CaptainBeowulf wrote:Historically, the world has kind of needed the pre-eminent superpower of the day to help out with maintaining order on the seas. The Roman Navy, the Royal Navy, and the U.S. Navy have greatly helped to preserve international trade in the 1-4th, the 18th-19th, and the 20th centuries respectively.
The alternative is widespread piracy. I don't expect a United Nations led coalition navy to be able to control that. Look at the situation off the coast of Somalia.
Oil or no oil, it's in the interests of the U.S. for world commerce to flourish. Not only because it provides U.S. merchants the opportunity to trade with large overseas markets, but because politically it enhances the allure of capitalist democracy around the world. Furthermore, a strong navy gives you more options for inserting air assets and ground forces into destabilized areas around the world. If the oil revenue goes down the drain, expect more instability in the middle east, not less...
CaptainBeowulf wrote:If the oil revenue goes down the drain, expect more instability in the middle east, not less...
Relative poverty might induce an attack of rationality, I hope, but do not expect.
Ensuring world-wide freedom of navigation probably does not require nearly a dozen carrier battle groups, etc. We would have a different navy (again I hope) for a different world.
It takes 3 CBGs to keep one deployed 24/7 (non-wartime conditions).
So 12 CBGs = 4 areas covered.
Asia - China/Japan/Taiwan
The ME/Med - North Africa
The Indian Ocean - India/Pakistan
That leaves one spare for emergent situations or to back up one of the others.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
CaptainBeowulf wrote:Historically, the world has kind of needed the pre-eminent superpower of the day to help out with maintaining order on the seas. The Roman Navy, the Royal Navy, and the U.S. Navy have greatly helped to preserve international trade in the 1-4th, the 18th-19th, and the 20th centuries respectively.
The alternative is widespread piracy. I don't expect a United Nations led coalition navy to be able to control that. Look at the situation off the coast of Somalia.
Oil or no oil, it's in the interests of the U.S. for world commerce to flourish. Not only because it provides U.S. merchants the opportunity to trade with large overseas markets, but because politically it enhances the allure of capitalist democracy around the world. Furthermore, a strong navy gives you more options for inserting air assets and ground forces into destabilized areas around the world. If the oil revenue goes down the drain, expect more instability in the middle east, not less...
And potable water. Yemen for example burns most of its economic potential, water and labor pool on the Khat thing. Khat is a water vacuum, and the labor spends all afternoon into the evening sitting in circles chewing it vice being productive.
The fact is, the Middle East is going to implode by itself no matter how many ships we orbit there. It is only a matter of time.
The ugly fact is, without oil and gas, there is really no point to maintaining a stability presence. It is not cheap, and at that point would not really matter.
CaptainBeowulf wrote:If the oil revenue goes down the drain, expect more instability in the middle east, not less...
Relative poverty might induce an attack of rationality, I hope, but do not expect.
Ensuring world-wide freedom of navigation probably does not require nearly a dozen carrier battle groups, etc. We would have a different navy (again I hope) for a different world.
It takes 3 CBGs to keep one deployed 24/7 (non-wartime conditions).
So 12 CBGs = 4 areas covered.
Asia - China/Japan/Taiwan
The ME/Med - North Africa
The Indian Ocean - India/Pakistan
That leaves one spare for emergent situations or to back up one of the others.
MSimon,
Yes you are old navy
We no longer use that model for force determination. It is all based around capabilities determination. And, based on that, we also use the "surge" model. In this concept, it is an attempt to remove what was called the "bathtub effect" on strike group and unit readiness. The idea is that you keep a majority of your fleet at some level of readiness, annotating which capabilities are limited, and then surge the most applicable force when you come up short with the deployed force. Great on paper, emperor's clothes in practice, as well as really hard on the units and troops.
If we have 4 CSG's, that means arguably 1 deployed and at least 2 others on ready status. Depending on timing you could have all four "available" to push out essentially right away, but that is rare. This is part of the argument that allowed us to drop down from 14 CSG's.
There are also other considerations which are not appropriate to discuss in this forum.
KitemanSA wrote:MSimon = Old Navy : CBG = Carrier Battle Group.
Ladajo = New Navy : CSG = Carrier Strike Group.
Pssst, your acronyms are showing!
I prefer to think of myself as a bridge...
It is the navy of tomorrow that worries me. BEP = Battle Environment Participant.
with everything going on in the R&D side of things lately (Polywell included) I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with OSGs (Orbital Strike Group) before too much longer. Still not sure if it would be a good or bad thing, however, it would definitely be interesting.
