US Navy wants to scrap USS Truman

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: tarkalak

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
...

2000 years ago, the Earth was about 7 degrees F or about 4 degrees C warmer than today. Regular wine grapes could and were grown in what is now England. Then, around 500 AD, the climate changed when the Sunda Straight was formed.

There goes the thread again.

I mean, if we're talking about temperature history... this actually isn't true. There isn't a point in the history of human civilization (within the last 10,000 years) where the global temperature was 4' C higher than now. About 8,000 years ago, it looks to have been roughly 1' C warmer than it was in the Little Ice Age in the 1800s. And it is hotter now than it was 8,000 years ago. Here's a good page for a graph: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/c ... y%E2%80%9D

That's not to say that grapes couldn't have been grown in England. I do actually remember a source for that, but grape growing is not necessarily linked with climate. They grow grapes and make wine a-plenty in Iowa, which has a colder climate (on the whole) than England. Wine was grown in England because the Romans took it there, not because the people there always wanted to grow grapes and just couldn't because it was too cold. But for the sake of argument, let's agree that sure, growing grapes in England had something to do with climate - the Medieval Warm Period (which was not a global event) in the northern hemisphere was still only as warm as about 1950-1970.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

I get troubled every time I hear the pundits on US News/Opinion channels say that America "has the most powerful armed forces in the world, able to take on two or three major adversaries simultaneously!" I call BS.

I agree. The US used to have enough forces to deal with two regional threats at the same time. Since the forces have been cut since the first President Bush doing so, that is no longer true. At least with conventional forces.

Correct. Originally, there was enough force to fight offensively on 2 fronts (Europe and Asia). The force reduction changed that to fighting offensively on one front while defensively on the other. I'm not sure which place I'd rather be. That was ~5 years ago, so I'm not sure what the plan is now. I do know the military is once again training for large scale conflict. I trained that way most of my career. Then we trained for nation building. Cycles...

Y'all know more than me, but my impression is that the hardware is still mostly there. It's just that we're lacking in "wetware", right? (And "greenware", i.e. appropriated funds to activate the reserve hardware and pay for more people.) That's a relatively easy problem to fix if we needed to fix it, but training takes a few years, yeah?

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe



I agree. The US used to have enough forces to deal with two regional threats at the same time. Since the forces have been cut since the first President Bush doing so, that is no longer true. At least with conventional forces.

Correct. Originally, there was enough force to fight offensively on 2 fronts (Europe and Asia). The force reduction changed that to fighting offensively on one front while defensively on the other. I'm not sure which place I'd rather be. That was ~5 years ago, so I'm not sure what the plan is now. I do know the military is once again training for large scale conflict. I trained that way most of my career. Then we trained for nation building. Cycles...

Y'all know more than me, but my impression is that the hardware is still mostly there. It's just that we're lacking in "wetware", right? (And "greenware", i.e. appropriated funds to activate the reserve hardware and pay for more people.) That's a relatively easy problem to fix if we needed to fix it, but training takes a few years, yeah?

You're absolutely correct, Loka. The training does take some years, but there's also the mindset. Most of the youngsters in the military have never trained for large scale conflict. All they know is nation building. The old farts just need a bit of refresher training to brush off the cobwebs. Again, my knowledge is 5 years old. I work with quite a few current military members and know the trend has swung back toward large scale conflict, but that is a recent change. That's a new type of training for a fair chunk of the military right now. Fortunately, most, if not all of the leadership has had that training in the past.

[ian77]

What a thread!

Global warming, defence spending, global strategic policy, AND English wine making all in a single thread!! [&o][&o][&o]

[Anachro]

Getting back to the topic, I should note that the carrier still very much serves a need, otherwise the Chinese wouldn't be building their own carriers. Along with the Liaoning which they purchases from Ukraine and refit, the Chinese will have their first domestically produced variant of the Kuznetsov-class commissioned this year (better launch catapults, etc.) with a newer class set to be commissioned in 2023. This would bring the number of Chinese carriers to three by that time. However, their role is more limited in today's age, acting as tools of power projection for nations with ambitions or security needs beyond their own shores, especially in areas they can't readily reach by other technologies.

For China, this means being able to project its power into surrounding areas and more readily pushing its aggressive claims to territory and borders far beyond its shores (Spratly Islands, Philippines, the East Indies, the Indian Ocean); for the USA, this means supporting its security alliances in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. If some think that China only wishes to "control their shores" and protect themselves, they may well want to ask why China is so rapidly building blue water, power projection capabilities. This becomes more ominous when coupled with China's increasingly aggressive stance as to what constitutes and doesn't constitute Chinese territory.

But make no mistake, the carrier is no longer the single, dominant arbiter of naval power, subject as it now is to risks from increasingly dangerous adversarial technologies. It is one tool among many.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: Anachro

Getting back to the topic, I should note that the carrier still very much serves a need, otherwise the Chinese wouldn't be building their own carriers. Along with the Liaoning which they purchases from Ukraine and refit, the Chinese will have their first domestically produced variant of the Kuznetsov-class commissioned this year (better launch catapults, etc.) with a newer class set to be commissioned in 2023. This would bring the number of Chinese carriers to three by that time. However, their role is more limited in today's age, acting as tools of power projection for nations with ambitions or security needs beyond their own shores, especially in areas they can't readily reach by other technologies.

For China, this means being able to project its power into surrounding areas and more readily pushing its aggressive claims to territory and borders far beyond its shores (Spratly Islands, Philippines, the East Indies, the Indian Ocean); for the USA, this means supporting its security alliances in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. If some think that China only wishes to "control their shores" and protect themselves, they may well want to ask why China is so rapidly building blue water, power projection capabilities. This becomes more ominous when coupled with China's increasingly aggressive stance as to what constitutes and doesn't constitute Chinese territory.

But make no mistake, the carrier is no longer the single, dominant arbiter of naval power, subject as it now is to risks from increasingly dangerous adversarial technologies. It is one tool among many.

American CVNs are not dispossile though. The Chinese have a very different view of platforms. If it means securing Taiwan they'll gladly sacrifice their CVs.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: Anachro

Getting back to the topic, I should note that the carrier still very much serves a need, otherwise the Chinese wouldn't be building their own carriers. Along with the Liaoning which they purchases from Ukraine and refit, the Chinese will have their first domestically produced variant of the Kuznetsov-class commissioned this year (better launch catapults, etc.) with a newer class set to be commissioned in 2023. This would bring the number of Chinese carriers to three by that time. However, their role is more limited in today's age, acting as tools of power projection for nations with ambitions or security needs beyond their own shores, especially in areas they can't readily reach by other technologies.

For China, this means being able to project its power into surrounding areas and more readily pushing its aggressive claims to territory and borders far beyond its shores (Spratly Islands, Philippines, the East Indies, the Indian Ocean); for the USA, this means supporting its security alliances in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. If some think that China only wishes to "control their shores" and protect themselves, they may well want to ask why China is so rapidly building blue water, power projection capabilities. This becomes more ominous when coupled with China's increasingly aggressive stance as to what constitutes and doesn't constitute Chinese territory.

But make no mistake, the carrier is no longer the single, dominant arbiter of naval power, subject as it now is to risks from increasingly dangerous adversarial technologies. It is one tool among many.

American CVNs are not dispossile though. The Chinese have a very different view of platforms. If it means securing Taiwan they'll gladly sacrifice their CVs.

"Gladly" - I doubt it. Just because Chinese domestic politics are authoritarian doesn't mean they're immune to domestic politics.