{"id":148119,"date":"2023-10-04T07:00:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=148119"},"modified":"2023-10-03T18:15:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T22:15:13","slug":"paper-tiger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=148119","title":{"rendered":"Paper tiger?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yes, we have the most advanced military in the world. If it works, that is. Remember the new catapults on our latest and greatest aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford? The ship started construction in 2009, launched in 2017 – and finally became mission capable in 2022. Remember how many ships launched in WWII – which lasted 1\/3 as long as the Ford’s launch build? CNN<\/a><\/p>\n

Then we have the current destroyer refit. Supposedly by throwing $150-175,000,000 per hull at them, their service life could be extended and they could stay on the forefront of our forces for at least another decade. The Vicksburg, first launched in 1991, is one even the Navy is tired of supporting and wants to retire:<\/p>\n

For more than six years, the USS Vicksburg has sat idle at a shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, undergoing repairs that have cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the 567-foot guided-missile cruiser might never return to sea. The USS Vicksburg is one of 11 vessels that the Navy is seeking to retire but members of Congress may not let it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now we get to the part long-term readers will recognize: see what Diana Maurer, the director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, says.<\/p>\n

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Maurer’s office released a report this year that found the Navy is spending more money repairing its warships while its vessels are spending less time at sea. From 2011 through 2020, operating and support costs across 10 ship classes grew by $2.5 billion, or 17%. That included a $1.2 billion increase in maintenance costs \u2013 a 24% jump, according to the GAO report.<\/p>\n

Maurer said the rising maintenance costs are due in part to the Navy’s having put off the upkeep of the ships when they were involved in combat in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How many folks here remember TAH\u00a0 reader complaints about deferred maintenance,\u00a0 and that the bill would come due?<\/p>\n

At a House Appropriations Committee hearing last year, Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, said that the Navy had awarded $500 million in contracts to update the Vicksburg.\u00a0\u00a0 NBC News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have to suspect a new ship <\/em>would cost around that…\u00a0 Could be worse. The submarine USS Boise has been in repairs for eight years.<\/p>\n

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Now to the overpriced Edsel, the beloved F-35:<\/p>\n

Maintenance challenges have had a negative effect on US services’\u00a0F-35 readiness, according to\u00a0a report published by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).<\/p>\n

The paper highlighted that the fifth-generation fighter fleet mission capable rate was about 55% in March 2023, far below programme goals. When assessed in the same period, the programme was also said to be behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs, resulting in longer \u2018component repair times, with more than 10,000 waiting to be repaired\u2019.\u00a0 Shephardmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n

A lack of spare parts and technical data, poor training of maintainers, and a lagging effort to expand repair depots are dragging down the U.S. military\u2019s ability to keep the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the air, a government watchdog said in a report released Thursday.<\/p>\n

But the F-35?s availability has lagged for years, and if a war broke out today, many fighters would be unavailable to fight. In March 2023, GAO said, the mission-capable rate for all F-35s was at 55%. That\u2019s well below the 70% mission-capable goal the Air Force has for its F-35As, and the 75% goal for the Navy and Marine Corps\u2019 F-35B and F-35C variants.<\/p>\n

The backlog of broken spare parts that need fixed has more than doubled since spring 2019, GAO said, from 4,300 to more than 10,000.<\/p>\n

It now takes an average of 141 days to repair a broken spare part \u2014 far above the F-35 program\u2019s goal of 60 days \u2014 and nearly three-quarters of those parts are sent back to the original equipment manufacturer for repair.<\/p>\n

Defense News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds to me like Lockheed Martin needs their feet held to the fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, we have the most advanced military in the world. If it works, that is. Remember … Paper tiger?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}