“I don’t know if we’re going to buy any more of that type [Ford-class]," Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly told DefAeroReport. “We’re certainly thinking about possible other classes. What are we going to learn on these four that’s going to inform what we do next? But we have some time now, we have up until 2026, 2027 before we have to make a really firm decision."
At $12-13 billion each, the Ford-class carriers are the most expensive warships ever built. The Navy is actively looking to trim billions out of its budget in order to fund smaller, more distributed surface warfare assets, including unmanned / optionally-manned surface combatants. Many defense analysts caution that large, high-value assets - like supercarriers - are potentially more vulnerable to new ballistic missile and hypersonic projectile threats.
The Pentagon has already committed to buy four hulls in the Ford series - the future USS Gerald R. Ford, USS John F. Kennedy, USS Enterprise and USS Dorris Miller. The last two hulls were purchased in a block-buy in order to reduce cost. USS Ford has been delivered, and construction on USS Kennedy and USS Enterprise is under way.
The boldface is mine as I was the first defense analyst to show the UAV problem with complex systems. They cannot deploy these systems against swarms of cheap UAVs, they have no real defense.
McCain and Inhofe are responsible for the losses, they both mis-managed defense and got us into this pickle.
No comments:
Post a Comment