What would it cost? Would it even be worth building? Head on over to Foxtrot Alpha for the full story. The result is a 30,000-ton super ship capable of bombarding targets at up to 200 miles, unleashing land attack salvoes and antiship cruise missiles, and downing everything from enemy aircraft to incoming ballistic missiles. Montana would have an Air and Missile Defense Radar for detecting, tracking, and engaging aerial threats, and everything would be powered by onboard nuclear reactors. (As Farley notes, Montana is the only state that never had a battleship named after it.)įarley's battleship Montana is a beast, with two railguns, 500 vertical launch silos for missiles, and lasers for close-in defenses. Robert Farley, professor of international relations at the University of Kentucky and author of The Battleship Book, has designed a fictional USS Montana (BBG-72), ditching the heavy guns in favor of railguns, vertical launch silos, and lasers. The cost of maintaining and operating less capable ships, he said, would result in reductions in sailors, ammunition, spare parts, maintenance, flying hours and days at sea.Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play “After about a year and a half study, I refuse to put an additional dollar against a system that would not be able to track a high-end submarine in today’s environment,” Gilday said. Similarly, the anti-submarine warfare system on the nine Littoral Combat Ships the Navy wants to decommission “did not work out technically,” he said. Rogers of Alabama, the panel’s ranking member, plus Rob Wittman of Virginia, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Michael Waltz of Florida.īut Gilday, the Navy’s top admiral, replied that the radar on older cruisers being retired can’t see the threat, leaving them vulnerable. Meanwhile, at the House Armed Services Committee, several Republicans joined Luria in voicing concern about the U.S. She also alluded to the need to get ships in and out of maintenance faster, so that the actual number of deployed ships can grow. “The debate I believe needs to be very substantiated, and not just picking a number that we think might be for the right number of ships for the U.S. She also noted that three of America’s allies in the region - Japan, South Korea and Australia - have fleets totaling more than 350 ships combined, though she acknowledged some of those are smaller too. She then noted that China’s fleet - which she put at 500 ships - is comprised of 230 smaller support vessels. It’s quality and capability that matter, as you gentlemen pointed out,” she said to Austin and Milley, who were joined by Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord. “There’s a simple fact here: The United States does not have the shipbuilding industrial base to manufacture, let alone maintain, a Navy that can completely - numerically - compete with China,” McCollum said. And she made a rarely heard point: that trying to catch up in quantity is a vain effort. Eric Ver Hage, the Commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Center (CNRMC) and Director of Surface Ship Maintenance and Modernization, said during the event that we don’t have enough (ship repair) capacity for peacetime, let alone to repair combat-damaged ships during wartime. ![]() McCollum, meanwhile, said she is interested in exploring possible new uses for at least some of the Littoral Combat Ships that are facing early retirement.īut she pushed back at length against the GOP argument that America’s Navy is a shadow of China’s. Virginia Democrat Elaine Luria joined several of her GOP colleagues in taking issue with the declining U.S. She also noted that America’s allies in Asia have plenty of warships to bring to any fight.Ī similar debate took place Wednesday at the House Armed Services Committee. The differences, which fell largely along party lines, were manifest at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense budget hearing with the Pentagon top brass and a House Armed Services Committee hearing with the leaders of the Navy and Marine Corps.Īt the Defense Appropriations hearing, the top Republican appropriator, Kay Granger of Texas, and the ranking Republican member of the Defense panel, Ken Calvert of California, complained the Navy would decommission significantly more ships in fiscal 2023 than it plans to procure, while China’s fleet is already larger - and growing more rapidly - than America’s.īut Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the Appropriations subcommittee’s chairwoman, sought to rebut these arguments by noting that nearly half of China’s larger Navy is made up of relatively small, support ships. Sharp divisions over the adequacy of President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2023 request for the Navy’s shipbuilding budget emerged at two House hearings Wednesday.
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