US Navy Verdict: One in five is not ready for battle!
According to wired.com (USA), more than twenty percent of naval warships are not ready to sail at sea or to any battles, and this is when the demand for military vessels has increased several times. And the number of ships unprepared for battle is likely to increase, as the US Navy troops only confirm their constant trouble with combat readiness.
According to statistics published by Republican Randy Forbes, who is a Republican of Virginia and who heads the subcommittee of the House of Representatives on the readiness of the United States Armed Forces, about 22 percent of military ships failed to pass the test in 2011 year. And in 2007, only eight percent of the ships were classified as: ships equipped with outdated equipment or with equipment for which there were no necessary spare parts. And, by the way, more than half of the aircraft used by the Navy are not ready for battle, and among them are the P-3C Orion, F / A-18 Hornet reconnaissance aircraft and the EA-18G “Growler” aircraft for creating radio-electronic interference. ".
According to the diagram made by Forbes, which was published for the meeting of the subcommittee, “the inundated US fleet goes to sea without the necessary repairs for it. Destroyers, patrol ships, aircraft carriers spent about forty percent of the time waiting for deployment into battle formations with "at least a failure of one main module or several systems." “These systems are likely to include“ satellite communications, radar, air defense systems or engines. Let us not forget that even the newest ships are subject to destruction. ”
And the demand for ships of the Navy is huge. Let's look at the past year. The aircraft and ships of the Navy performed the tasks of supporting military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. They helped save people in natural disasters: after the earthquake / tsunami in Japan and after the floods in Pakistan. The ships led a military operation against Libya and fought with pirates from Somalia.
At a meeting of Randy Forbes, the two warlords present, Vice Admiral Kevin McGoy and Vice Admiral William Burke made it clear that there were more and more problems with combat readiness. Since engineers should carry out more stringent checks, and this will be a kind of solution to the problems, which was proposed by the admirals. But perhaps the warlords will begin to face deeper troubles in the repair and maintenance. Both the repair and maintenance of warships show negative results with ongoing funding from the defense department, which, according to William Burke, is about $ 5 billion, which is spent only on “patches” for fleet.
Phillip Ewing of Dot Buzz claims that the modern navy is now paying its bills, because of the wayward decisions of the Pentagon in the late nineties and the beginning of the two thousandth. If someone noticed that they appeared, "permanent operational problems in connection with scheduled maintenance" at the end of the previous decade. That Ewing wrote that the navy reduced repair brigades and began to use computer programs that I cannot replace experienced managers. Who could monitor the situation and give orders for repair. But this budget reduction can only mean that the ships do not receive regular maintenance or spare parts that are necessary for their operation.
Now we will try to imagine that before the US Navy there will be a choice of three possible perspectives. Reducing the allocation to defense and defense, 12-year plan for 400 billion dollars means for the Obama administration only one thing that the administration will have to change its priorities if it wants the planes and ships to be at least somehow ready for battle. The Pentagon, on the other hand, has its own opinion that, on the part of the government, security measures should be taken in the air and at sea, especially in the western part of the Pacific Ocean. In the end, until the navy begins to build modern ships in the next decade, the fleet will lose about seventy ships, since the combat means and submarines of the Reagan era will end their service life in 2020.
In other words, the navy is confused at the thought of what awaits it in the future, when more needs to be done with less money. It is believed that the deck of the ships of the Navy will hold more and more, and these ships have long been time to dispose.
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