Welcome to the CavasShips Podcast with Christopher P. Cavas and Chris Servello…a weekly podcast looking at naval and maritime events and issues of the day – in the US, across the seas and around the world. This Week…Both of us attended the US Navy League’s three-day Sea Air Space gathering just outside Washington DC. We saw a lot and we heard a lot, and we’ll talk about our takeaways.
In this Week’s Squawk Chris Cavas has some advice for Navy leaders as they seek to get rid of ships.
Please send us feedback by DM’ing @CavasShips or @CSSProvision or you can email chriscavas@gmail.com or cservello@defaeroreport.com.
This Week’s Naval Round Up:
Discussion and debate about the US Navy’s budget requests to decommission 24 ships in fiscal 2023 while buying only 9 continues. At the US Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium just outside Washington, both Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Mike Gilday defended their plan as necessary to strike what they call the right balance between strategy and budget. CNO Gilday declared that “We need a ready, capable, lethal force more than we need a bigger force that’s less ready, less lethal, and less capable.” SECNAV Del Toro said he considered fielding capabilities more significant than anything else, including fleet size.
The Navy’s latest plan has the fleet’s size dropping from today’s 298 ships down to 280 in 2027 before starting to rise again.
Critics focused on the 24 ship inactivations more than the new construction, particularly nine littoral combat ships – some of which are so new they have never deployed – and five more cruisers to be decommissioned in addition to five in 2022. Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia tweeted that “the Navy owes a public apology to American taxpayers for wasting tens of billions of dollars on ships they now say serve no purpose.”
The issues will get even more scrutiny in May when the four Congressional defense committees hold Navy budget hearings.
A record number of Marine F-35B Lightning Joint Strike Fighters – sixteen JSFs at once – operated from the assault ship USS TRIPOLI in late March and early April to test out the Marine Corps’ Lightning Carrier concept to use assault ships as dedicated fixed-wing carrier platforms. F0-35Bs from Marine Fighter Attack Squadrons 211 and 225 and Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One operated from the TRIPOLI off the southern California coast. The Corps will work up to embarking 20 F-35s at a time to prove out the Lighting Carrier concept.
The Coast Guard icebreaker POLAR STAR WAGB10 on April 8 wrapped up a 147-day Operation Deep Freeze deployment when it arrived in San Francisco Bay. The cutter – the only active American heavy icebreaker – operated in Antarctica for 65 days, the longest such deployment since 2004. POLAR STAR did not return to its homeport of Seattle but instead entered drydock in Vallejo, California – site of the former Mare Island Navy Yard – for the second phase of a five-year, $75 million Service Life Extension Program.
In Spain, Navantia shipbuilders in Ferrol began cutting steel April 6 for the first F110 Bonifaz-class frigate for the Spanish Navy. Spain plans to build five F110 frigates equipped with Lockheed Martin’s Aegis combat system using the S-band variant of Lockheed’s new SPY-7 radar, both provided to Spain under a US Navy Foreign Military Sales construct.
