You have to realize how important the "shipbuilding" issues are and how
they in fact run romped over the ability to plan for and procure the
aviation assets - and then also there is the politics.

The Pentagon lies when it wants to hold steady on a point -
unfortunately there is not any real better way to put that. They
Pentagon speaks in "selected truths" and it is in fact an art-form, so
how can the Congress really know what is going on (over-sight mind you)
before it actually becomes too late and things are a mess. I stumbled on
the Military Liaison office (in the Congress) practicing how to provide
a power point briefing so selective points could be made and no real
"trail" could be made to the "who said" or "source" that would enable
further or more detailed questions. The idea was if the question is not
asked nothing is volunteered and no clarifications are made if you can
at all get away with it. So with this Admiral Mike Mullen could simply
mandate that the JFK was not a good choice to be refurbished. Well that
is fine but he did not look at a refurbishment that would not compete
with the nuclear CVN-21 but one that would actually compete with the
LHA(R) to provide a bigger-better assault aviation ship for the Marine
Corps Expeditionary Force. He was so determined to get rid of a
conventional carrier trying to focus on his vision of a nuclear CVN Navy
he totally lost track of the rest of the naval force defense needs.

The first lie was to inflate and exaggerate the refurbishment costs of
the JFK - it became around $600 million - oh my God was the call, and of
course to make it a 30 knot deck that could keep up with the new CVN's
was next to impossible - and in that nobody really gave a hoot - but for
the budget they would be on the same shipbuilding line - to do it right
was way too hard. Then as most things with defense the contractors saw
the golden cow in the CVN's and every cost possible was hammered into
the new CVN-21 concept so the already amazing $3 billion carrier slipped
to $5 bill and now out to $7.5. Holy **** was the new cry and all of a
sudden the $600 million for the JFKL started to look like a real bargain
and yikes - it was inflated to boot anyway. Now we will get nuclear
carriers and the fleet will convert - but what are the real naval issues
now:

(1) how do we build up the Marines Expeditionary Force of
independent Battle Groups lead by a capable aviation assault command
ship to fight COIN and Littoral war

(2) Determine that in the full strategic sense - do we even need
surface ships as the lead nuclear and counter-nuclear combatants - has
the time come to start really stretching out the surface navy and
building up the submarine navy to transform where there is still proven
stealth (under the sea) and stop fooling around with trying to re-invent
mother nature. It does not take much to understand that an internetted
Wolf - Pack of 4 x Virginia Class nuke-boats operating autononomously
will do more to keep the Chinese up at night then all the carriers we
could send to the Pacific. The carrier strength is so determined by the
strength of its air wing even these CVN's are limited by the F/A-18E/F
which is a step-back from the A-16 / F-14 wings and sadly the JSF will
still remain inferior to both configurations. So the carriers are just
big vulnerable target sets that in a full nuclear war will have marginal
value and the CVN Battle Groups are many times in-efficient to deal with
littoral operations to counter insurgency situations. It is interesting
to note that refurbishing the JFK abd the Kitty Hawk for the Marine
Expeditionary Battle Groups builds upon the Navy's credibility to deal
with COIN littoral war and it continues to free the CVN's to focus on
broad area open ocean concepts as the transition to strategic
sub-surface gains strength. The CVN BG's can come in and support the
Marine BG's to lend help but then move on and remain high speed, open
ocean, secure and ready.

(3) Take a hard look at what is needed in naval aviation - that
is - surge produce the F/A-18E/F/G to fill all Marine, Allied, FMS and
Navy units in such a way as to keep the force young and capable for the
next 15 years. Fill the CVN's and fill the CVA for the Marines - in
this we actually return over 200 new F/A-18's to the front line ready
units. Marine Air Wings move afloat and the two Battle Groups are
forward deployed joining with allied Battle Groups who are building in
the same fashion, primary to that would be the UK Navy that should be
offered a third retired US conventional carrier for them to refurbish
and in turn buy a wing of F/A-18's and the French may jump in with a mix
of Rafale's in the fray. The Rafale may be the best Naval Fighter in
inventory in the west today - but that is another story.

(4) Since the world is joint and since the Marine BG's will pick
up the world wide war on terror, the Expeditionary BG's will have to
move in that direction so the BG will need to be filled with more
assault ships - many times more aviation ships for helicopters, COIN
aircraft and MV-22's - and in this we should see SOF, Naval Riverine,
USAF and Allied SOF as well as US Agency and NATO special units all
becoming amphibious and moving under the ability to deal out of one
headquarters afloat - with CENTCOM and PACOM married to the whole
effort. The key to these Naval BG's is that they bring with themselves
their own suborbital IT network so things will be agile and work -
dirigibles, high alt UAV's and whatever.

(5) You pay for it by canceling the JSF and moving one variant
(the CTOL) into a decade long development merging it with the
laser-canon, vectored thrust engine, manned/unmanned variant, UCAV/UCAS
and all other programs that will evolve it into something more advanced
then just a better F-16 or F-18 - it will become the penetrating
platform of choice for war against advanced states such as North Korea,
the PRC, Iran etc.... and that decade of development will bring in the
international community that joined the JSF and togeher they move on
with all prior investment credited to buys of legacy platforms (F-16,
F-15, F-18, etc) .... This frees up over 40 billion over that decade and
re-invests 10 of it in legacy aircraft and pays for the conventional
carrier conversions and additional (50% more) MV-22's. The cancel of
the JSF kills the LHA(R) and in this two more LHA's can be obtained as
well as more helicopters. Killing the failed DD(X) will also free up
wasted billions and enable DDG's to be retrofitted with features that
were developed with the DD(X) - like armored weapons magazines. And -
each BG will get a refurbished Battle Ship for the specific reason to
provide fire support - the refurbishment will not rebuild a battleship,
it will bring afloat a fire support resource for forward deployment to
the Gulf and South Pacific.

The thinking goes on and on because you kill the flood of expensive
useless stuff and bring back the necessary and better build what you
need down the road....



"Arved Sandstrom" wrote in message
news:Gfnfi.9242$xk5.1743@edtnps82...
"Flashnews" wrote in message
. net...
We are all talking around the wheel and not realizing that the world
is now "JOINT" - so there can be labor management but the mechanisms
today allow the Army to own a lot of ships and a lot of flying
vehicles.

But you are right in the pinning down of "ownership" - and I think
what we are suggesting is that an aviation assault ship, even a full
deck carrier refurbished to be one, will still have a Naval Officer
as Captain but the mission commander will be an officer reporting to
the Amphibious Expeditionary Force Commander and this guy could be an
Air Force three star but probably would not - it would be a Marine.
What would happen is that the physical ship itself would take a
drastic make-over as it switched from a naval aviation ship to a
command assault aviation ship. The mixture of aircraft. MV-22's, and
helicopters would all form a Marine Corps Air Group not a Naval Air
Wing but they may still call it a CAG - stuff like that

I buy that idea - that's pretty much what I meant. After all, all of
the amphibs already have Marine-only air, and they are designated as
Marine air - composite squadrons and MAWs. My point was, I don't
really see why Marines need to fly F/A-18's off supercarriers, if it's
not dedicated to supporting Marines? Let the Navy worry about CAP and
deep strike and all that good stuff; it's just not something the
Marines need to be doing.

AHS