Great green nonsense

Sal has an interesting post over at his place.

It is more distraction for the U.S. Navy, given all the other stuff going on.

But OK, I'll play. The goal is that 2016 is the year of the Green Fleet.

Here are my ideas.

Get rid of all of the Littoral Combat Ships. They are horrifically energy inefficient and a waste of manpower

Park the Zumwalt (pocket battleship without the survivability). Ditto.

Get rid of the cruisers (actually over-stuffed Spruance DDG hulls). They don't offer enough for resources spent other than being really nice, juicy targets.

Retire all classic Hornets.

There are enough Super Hornets to deploy 3 total tac-air squadrons on a carrier deployment vs. the current 4 which are 2 classic and 2 Super. We already don't deploy as many carriers as we used to and squadrons can be shuffled as needed. Super flying hours will go up per year but, at least this aircraft is still in production. Plus refurb processes (like at Jackson, Florida and other places) will be streamlined.

As for surging strikers off of the aircraft carrier, find and read:

Air Force Magazine Vol. 82 No. 3 | The Carrier Myth | March 1999 | Rebecca Grant.

And you still have more strike power vs. the 1980s off of the deck because of JDAM and JSOW alone. Targets per sortie is still effective. And if it is strategic strike? Well, converted Ohios have shown the way. Something to think about when boomers have to be refreshed. That same tech can be used to kind of replace, the converted Ohio-class SSGNs.

All of this will require the Navy to use less fuel per year, without a noticable reduction in combat power.