Good Morning Folks,

The Robot Economist is correct the U.S. can't afford a 600 ship Navy nor even a 313 ship Navy. For those of us who don't believe a word that comes out of the DoD/Pentagon and bother to count the Navy's active ships list against retirements and new ship comming on line and balance the numbers the current size of the U.S. Navy is around 240 ships of all types. When you retire 10 ships and take delivery of only 3 ships and Congress only orders 5 in the next calendar year you are not growing.

Facts, Los Angles Class Submarines are being retire faster then new Virginia Cass can be built, ex. the U.S.S. Plymouth was retired this year before even being refuled once...the Spruance Class Destroyers are gone but we are still building DD-51...Perry Class frigates have been all but retired, they are on drug interdiction missions off South America...the CG-51 Class of cruisers are being retired without a replacement...Katrina has delayed the delivery of at least 11 ships by at least 2 years...the DD(X) if bought will be in small numbers.

The Navy has since 2004 drawn down over 50K personal and is still shrinking.

At the current rate of attrition the U.S. Navy will very soon cease to exist as a "Blue Water" force that can do the tradition Naval roles of keeping sea lanes open and insuring American access to the ports of the world.

ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

Posted by: Byron Skinner at October 5, 2006 12:59 PM

While Lehman needs to lay off the his 600 ship navy from 25 years ago, he does have a point that by building 5 ships a year, assuming a 30 year lifespan for most ships, we'll be down to a 150 ship navy.

As for the Chinese, it won't be nearly as expensive for them to build up their navy. According to this RAND study I found - "Why Has the Cost of
Navy Ships Risen?" (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG484.pdf) - the labor cost of a ship is a huge amount:

Ship Type Labor % of End Cost
Nuclear aircraft carrier 51
Amphibious ship 47
Attack submarine 39
Surface combatant 32

Obviously, Chinese labor costs are nowhere near ours, so that is in their favor.

Even if a Chinese destroyer may be 10-20 years behind in terms of technology, they could have 2-3 DDs of 1980's technology for every 2010 DD we have, and 1980's naval technology is nothing to sneeze at.

Posted by: bespoke at October 4, 2006 05:09 PM

I can't believe Secretary Lehman is still whinning about not getting a 600 ship navy. The Navy itself only wants a 313 ship fleet and the CBO demonstrated that is their sustainable limit.

If the U.S. can't financially field a fleet of 600, what makes him think China can do the same with its tiny budget? Maybe if they churned out vintage 1970s cruisers for 20 years and didn't retire any of them. And since when does a fleet of three Kilos constitute a "very good" sub fleet? Seriously, this guy could use a little perspective.

As for the rocket monopoly article, I think it is important emphasize how the ULA merger effectively allows the DOD to do an end-run around federal competitive bidding requirements. Now it can have both Delta and Titan rockets without having to justify the added expense to the public.

Posted by: Robot.Economist at October 4, 2006 09:50 AM

Wait a minute...Jermaine Dye went 5 for 5? Where?

Posted by: Timmy Mac at October 4, 2006 08:29 AM