SpaceX works because a lot of people want to put satellites in orbit. In a time of unprecedented peace, how many navy ships do we realistically want to be building?
$4.25B/ship is the wrong way to frame it. Think of it as $23B to keep our shipbuilding expertise current, to make sure we have the capability to build navy ships that incorporate a bunch of cutting-edge technologies (some of which have worked out and some of which haven’t, as is the nature of cutting-edge technologies). If a shooting war started to look likely we’d be building a lot more than 3 of them and the unit cost would come way down.
reply.. It seems you should be able to bring down a 4 billion ship with a swarm of thousand drones for maybe 1 million each for the total cost of 1 billion. Same for aircraft carriers.
.. The lack of a missile defense system on the Zumwalts has more or less made them pointless beyond research/development testbeds.
China Mistakenly Challenges Andrew Jackson to a Duel
China Mistakenly Challenges Andrew Jackson to a Duel USS Ronald Reagan and ships of Carrier Strike Group 5 transit the Pacific Ocean in June 2017.
A Chinese diplomat’s insulting words invite a vigorous response from the U.S. The United States Navy will be making a port call in Taiwan in the near future. The only questions that remain are where, when, and how many ships of what type will drop anchor or tie up at Taiwanese piers. Of course, this may cause a war to break out in Asia, but it won’t be one of the United States’ making. We owe this troubling possibility to a China whose rising sense of anticipatory greatness is at odds with its capacity to execute a successful war. Hubris stimulated a Chinese official, Li Kexin, who is attached to its embassy in Washington, D.C., to threaten war against the United States. Li was responding to fairly normal language within the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act that allowed for mutual port visits between American and Taiwan naval vessels. In response, Li stated: “The day that a U.S. Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung [Taiwan’s main deep-water port] is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force.”
Under these conditions, the United States has no choice but to send the United States Navy to Taiwan for a port visit, and to do so in a big way. The USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class super carrier based in Japan, with its entire embarked air wing of 65 strike fighters and reconnaissance aircraft and its accompanying escort strike group of Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class ballistic-missile-defense destroyers, should quickly sortie to Taiwan. They should divide up, with one portion of the strike group transiting down the strait that separates the island from China and the other coming down the eastern coast, meeting up at the southern tip to escort the Reagan into port at Kaohsiung. At that point, the other strike-group ships should either take up station north and south of Taiwan, with their Aegis radars at full alert given the nature of Mr. Li’s threat, or rotationally enter other ports in Taiwan for friendly port visits. The Ohio-class guided-missile submarine Michigan, carrying 154 Tomahawk missiles, should also make an appearance, before quietly disappearing into the depths to continue its lonely patrols. Such a move would be an effective demonstration of American naval coercive diplomacy worthy of Theodore Roosevelt.
.. Additionally, the United States should consider a robust, healthy defensive-arms sale package for Taiwan in the coming year. Surface ships and fighter aircraft, top-of-the-line fifth-generation stealth fighters, should be part of the package,
..All of this will be viewed by China as escalatory, and it should be, but the Chinese must be reminded that it was their intemperate language that started the upwards climb.
.. Walter Russell Mead identified four schools of U.S. foreign policy; the
- pro-business Hamiltonians, the
- liberal-order Wilsonians, the
- realist Jeffersonians, and the
- mercurial, exceptionalist Jacksonians.
The election of President Donald Trump signaled the return of the Jacksonian impulse for the first time in a generation
.. And when it comes to war? Mead states that “when an enemy attacks, Jacksonians spring to the country’s defense” viscerally, and Jacksonians, like their namesake Andrew Jackson, will not stop until honor is satisfied. It is a dangerous impulse to stimulate, as China’s Li Kexin has done. China owes the United States a public apology. It now needs to accept a U.S. Navy port visit to Taiwan with a minimum of protests
.. Jerry Hendrix is a retired U.S. Navy captain, an award-winning naval historian ..
A Russian Ghost Submarine, Its U.S. Pursuers and a Deadly New Cold War
A resurgence in Russian submarine technology has reignited an undersea rivalry that played out in a cat-and-mouse sea hunt across the Mediterranean
The Krasnodar, a Russian attack submarine, left the coast of Libya in late May, headed east across the Mediterranean, then slipped undersea, quiet as a mouse. Then, it fired a volley of cruise missiles into Syria.
In the days that followed, the diesel-electric sub was pursued by the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, its five accompanying warships, MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and P-8 Poseidon anti-sub jets flying out of Italy.
The U.S. and its allies had set out to track the Krasnodar as it moved to its new home in the Black Sea. The missile attack upended what had been a routine voyage, and prompted one of the first U.S. efforts to track a Russian sub during combat since the Cold War. Over the next weeks, the sub at points eluded detection in a sea hunt that tested the readiness of Western allies for a new era in naval warfare.
