ships is one of the sweet little lies a declining naval power tells itself.
Clunky and disjointed, it tries to spot weld its political and budgetary priorities around a shell of a national strategy. You don’t have a navy to meet your strategic requirements, you simply exchange that for industrial base corporatism divorced from national strategy as your driver.
If carriers – with their short-legged, tactically hobbled flight deck of strike fighters – are not the capital ship of the future, then why just stop with what we plan to do with the TRUMAN? CANX the double-FORD buy as well. Hedge your bet with one and work towards an 8-CVN Fleet. If we do that, we make the PLAN goal of reaching parity in the Pacific closer for them.
I think such an act would provide another opportunity for the Trump Pentagon to better align with the previous administration;
“We welcome China’s rise,”
– President Barak Obama, January 20th, 2011
All good natured snark aside, there can really only be a few reasons to do this to the TRUMAN:
1. 2015’s Team Hendrix beat out Team McGrath and the carrier will, at least for the USN, no longer be the center-piece of maritime power projection. We just haven’t told everyone that, including future adversaries whose land-based air just got an easier challenge to fight.
2. We are playing clever budgetary games thinking if we scare enough people in Congress, they will throw more money our way.
3. We have decided to adopt the European model outlined above, surrender the money fight, and sell our plow mule to purchase a dozen hair sheep.
Whichever way or reason, this is perfectly aligned with my “Terrible 20s” theorem, which turned nine earlier this month. It is setting up almost by design.
What will Congress’s play be? That’s the story from here. If you’re betting on more money, I don’t think you’ve thought things through.
