Old ships: the problem of the USA and Russia
To begin with, a small digression to the readers and (especially) commenters. We have a different audience. Both culture and education. Accordingly - and the quality of the comments. Some (usually quickly leaving us) part of the audience believes that it is possible to stoop to outright rudeness and stupidity. Usually, for some reason, these are the so-called "cheers-patriots", for whom insults are the main argument. But I would like a different argument.
The author is often accused of lack of patriotism. He only sees the bad. Sorry, Channel One and Zvezda will tell you about the good. If you need positive under the cheers-sauce - so it's there, there are such professionals (without scoffing, it's true) they do it very accessible and beautifully. We try to be objective.
A few words about objectivity. There were two articles this month that caused a direct spill of bile in the “uryashnye”. On the modernization of surface and submarine ships. It’s hard to say why I didn’t please, but apparently people just don’t quite understand the subject.
I somehow already tried to speak in automotive language, I'll risk it again. You have a six. Inherited from grandfather. Fresh, only 1982, assembled from Soviet metal and Soviet hands. Flint, in short.
You take her to work. Change sills, arches, fenders, paint, sort out the engine, flop a “modern” injector for the “classics” on it, repair the box and paint. Uh? Oh sure. All such "six", as from the assembly line, shines.
And you go to your neighbor. Measure. But the neighbor has a Chevrolet Cavalier of the same year. The condition is not exhibition, but ... air conditioning, automatic transmission, power windows, power steering and other pleasures.
Do you understand what I mean? Yes, patriotism is very good. But common sense says that a Kia "Rio" or even a "Granta" would be better.
Our entire life today is marked by the struggle between patriotism and common sense. And someone believes that the patched "Admiral Shaposhnikov", which has had half of its hull replaced, is an unspeakable "victory" that has strengthened the fleet, and it has the right to do so. As well as the fact that a forty-year-old ship is such a dubious gain. But alas, not only are there no others, they are not yet foreseen. And this is the reality of our day.
But now we will talk about what is happening on the other side of the ocean, in the United States.
On the one hand, the publications of some state media speak directly about how bad things are for the Americans. On the other hand, is it worth it to rejoice?
"American navy yards and shipyards are badly worn out and can't handle the load" - said the head of the Forces Command fleet Admiral Daryl Caudle.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Surface Navy Association conference, the admiral spoke a lot and directly that warships are being repaired slowly and not as well as we would like, and new ships suffer from postponed delivery dates (the Russian equivalent of "shift to the right" ).
The worst situation is with aircraft carriers and submarines, the shipbuilding industry is in such a state that if several large ships fail (for example, as a result of a military clash at sea with an enemy of equal strength), there will be enormous difficulties in repairing them.
Not enough people, not enough capacity.
All of this is very familiar to us, in Russia there are exactly the same problems. And during the time it takes the United States to build a nuclear aircraft carrier with a displacement of 100 tons, we are building a frigate with a displacement of 000 tons.
As they say, there is a difference, and it is palpable.
Caudle goes on to complain that the US Navy lacks shipyards and dry docks. Those that are, work at the limit of their capabilities. In the case of the situation described above, when urgent repairs of many ships are required, the admiral believes that the US Navy does not have any reserves in order to rectify the situation.
As an example, the admiral cited the example of the Connecticut submarine, which the crew banged about something in the South China Sea. The boat is still waiting for repair, and no one can predict when it will begin. And no one has yet guessed how effective the repair will be.
Ship repair is a problem. This is a huge problem, because in wartime this problem can become a vulnerability, perhaps even a critical one.
Here it is worth remembering the experience of the Second World War. What losses did the US fleet initially suffer from the actions of the Japanese aviation and ships. And how confidently the country was able to repair damaged and build new ships, completely offset the advantage that Japan received in the first year of the war.
Will they be able to repeat in the USA? If the admirals of the American Navy doubt it...
Meanwhile, from the US military budget from 2015 to 2019, 2,8 billion dollars were allocated specifically for the repair and reconstruction of shipyards. For comparison, this is half of the entire military budget of countries such as Ukraine, Romania, Denmark or Switzerland.
However, despite the money spent, according to the reports of the Senate commission that controls the military-industrial complex, enterprises that received subsidies for repair and development disrupted about 70% of the repair and maintenance of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines in terms of timing. It is worth emphasizing that these are enterprises that are fully or partially federally owned.
Private traders are doing somewhat better, but they mainly deal with smaller ships.
