We have the largest office building in the world (until last year) dedicated to the thousands of people who are supposedly dedicated to the planning and execution of our defense plans. 23,000 people to be exact, although I am confident that the Department of Defense has no real idea how many work there or what they do.
That planning is supposed to extend into the far future. Space battles, hypersonic missiles, robots, electronic warfare that most people cannot even imagine, and on and on. That’s their job.
Yet they could not plan for a breakdown in the logistics chains that allow our shipyards to function? Because logistics is supposed to be a big deal in the military. Or is it paving the way for an equitable armed forces that respects the rights of transgenders, non-binaries, furries and pedophiles?
Because that’s what most of the nonsense coming out of the Pentagon sounds like. They have lost focus. They have forgotten their jobs. They are going to get a lot of Americans killed.
US Navy ship programs face years-long delays amid labor, supply woes
Based on current performance, the Navy projects the first Columbia-class SSBN will deliver 12 to 16 months later than its contractual delivery date of October 2027. The submarine is built by General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding.
This is particularly worrisome because the vessel is expected to deploy shortly after its post-delivery testing and training. The Navy is obligated to have 10 SSBNs ready to deploy, lurking beneath the oceans while carrying nuclear missiles. The service is counting on the lead Columbia boat to deliver in 2027 so it can go on its maiden patrol in 2031. With any delays, the Navy will dip below the requirement.
Guertin said the Navy took significant steps prior to the pandemic to reduce risk on this program and accelerate the schedule where possible.
“COVID happened. Supply chain changed. Workforce greening happened,” he said, but previous risk-reduction steps kept the pandemic impacts “as minimal as possible.” The Columbia program, the Navy’s top acquisition priority, is the least delayed of the new programs assessed in the shipbuilding review, Guertin said. [Bolding mine]
That’s sh*t planning. Maybe fewer photo ops with transsexual sailors and pregnant “warfighters” and a few more late nights trying to keep our country safe.
But the worst and most damaging thing is the pathetic nods to the country-killing communist concept of global warming! It is subsuming the only job these people have. That job is to make sure that America can fight and win wars. Any other focus is anathema to their mission and must be ruthlessly stamped out.
That alliteration is coincidental…who is pushing “global warming” as an existential issue? The left. And who controls the left?
Having a “Green” armed forces is indistinguishable from having a second-rate armed forces. Spending precious time and money on planning planes and tanks and trucks that get better mileage and don’t emit CO2 is rank stupidity and is going to get lots of soldiers and sailors killed, and maybe lose us a war. Allowing green initiatives to slow the production of vital military hardware is criminal, and these people should be cashiered.
Read the article. It is a mass of excuses for the Pentagon’s abject failure to do their only job! Understanding the complexity of shipbuilding is admittedly a far more daunting task in 2024 compared to the planning for shipbuilding during WWII, when we could produce a Liberty ship. They took eight months to build at first, and that dropped to a bit more than one month by the time production ramped up. But that was 80 years ago, and the Department of Defense has grown in complexity along with its ships.
There is simply no reason for these delays other than failure. Our country used to reward success and punish failure.
What has happened to us?
