Editor’s Note: Arrias steps away from Ukraine today…a brilliant sunny one tinged with memory for those who gave their all…

– Vic

DoD’s Augean Stables

If you have been keeping up with current events you will know that there is a war going on in Europe, a big, ugly, high-end war with one of America’s “peers” in the mix. And if you have been really paying attention you will have noticed several points; I’ll just address one today:

War is expensive.

Said differently, every dollar spent on defense needs to be spent wisely. Even if we were to increase our defense budget by 50%, we still wouldn’t have enough money to make dumb choices.

Which brings us around to the DOD. In the last few weeks the Navy has announced plans to decommission some ships. Okay, every year some ships are decommissioned.

But what is the Navy doing? Consider USS Anzio. Take a look at the ship in this picture:

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[4251 x 2834] USS Anzio looking worse for wear, Naval Station Norfolk, April 7, 2022.
byu/_Sunny– inWarshipPorn

If you have been following the discussion closely, you will know that Anzio is on the list of ships the US Navy wants decommission. Except Anzio is also just finishing a “SLEP,” Ship’s Life Extension Program. Hmmmm… The Navy spent $53 million on extending the life of the ship and now they want to decommission it. Does that make sense?

Or consider the Littoral Combat Ship – LCS. The first two ships, both of which came in with serious cost overruns, were decommissioned after less than 13 years of service. Two more will be decommissioned this year after 10 and 8 years of service respectively.

These ships were supposed to be multi-mission ships, and “mission modules” would be loaded or off-loaded depending on the mission. But these “mission modules” never quite came into being. In particular, the anti-submarine module turned out to be just too hard and too heavy and well…

On top of that, a DOD study found the ships would not survive in combat. Over the years the GAO issued report after report about various problems with the ships.

And now the Navy wants to retire 9 more because they have cracks in the hull (built light so they could go faster…). But why are we still buying more of these ships?

What about USS Ford, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier? Commissioned in 2017 and has yet to deploy. But it’s going to later this year. Well, not really, if you read the fine print. The last Navy announcement was that Ford would be out and about the Atlantic but not with a complete airing and it will not “chop” (switch its chain of command), but will remain attached to the US Navy. Ford’s first real deployment is now scheduled for 2024, “just” 6 years after the original schedule.

Or what about USS Zumwalt and her two sister-ships? Three destroyers bought for $22 billion? Oh, and the guns don’t work.

It’s not just the Navy. If you want to give yourself a headache, take a look at the KC-46, the USAF replacement for the KC-135. The KC-46s, based on the Boeing 767 – which went into service in 1981; in 2011 the contract was awarded, and the first aircraft was delivered to the Air Force in 2019. But as of 2021 the KC-46 still is not cleared for use overseas, and still cannot refuel the A-10, F-22, F-35, B-1, or B-2.

Just for the record, the Boeing-707 went into service in 1955, the first KC-135 was in service by 1957. The last one was built in 1965, and they are expected to keep flying until some time in the 2050s – 90 years. The rumor is that the KC-46s will be retired in the 2050s as well and one wag has suggested that the KC-135s will be flying after the KC-46s are retired…

Each of these cases has perfectly good “reasons” why this is so. But collectively they tell a different story.

This is broken. And it is broken inside DOD. This is not an industry problem (though they are more than willing to drink from this fountain). But let’s frame it differently: How many program managers of LCS, of FORD, of KC-46, of any of a dozen major maintenance programs, over the last 20 years received Legions of Merits or Distinguished Service Medals, and promotions as they left the jobs in managing these programs? How many were promoted? How many Captains because Admirals? How many Admirals got another star? How man GS-14s became GS-15s? How many GS-15s became SESs?

Imagine the caterwauling. And the perennial excuse: this has always been so. Yes, Julius Caesar in his Commentaries rants about what he called the “Impedimenta,” the folks who would sell things to the Army that they didn’t need or were of low quality. But we have turned that on its head; now we go out and seek things we don’t need and order things that don’t work.

Like the 12 Labors of Hercules, the task will be prodigious, but the stables on the Potomac, like the Augean stables, need to be cleaned out. Heads need to roll, examples need to be made, and we need a few Rickovers to go in and fix them. Congress needs to demand that the Navy, and the other services, fix this.

Copyright 2022 Arrias
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