Why is that? It is clear that some shipyards are very old. The same famous shipyards in Boston are over 200 years old. It is clear that they have been modernized from time to time, but replacing the machine park is one thing, and changing the entire infrastructure is another.
The technical condition of the fleet, especially the large navy, is a huge problem. This applies to both our fleet, which is far from the youngest in the world, and the American one, which is also full of veterans.
In 2020, again reporting to Congress, a special commission to review the naval forces made a very unpleasant conclusion for congressmen: old ships consume more money for maintenance and repairs than actually carry out combat service. It turned out that even for a country like the United States, with such a military budget, it is problematic to maintain such an armada of old ships.
When they talk about it in the Russian media, even with a certain amount of gloating, this is normal. But it is worth remembering that the problems in the Russian fleet are of exactly the same kind.
Today, some of us happily clap their hands over the fact that ships that are 35-40 years old are “going through deep modernization”. And at the same time, they talk with enthusiasm about the "old and crumbling US Navy."
Yes, with ships that have exceeded 30 years of age, the Americans also have problems, who build ships somewhat more successfully than we do. In quantitative terms, at least. Propulsion systems do not withstand the prescribed loads, they fail, the ships cannot perform their tasks.
Moreover, it was the problems with the power plants that sentenced the Freedoms, the very littoral ships on which the United States made very high stakes. The series has been stopped, the ships are no longer acquired by the fleet, and those that are in service are likely to be disposed of as they cannot be used normally.
By the way, about recycling.
A very topical question: what to do with ships whose service life has reached its maximum?
It is clear that for American admirals (probably not only for American ones) to write off warships as scrap - with a sickle or anchor ...
In the United States, the list of ships to be decommissioned was personally and individually approved by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gildy.
The first three of the nine Freedoms. And one of the Independences (Coronado) joined them. That is, four littoral ships go to the metal. After the breakdown of the power plant on the Coronado, the commission came to the conclusion that it was easier to cut than to repair.
Seven of the 22 Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers will follow the littoral.
The ships have come close to 35 years of age and more and more money has to be spent on their maintenance. In addition, two of the seven ships, Anzio and Hue City, were put on the reserve list after it turned out that the repair and modernization of these cruisers would cost the budget one and a half billion. Easier to cut. And much cheaper.
It will be necessary to do something with the boats of the Coastal Guard of the Cyclone type. Five boats that have been in service since the beginning of the 90s will also be scrapped, the remaining five are not much younger. A replacement is needed, which is not yet visible.
Well, the largest ship on the list is the amphibious dock ship Whisby Island.
The ship is 36 years old and was last seen in an active process in 2016, when it participated in the Sea Breeze in the Black Sea.
The approach is perhaps justified by the fact that the United States has everything necessary to build new ships. Perhaps there is, because what has been happening in the country lately cannot be called a positive process.
Shipyard cuts also caused cuts in the entire military-industrial complex after the “victory” in the Cold War. No, there was a victory, but it clearly turned out to be pyrrhic, since thousands of specialists were not needed. After all, there was no need for a decent number of warships, and hence for their designers and builders.
And it all started not yesterday, but even under the Clinton administration, when private shipyards began to close due to lack of work and private industry began to lobby for military orders.
And it worked. Part of the engineering and design work began to be left to private traders, although the design of warships was perfectly handled within the walls of NAVSEA, the command of naval systems. It was here that they created projects for very decent ships such as the Wasp UDC and the Ticonderoga cruiser.
Savings have had a huge impact on everything. And today in the United States they are reaping about the same fruits as in Russia, only without enterprises such as Nikolaev's plants remaining abroad.
And the Americans seem to have everything in place, but not in the quality in which they would like.
On the one hand, according to the principle “the neighbor’s dacha burned down, a trifle, but nice,” yes, we can not only gloat, but state the fact that everything in the US naval industry is far from ideal.
However, in our industry, not everything is as perfect as we would like. We have exactly the same problems: lack of docks, industrial sites, factories, power plants for ships.
Speaking about the fact that what is happening in the United States is very beneficial to us, it is worth remembering that the American nation is not just tenacious. Yes, today the Yankee is far from the one that built dozens of aircraft carriers and cruisers, not at all the same. But we are not the same as in the days of the USSR. So, in the best case, given the problems in the United States, one can only say that we still have a certain amount of time that can be spent not on patching old ships, but on building new ones.
How the Americans did it in 1942. But we need to start in Russia of the 2022 model.
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