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Friday, May 03, 2013

On the May 5 Midrats: Episode 174 - "The New Shipbuilding Plan"

Join us Sunday, May 5, 2013 at 5pm (Eastern U.S.) (yes, that's 5/5 at 5) for Episode 174: "The New Shipbuilding Plan":
Last month saw the U.S. Navy's newest shipbuilding plan hit the streets.

Is this good news, more of the same, or are there some systemic issues that are being painted over?

What can the Navy expect over the next few years as the defense cuts bite deeper and the battle for wedges of the defense budget pie heats up.

Using their latest article in RealClearDefense as a starting point, our guests will be Mackenzie Eaglen, Resident Fellow at the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Bryan McGrath, Director, Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis.
Listen live (that's on 5/5 at 5) or pick the show up later by clicking here.

2 comments:

  1. G Lof4:36 PM

    I normal have to listen to Midrats on my MP3, so I don't get to ask questions. But this is a subject I real interested in, so I want to try asking some before you start.

    Question 1) is your current planning tools give to Congress adequate. is a 5 year plan enough to explain the costs of ships that take seven years to build?

    Question 2) Most documents seem to show lines like 2 DDG51 costing 3.6 billon. Would it not be more informative to separate each ship out separately, such as 1st DDG-51 for 2 billion, 2nd DDG51 for 1.6 billio0n, and 3rd DDG51 for 1.4 billion.

    Question 3) should all moneys for major maintains be accompanied with an estimate of how long this maintains extend the ships useful life?

    As for the latest plans, is it possible to get estimates for alternative possiblities ,such athe cost of anew class of CG(x), tenders and light frigates? This would provide better information when the congress debates issues like the LCSs.

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  2. Thank you for bring my question up, even in the condence form you did.

    My personal response to Mr McGrath reply was " Crazy is doing the same thing over amd over, and expecting a different result." Now I not call Mr McGarth crazy, only the how we explain things to the public has to change if we expect to get diiferent result from them.

    I suggested that we go to a seven or eight year plan because that how long it thats to build a ships. I would add to that a suggestion that we inculd a list shown changes to the fleet cause by that years shipbuilding and retirement plan. What will people thing if they saw that the ship we buy today won't reach the fleet till 2020, and during the same time the numbers of cruisers and destroyers has shrunk by 15 ships. This is the information the public needs if we going to reverse the down turn too the navy.

    I will point out that such information was how the Reagan administration rebuild the USN in the 1980's.



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