US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Cv is already taken by the USAF, and the USN won't allow anything in its service to carry CV as a Designation except a Aircraft Carrier. SMV or SV or how about PMV or PV?
Yes...of course you are correct.

I forgot that the USAF already used it...and of course the CV designation is already something with the carrier.

So...I should have remembered the SV designation. SV-22 is what I believe they want to name the ASW variant...heck, I even built a model of it! LOL!


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Bernard

Junior Member
Independent U.S. Rebalance to the Pacific Report Calls for Study of Second Carrier Based in 7th Fleet
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February 3, 2016 7:22 PM • Updated: February 3, 2016 11:29 PM
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USS Antietam (CG-54), right, steams alongside USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76). US Navy Photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. – An independent review on the U.S. rebalance to the Pacific concluded the U.S. should study forward deploying a second carrier to the Western Pacific, one of the authors said before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. The study from the Center of Strategic and International Studies echoes call to station a second U.S. Navy carrier from SASC chair Sen. John McCain and a second independent review of Navy force from late last year to study forward deploying a second nuclear carrier to U.S. 7th Fleet.

The CSIS report came short of recommending the move but indicated crunching the numbers on what it would take warranted further study.

“We didn’t come out with a hard recommendation on this because there are operational questions, cost and infrastructure questions,” Michael Green with CSIS said in response to a question from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).

The most likely location for a second carrier would be alongside the existing U.S. forward deployed carrier berth in Yokosuka, Japan but while there is space for the carrier questions linger where to put the accompanying airwing.

“If you deploy this new carrier in Yokosuka you have to find a place for the airwing. [Marine Corps Air Base] Iwakuni, could be expanded but that’s a political lift for the Japanese government in terms of host nation support,” Green said.

When the CSIS report was released last month, the notion of deploying a second carrier to the Western Pacific received press attention in Japan “and there was not a lot of push back. A number of the senior officials and military officers in Japan were quite intrigued because of the signal it sends and the firepower it brings,” Green said.
“It addresses a concern our allies have – the 7th Fleet’s one carrier is out of [U.S. Pacific Command] a lot. They watch that. They would have constant coverage – what in their view in an increasingly difficult region.”

That difficulty is resident primarily in China’s People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) expansion and increased presence in the South China Sea and the East China Sea with a government in Beijing that is comfortable with taking more risks militarily, Green said.

“We’re probably going to be living with this [friction] for five our ten years because its built into the PLA’s operational concepts, force structure, their doctrine. The Foreign Ministry and others in the China system are not going to knock them off of that trajectory. In my view: it’s if the Chinese economy slows down or not.”

PLAAF-PLA-NAVY-APC-IFV-General-Secretary-of-the-CPC-Central-Committee-the-CPC-Central-Military-Commission-President-Xi-Jinping-inspected-CHINESE-Navy-Haikou-destroyer-TYPE-052CDE-4.jpg

Chinese president Xi Jinxing onboard PLAN destroyer Haikou. News.cn Photo

The CSIS report also outlined the inconsistent presentation of the goals of the U.S. Pacific rebalance by Washington and how tightening up the message could send a clearer signal to China and U.S. allies.

“The kind of networking cooperation that incentivizes China to play within the rules, the kind of capacity building for the Philippines and for smaller micro states, so they can handle earthquakes and tsunamis in a way where they’re not vulnerable strategically and where we have a trade agreement, that’s what we should be thinking about,” Green said.
“If we do think in those terms it will add some discipline to how the administration and others articulate our strategy… We’re not looking to contain China, we’re looking for a rules base order and here’s how it might look with our relationship with our allies and other partners. ”

Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Conant, former deputy commander of Pacific Command and an advisor on the report, said the United States needs to send “a clear and concise message [on] what rebalance means.”

China has become more assertive for a number of reasons, Green said. That includes President Xi Jinping not coming from that part of the Communist Party that holds Deng Xiaoping’s more accommodating view of Beijing’s role in the world. It also arises from the mistaken conclusion Chinese leaders drew from the 2008-2009 financial crisis impact on the United States that “America’s best days are over” as a great power.

To nations such as the Philippines and Vietnam who see an expansionist China, “they want more of us,” but “they don’t want bases,” Green said. He suggested a model might come from the rotational movement of U.S. forces or even patrol vessels from Japan in and out of those countries, similar to that in Australia.

“An elective security arrangement like NATO, almost no one wants that… that would produce a China we don’t want, Green said.
“We’re not looking to contain China, we’re looking for a rules base order and here’s how it might look with our relationship with our allies and other partners.”

Even with China’s economy slowing from 9 percent growth to between 3 to 4 percent annually, Green warned against making the same mistake China made with the United States eight years ago. He said the results could be “a more humble China” or a “more nationalistic and grumpy” nation in five years.

As for the slowdown affecting the Chinese military modernization drive, especially in its maritime forces, Conant added, “I don’t see it slowing down.”

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Where would you base a second carrier? Same as the one now? Or like Australia? Guam? Hawaii too far?
 

Brumby

Major
Pentagon orders commanders to prioritize climate change in all military actions
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The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies.

A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.”

It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.”