.. undersea rivalry of the Cold War, when both sides deployed fleets of attack subs to hunt for rival submarines carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.
.. Russia brags that its new subs are the world’s quietest. The Krasnodar is wrapped in echo-absorbing skin to evade sonar; its propulsion system is mounted on noise-cutting dampers; rechargeable batteries drive it in near silence
.. Top officials of North Atlantic Treaty Organization say the alliance must consider new investments in submarines and sub-hunting technology.
.. The challenge extends beyond Russia, which has sold subs to China, India and elsewhere.
.. Russia’s defense ministry notified international airlines that it would be conducting drills off the coast of Libya. U.S. officials and defense analysts said the drills were part of a sales pitch to potential buyers, including Egypt, that would show off the submarine’s cruise missiles.
.. Smaller attack submarines like the Krasnodar, armed with conventional torpedoes and cruise missiles, can pose a more tangible threat to U.S. aircraft carrier
.. The Krasnodar was designed to operate close to shore, invisible to opposing forces and able to strike missile targets 1,600 miles away.
.. How many hours or days the Krasnodar’s batteries can operate before recharging is a secret neither Russian officials who know, nor the U.S. Navy, which may have a good idea, will talk about.
.. Western naval analysts say the sub most likely must use its diesel engines to recharge batteries every couple of days. When the diesel engines are running, they say, the sub can be more easily found... Russian subs have gotten quieter but the cat-and-mouse game remained about even with advances in tracking: “We are much better at it than we were 20 years ago.”.. Submarines look for ways to hamper sonar equipment by exploiting undersea terrain and subsurface ocean currents and eddies. Differences in water temperature and density can bend sound waves, making it difficult to pinpoint the source of a sound... Russia’s military modernization program, announced in 2011, poured new money into its submarine program.. NATO planners worry subs could cut trans-Atlantic communication cables or keep U.S. ships from reaching Europe in a crisis, as Nazi subs did in World War II... U.S. officials have said they believe that Moscow’s support of the Assad regime is partly for access to a strategic port in the eastern Mediterranean to resupply and rearm warships... A new nuclear-powered class of Russian submarines even more sophisticated than the Krasnodar, called the Yasen, are designed to destroy aircraft carriers.
How Trump Can Harness the U.S. Energy Boom
The embrace of new technologies to extract oil and natural gas at an unprecedented rate has transformed one of America’s enduring vulnerabilities into a strategic asset. Thanks largely to fracking — hydraulic fracturing of rock — the United States is now the largest producer of oil and gas combined in the world. America consumes large quantities of energy, so this expanded production has not yet made the country energy independent. But it has greatly decreased its dependence on foreign energy: About a decade ago, the United States imported nearly two-thirds of the oil it consumed; that percentage is now closer to one-fifth.
.. an improved trade balance and a stronger economy. The boom has also improved the country’s sources of soft power, in part by underscoring America’s enduring edge in innovation and ingenuity.
.. American producers of oil from shale rock have introduced a new business model to the scene: Small investments in exploration and production can bring oil to the market quickly. This weakens OPEC, by making it more difficult for its production cuts to result in sustained increases in oil prices. For the first time in more than a century, the market determines the price of oil with much less influence from any cartel, commission or band of big oil companies.
.. The energy boom has also weakened many of America’s competitors, particularly Russia, by both decreasing its revenues and reducing its ability to use its energy resources as a political cudgel.
.. The boom also expands opportunities for the United States to forge new partnerships. For instance, given China’s growing dependence, and America’s waning reliance, on Middle Eastern oil, Beijing may be more likely to work with the United States to stabilize that part of the world. Such changes put America in a stronger position to reinforce the international order.
.. Many non-energy policies of the Trump administration undermine the energy boom and all its potential advantages.
.. On climate, Mr. Trump’s pledge to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement could also hurt the American energy boom. Natural gas stands to gain as the world takes strides to tackle climate change: As countries transition to more sustainable energy, they often move away from coal to natural gas. American natural gas exports could benefit from this transition — but not if countries like China and India also weaken their commitment to tackling climate change and drag their heels in curbing coal consumption.
.. Mr. Trump’s talk of retrenchment overseas has made friends and foes nervous about America’s willingness to continue to use its vast sea power to maintain open shipping lanes. Over half of the world’s oil supply and a growing percentage of the natural gas it consumes is transported through these waterways.
.. Mexico is by far the largest foreign consumer of American natural gas — a trend that will increase with recent Mexican electricity reforms. Yet President Trump’s talk about a border wall has spurred a revival in the presidential candidacy of Mexico’s own populist, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is committed to reversing these and other energy reforms. That would not only shrink the largest market for American natural gas but would also dull prospects of the United States, Canada and Mexico of reaching North American energy independence.