Actually reading the report shows Helena has served 38 years with an expected service life of 33 years. How long before she needs another refurbishment of this, or greater cost? How long are we going to struggle to keep her serving...40 years? 45? 50? When do we drop her? She is, in fact, a perfect illustration of what the entire report is about. We can--every few years--shell out these kinds of amounts keeping "relics" in service for the sake of numbers, then claim there is not enough money to build the new ships we need. Or we can drop them, suffer a temporary dip in numbers, then execute the plan as shown, which would get us even greater numbers of newer hulls in the period shown.
From the plan itself:
"This era of strategic competition requires a larger, modernized, capable, and lethal multi-domain Navy to face multiple pacing threats. The Navy is moving forward building advanced platforms such as Ford class aircraft carriers, DDG 51 Flt III, FFG 62, and SSN 774 with the Virginia Payload Module. Meeting Joint Force operational requirements under current budgetary guidance and against the backdrop of deteriorating industrial base market conditions over the past four decades requires difficult choices. These choices include
divesting less capable ships that are expensive to repair and maintain, along with ships that provide less relevant capability against the requirements of our pacing challenge. But these hard choices can also present opportunities, such as investments in promising technologies that can be fielded at operationally relevant timelines and scales over the coming years. Careful prioritization in the near-term, in accordance with the National Security Strategy and the 2022 National Defense Strategy, will result in a Navy battle force that is more ready, sustainable, and capable of securing the nation’s interests in peace or war."
But why would we bother to read the actual document?
I knew Helena was 36 years old. End of life. My point was if you spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a test refurbishment, it would be good to extend the life of a midlife submarine.
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