USS Milwaukee to be decommissioned!

[Sturgis270]

Local news out of Milwaukee talked about the possibility of the Navy removing the USS Milwaukee from service as well as other ships of the same design due to propulsion issues. I was at the ceremony in Milwaukee for the commissioning in 2015. Only in service for 8 years and it was sidelined part of that time. Tax $$$$$ down the drain. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/...bat-ship-proposed-decommissioning/7249453001/

 

[RC44Mag]

Those littorals were a complete disaster from the get go. What a mess our fleet has become. The chicoms and ruskies are licking their chops waiting for just the right moment.

 

[Wvfarrier]

The government does not care if they waste our money

 

[Hvymax]

It seems their primary mission for the last 30 years is to vaporize as many Trillions as possible while enriching the Oligarchs.

 

[bobski]

some jet designs never saw 5 years of service, why not ships if they dont work?
if its cheaper to make a new one with upgrades, maybe it a good thing.
i dont like the idea of my nations sailors being dead in the water like sitting ducks.

 

[Hvymax]

some jet designs never saw 5 years of service, why not ships if they dont work?
if its cheaper to make a new one with upgrades, maybe it a good thing.
i dont like the idea of my nations sailors being dead in the water like sitting ducks.

It just seems like they have been focusing on Trillion Dollar Money Pits instead of KISS .

 

[the_leper_colony]

It just seems like they have been focusing on Trillion Dollar Money Pits instead of KISS .

Might be fun to start a thread about expensive or 'name brand' guns that sucked, and went out of production almost immediately. The Colt All American 2000 comes to mind.

As always FWIW, IMHO, YMMV, etc., etc.

 

[Actnbill]

you mean like the ' Grendel ' ???

Colt had all their 'Snake Guns'..... Anaconda, Python, King Cobra ...etc ..... How come they never made a 'Rattler' ???

 

[dannyd]

I rode the Milwaukee AOR-2, Beans, Bullets and black oil. Our steam turbines were painted up like two beer cans.

Our best saying was; We slip the meat to the Fleet.

 

[JiminMaine]

I rode the Milwaukee AOR-2, Beans, Bullets and black oil. Our steam turbines were painted up like two beer cans.

Our best saying was; We slip the meat to the Fleet.


View attachment 29338

I did three years on the K-Zoo (USS Kalamazoo AOR-6) those were good ships, but they were not around for that long either.

 

[bobski]

every jet fighter was the result of keeping up with the enemies upgrades. ships are no different.
sometimes its cheaper to trash a mistake, than to milk it along.

 

[dannyd]

The Surface Navy is trying to make itself relevant in the 21st century, with new submarine and missile technology, the aircraft carrier and surface ship have become like the battleship in 1941.

They can hit the carrier anytime and anywhere in the world, so they will be useless in a global war.

The United State's could take container ships put Vertical Launch systems on them for a fraction of the cost of the carrier. Couple hundred missiles and minimum crew.

 

[RC44Mag]

Like the way you think Danny, that’s a very good idea. For conventional warheads great but specials would still need to be aboard warships or put the USN ones onboard boomers.
I will also add that we still need to project our fleet and air assets around the globe and our carriers do it better then anyone else, we’d still need to keep some of the out there but as you say they will be short lived when the shooting starts with world powers.

 

[the_leper_colony]

you mean like the ' Grendel ' ???...

I don't think I would describe anything made by Grendel as "expensive or 'name brand'"!

As always IMHO, FWIW, YMMV, etc., etc.

 

[dannyd]

Like the way you think Danny, that’s a very good idea. For conventional warheads great but specials would still need to be aboard warships or put the USN ones onboard boomers.
I will also add that we still need to project our fleet and air assets around the globe and our carriers do it better then anyone else, we’d still need to keep some of the out there but as you say they will be short lived when the shooting starts with world powers.

I wish that was my idea, but that concept came out 40 years ago when the VLS (Vertical Launch System) became operational.

The missile has made the world a very small place.

 

[Pps1980]

Complete nightmares from a maintenance standpoint from what I have heard repeatedly. They almost all have hull fractures that are serious.

 

[dannyd]

Complete nightmares from a maintenance standpoint from what I have heard repeatedly. They almost all have hull fractures that are serious.

That's all Aluminum ships been able in the North Atlantic after being sea state 7 or 8 for a while, to look outside because of the cracks.

That's the only thing I really miss about the Navy is being a teenager on the boat. One of favorite C.O.'s would play "Wipeout" by The Surfaris.

He would say over the 1MC, "Boys strap everything down because this is going to suck" and then he play the song.

 

[blume357]

For good or bad it is the industrial military complex... one big behemoth of an industry that the American People support. Just like all the billions of equipment we left in Afghanistan .... everybody raised cane here about it but guess what?... we now need to replace all that stuff with equipment that is 'more better'.

 

[dannyd]

For good or bad it is the industrial military complex... one big behemoth of an industry that the American People support. Just like all the billions of equipment we left in Afghanistan .... everybody raised cane here about it but guess what?... we now need to replace all that stuff with equipment that is 'more better'.

The Military Industrial Complex made old Strom rich,

 

[bobski]

not a good idea to put missles on non-combatants.
it would make every floating ship in the sea a target.
(think lusatania.)
it would be as stupid as putting air to air missles on a pan am 747.

