CNO Greenert: 'We're Not Downsizing, We're Growing' - Especially In Pacific

[unhappycamper]

http://defense.aol.com/2012/11/16/cno-greenert-were-not-downsizing-were-growing-especially/



CNO Greenert: 'We're Not Downsizing, We're Growing' - Especially In Pacific
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: November 16, 2012

WASHINGTON: Full speed ahead and damn the drawdown -- that's the confident note that the Navy's top admiral struck today.

"We're not downsizing, we're growing," declared Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, at the National Press Club. "The ship count is going up and the number of people is going up."

Adding up new ships commissioned minus old ones retired, "we started the year at 285 ships and we've grown to 287 ships," Greenert said, and "we will grow the navy from roughly 287 today to 295 ships by 2020."

Caveat emptor, however: Those figures still fall well short of the 313 "battle force" ships the Navy has long said were necessary. (Adding to the ambiguity, what counts as a "battle force" ship has changed over the years). They also count on current budget plans coming to fruition -- including, for ships to be bought after 2017, the Navy's notoriously optimistic 30-year construction plan -- despite the political near-certainty that defense budgets will be cut further, either under sequestration, to which the Navy is especially vulnerable, or as part of a deal to avert it.



unhappycamper comment: Let's see what your toys cost:

USS Gerald R Ford - somewhere between $30~$40 billion dollars
Zumwalt-class destroyers - somewhere between $5~$7 billion dollars
Virginia-class submarines - somewhere between $5~$7 billion dollars
Landing Platform Docks - $1.8 billion dollars
Littoral Combat Ship - ~$500 million dollars with no mission modules


Too bad you didn't get the memo. And it's too bad you guys don't tell We The People what this crap costs upfront.