This is just insanity. It is adding complexity in the decision process and embedding layers of bureaucracy which will add zilch to warfighting capabilities. It is simply political correctness and liberal ideology.
 
what do you guys think?
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Of the four armed services’ budget plans for 2017, the one most likely to make Congress apoplectic is the Navy’s. On top of reintroducing a
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repeatedly rejected by the Hill, the Navy proposes deactivating a
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— which tangles with the touchy issue of
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the US should have — and turning its highest profile drone
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with limited strike capabilities with an 80 percent smaller budget.

9 Wings For 10 Carriers

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have to undergo a massive mid-life Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) that takes them out of service for four years. Currently, the Navy has 10 nuclear aircraft carriers and 10 carrier air wings, one for each flattop — but one carrier is always in overhaul at any given time, and one wing,
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. Wings can train while their counterpart carrier is in drydock, but it’s hard to keep full proficiency in carrier operations without a carrier.

So why not match the number of air wings to the number of active carriers, the Navy asks? That would save a lot of money in tight budgetary times. It would also free up aircraft to fill holes in other units at a time when the Navy’s suffering a significant fighter shortfall.

The problem is the Navy has 10 carriers now, but it’s
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. Congress waived this requirement while the fleet built back up. (The law also requires 10 air wings….). Key members of Congress, notably House seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes, are intensely suspicious of the administration and fear proposed cuts will lead to a permanent 10-carrier fleet. Nine carrier air wings imply 10 carriers — not Congress’s longed-for eleven.

How does the Navy square this circle? By calculating not just how many carriers are in the fleet, but how many are fully available versus those undergoing major maintenance. The Navy reckons we won’t have 11 active carriers again — and therefore won’t need 10 air wings — until 2025. When that happens, they also reckon they can bring the tenth air wing back.

“The proposed plan matches the number of complete carrier air wings to the number of operationally available carriers (nine) through 2025,” said a Navy spokesperson, Lt. j.g. Kara Yingling, in an email. “This accounts for one carrier in refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) and one to two carriers in major scheduled maintenance periods.”

“The Navy will continue to assess requirements based on Global Force Management Allocation Plan (GFMAP) changes in coming years,” Yingling continued. “Because we are deactivating vice decommissioning, if requirements change in the future and we need to reactivate a 10th air wing, it will require a less rigorous administrative process.” In other words, a “deactivated” wing isn’t completely disbanded, making its resurrection easier.

Will this answer be enough to satisfy Congress? The Navy needs to cross its fingers.

UCLASS To CBARS: Dumbed Down Drone?

Powerful defense lawmakers want the UCLASS drone to be a
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, including
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and
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. The UCLASS’s proposed successor, CBARS — the Carrier Based Aerial Refueling System — will be lightly armed,
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told reporters this afternoon. But it won’t be capable of long-range strike or reconnaissance into defended airspace, he said. Instead, its key missions will be refueling manned aircraft; conducting intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting in “permissive” airspace; and conducting “limited strike.”

CBARS will also make due on one fifth the budget that UCLASS had: $89 million in Navy R&D dollars for CBARS in 2017, compared to $435 million for UCLASS in 2016. Why such a drop? It “simply reflects the change and the restructure” from UCLASS to CBARS, Lescher said. Would CBARS funding go up in future years once the restructured program finds its feet again? “I won’t project or speculate,” he said, but once CBARS gets underway, we can expect a “higher fidelity” funding profile next year.

CBARS will get drones on the carrier deck quicker that UCLASS, Lescher said, precisely because it’s much less technologically ambitious. “This is a quicker, mid-’20s IOC [Initial Operational Capability],” he said. CBARS will allow the fleet to figure out how unmanned and manned aircraft coexist in carrier operations and pave the way for future, more sophisticated drones. “It’s a smart acquisition approach to incrementally burn down that risk,” he said.

Cruising For A Bruising On Capitol Hill?

The third red flag the Navy is waving at Congress is its
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. At one point, the service wanted to retire the aging Ticonderoga class, but
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. The Navy then proposed putting the newest “Ticos” into long-term, slow-motion modernization. The idea was to save the fiscal costs and physical wear and tear of operating the ships, then reintroduce them into the fleet as the oldest Ticonderoga cruisers retired.

Forbes and others on the Hill, however, saw the Navy’s plan as
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, fearing they’d go into “modernization” but never come out again. So Congress imposed strict limits. Only two cruisers could go into modernization each year; no cruiser could be kept out of service for more than four years, and only six could be in modernization at any given time, and no cruiser could be out of service for more than six years — the “2-4-6” rule.

Now the Navy wants to put seven cruisers into modernization all at once, for a total of nine. They’d then come back out at unspecified times in the future, one at a time, to replace older Ticonderogas retiring. This wholesale departure from the fleet and retail return lets shipyards fit cruiser overhauls into their workload more efficiently, the Navy says, and would save money over keeping the vessels in operation.

Will the cruisers really come back? “The department leadership has spoken very clearly about the commitment to bring these cruisers back into the fleet,” Lescher said. “We have this important requirement for air defense commander capable platforms, one per carrier strike group” — a role only the larger Ticonderoga cruisers can fill, not the smaller
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.

“The evidence of that commitment is the $500 million dollars that is invested in this budget to make the FY17 plan work,” he said. “[Also], the department is proposing essentially increased congressional oversight [over] any changes to the status of these cruisers, [e.g.] inactivation.”

Will these extra safeguards satisfy Congress?
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.
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