 

[dannyd]

not a good idea to put missles on non-combatants.
it would make every floating ship in the sea a target.
(think lusatania.)
it would be as stupid as putting air to air missles on a pan am 747.

They would not be Non-Combatants, they would be Purpose-built Navy ships that could survive the new Naval War that's coming.

They would be inexpensive ships with 40 sailors as crews that would give the Navy more Useful firepower than any Aircraft Carrier we have today.

You rode the carrier two missile hits to catapult area and it's out of action except for the F-35's, that's why the front office is replacing the C-2 with the V-22. Can the V-22 replace the C-2, no, limited range and over twice the maintenance to keep it flying, but the V-22 doesn't need a catapult system to get it off the ship.

This is not a new idea, started well over 40 years ago, the Navy knew the carrier would become irrelevant in a major conflict with China, India or Russia.

The Nimitz and Ford class have basically became the Yamato and Musashi of the 21st Century, impressive to look at, but tactfully unsound.

 

[ProfessorWes]

It's not just the Navy, but that service seems to be where the past forty years of mistakes in defense spending have really come home to roost.

F-35, whether Air Force, Navy or Marine variants, are overpriced junk.

Both flavors of LCS are being retired because they weren't any good to begin with.

The Aegis cruisers are wearing out and there's no replacement on the horizon. A bunch of those have already been retired.

The Burke-class destroyers are a forty-year-old design and there's no replacement for those on the horizon. The first-flight Burkes are on the verge of being retired.

LCS briefly filled the frigate role, but what's going to replace those? It's going to be at least a couple of years before any of the FREMMs - originally an Italian design - are ready; the first of those are being built in Wisconsin.

The new Ford-class carriers seem to be a lemon, too. And in the age of missile and drone swarms, the big deck carriers seem to be sitting ducks anyway.

Sealift and underway replenishment have been cut to the bone. And with our deteriorating manufacturing base and relying on overseas supply - China, as often as not - for everything from raw materials to electronics - we've got pretty much a one shot-and-done military. Just look at how much of our stockpile of advanced weapons - how many years' worth of production! - has already been sent to, and used up by, Ukraine.

Not to mention that the modern woke Democrat-led military is much more proficient on lecturing the troops about things like climate change, racism and transgender rights than it is at training them in basic warfighting tasks. With the Navy, that seems to have manifested itself in things like ships running aground or into other ships, or not knowing what to do when a fire breaks out onboard. Then again, since the priorities of that same woke and pozzed military appear to be protecting Democrats and elites from their domestic political opponents, how much of a Navy do we really need anyway?

 

[bobski]

see dans comment......

"The United State's could take container ships put Vertical Launch systems on them for a fraction of the cost of the carrier."

 

[g5m]

The Surface Navy is trying to make itself relevant in the 21st century, with new submarine and missile technology, the aircraft carrier and surface ship have become like the battleship in 1941.

They can hit the carrier anytime and anywhere in the world, so they will be useless in a global war.

The United State's could take container ships put Vertical Launch systems on them for a fraction of the cost of the carrier. Couple hundred missiles and minimum crew.

View attachment 29344

I have seen it surmised that the Chinese have already done that with missiles in containers on container ships.
That could be a tough nut to crack.

 

[Hvymax]

you mean like the ' Grendel ' ???

Colt had all their 'Snake Guns'..... Anaconda, Python, King Cobra ...etc ..... How come they never made a 'Rattler' ???

Do you mean the 6.5 or George Kelgren's first company???

 

[dannyd]

The Navy as been struggling with tactics on large ocean warfare since April of 1945 because the Navy out of the three services at the time lost the most KIA at the Battle of Okinawa.

The Navy lost those sailors to the first anti-ship missile system in the world the "Kamikaza Pilots", the Navy also had a fear that they would be used by North Korea, China, and North Vietnam against the carrier's in those wars.
(Korea and Vietnam)

The Germans also had a air launch anti-ship missile, but nothing like the Japanese had turned their air force into. If I remember right the Germans only sunk a few ships with it.

So, here we are almost 80 years later, wondering how do we get close
enough to the enemy coast to deploy our weapons systems without getting annihilated.

One last thing, in the 1980's when the Navy was trying to bring back four old battleships the first thing they did was put "Tomahawk" launch boxes on them basically making those ships just the same a using a cargo ship, but at a tremendous cost of material and personal.

 

[bobski]

i tell ya what.....you go man the cargo ship, i'll hide behind that 12" hull. ;>

 

[dannyd]

i tell ya what.....you go man the cargo ship, i'll hide behind that 12" hull. ;>

Actually that's why the battleships were decommissioned again because of corrosion that 12" hull was about a 1" thick in some places.

I was different Airdale almost 18 years riding the flat end of surface ships, so I got to know more than I needed to know about them, but being the only Aviation Chief on a surface ship was great.

 

[RC44Mag]

i tell ya what.....you go man the cargo ship, i'll hide behind that 12" hull. ;>

dont forget modern missiles like Harpoon can be programmed to pop up and hit the deck from above, I’m guessing the Chinese and russians have them also.

 

[dannyd]

dont forget modern missiles like Harpoon can be programmed to pop up and hit the deck from above, I’m guessing the Chinese and russians have them also.

After you got out, we really got some new equipment, when the subs launched the Tomahawks in the Red Sea during the first Gulf War, we knew our days were numbered.

It's just evolution from the Flintlock to the Tomahawks (missiles).