It should be "battle ships," or the more accurate term "Man of war" or "man o' war." You're right that a "battleship" is a type of man o' war. As to bayonets, it seems a bayonet company just put out an ad today about what President Obama had to say about bayonets:




As to ships and their total number, we're nowhere near the raw number needed for force projection and protection of the sea lines of communication. Admittedly, I'm biased because I served as an enlisted man and then a commissioned officer in our fabled '600-ship Navy' of the mid-to-late 1980s, but the fact is still that we don't have enough materiel, let alone personnel, that would enable our Navy and Marine Corps combat team to project sufficient force over a long-enough timeline to allow for our Army and Air Force to move into position in a modern contingency action. Yes, some of our equipment can act as an effective force multiplier, thereby decreasing the materiel and equipment needed in some aspects, but the Navy and the Marine Corps must cover a vast amount of territory in a hurry. 280-odd ships and a smallish Marine Corps doesn't allow for effective coverage of that territory, even if we were to cover just the Asian and Western Pacific regions and leave everything else to the Russians and other naval powers. Not that that's a very good idea, either...

Do you have any sort of report by the DOD or an external think-tank that has concluded what you have about us not being able to project our force to an adequate amount until our larger forces arrive?

How about this (sorry, no article): Stateside pilots operating drones in Pakistan taking out Al Queda. that seems like a pretty high tech, cost effective, low risk way to get our point across.

I used to design missiles for a living. We had another name for Ships. We called them Targets. And lemme' tell ya'. they're easy targets to find, track and hit. Big hunks of slow moving metal in the middle of an unobstructed ocean, that sink when you poke holes in them.

Good thing we don't need any platform from which to launch those missiles and drones ...

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Have you ever served on or commanded ships, sir? I hear your refrain from a lot of men and women who've never earned a surface warfare officer designation. Our ships aren't as easy to 'kill' as you might believe or have been led to believe. I've served at sea and in ground combat positions. A naval man 'o war, in the skilled hands of a surface warrior, is a formidable thing, despite what you believe about anti-ship missile technologies.

42-something, I'm sure

42-Thousand maybe?

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

And anti-ship missile sites are known as "targets" to JDAM-laden B-1s....

It would also seem that Mr. Morey has never heard of Phalanx CIWS (if I remember the acronym correctly). Nothing is quite as easy to target and kill as some might have us believe...

Spot

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I didn't want to get into anti-anti-ship missiles and other technologies. That's for another time and place. I also didn't write what follows, but the writer himself has a keen understanding of what the surface combatant is and what's it's adapted to become:

As silly, parochial, and partisan as the infighting gets over defense planning and procurement, there is a reason why we have the forces we have, and it maps back to the basic, enduring strategy of the United States. We intend to control the seas that directly affect us and deter hostile control over the world’s other key chokepoints. And to do that, we need surface combatants.

...

That reality of sea control hasn’t changed since the ancient Romans locked down the Mediterranean, and it’s not clear that it ever will. As an environment for power and confrontation, the sea is sui generis. Modern threats from the air and under the sea have not made the surface combatant obsolete; they have merely driven it to adapt.


And the surface combatant has adapted, transformed from a platform that was largely about bringing guns to a fight into a platform whose effective purpose is to multitask 100% of the time. The US cruiser or destroyer can fire Tomahawk missiles hundreds of miles inland; it can deploy helicopters for a variety of missions; it can use guns large and small, and anti-ship missiles, against other surface ships; it can hunt submarines (if not as effectively as US Naval forces did during the Cold War), and attack them if it identifies them; and it can manage maritime air space for any combat purpose and shoot down enemy aircraft and missiles.


The surface combatant creates an envelope of multi-use combat power that moves around with it and acts variously as reassurance or a deterrent. There is a sense in which the aircraft carrier does that too, but from the maritime power perspective, the carrier doesn’t do all the things the surface combatant does – and that means it requires a protection provided by the surface combatant. If you want survivable, effective carriers, you need escorts.


Today’s carrier doesn’t have any antisubmarine warfare capability, nor can it reliably defend itself against a barrage of enemy missiles. Its close-in defenses are not the equal of the Aegis combatant’s anti-air or anti-missile capabilities. Nor can the carrier launch an anti-ship or Tomahawk cruise missile. The carrier is there to launch and recover aircraft. Its power envelope is singular; the surface combatant’s is multifaceted. The carrier’s air wing has a key role in maritime combat, but that role – like the Air Force’s – is complementary; it can’t replace the surface combatant, which remains the basic unit of naval power.


The submarine is a tremendously capable platform – in a face-off between a US submarine and a surface combatant I’d back the submarine every day of the week – but the sub’s role is also limited. In a geopolitical world in which “gray hulls” often exert their most proximate influence through sheer, obvious presence, the submarine’s purpose is to be invisible. The fear of a sub you can’t find is a more powerful motivator than the sight of a sub you can see, which is the opposite of the surface combatant’s effect. The attack submarine can collect intelligence, launch Tomahawk missiles, and hunt other submarines – and is by far the most effective anti-ship platform known to man. What it doesn’t do is integrate influence in all the dimensions of naval warfare – subsurface, surface, air, space, the littoral interface, geopolitics, and suasion – as the surface combatant does.


If you want to control the seas, you still need surface combatants. And since the seas are the pathway to most of what we do outside our borders, there is no such situation as one in which we will only need to do what aircraft carriers do, or only what submarines do, or only what minesweepers or oilers or merchant ships do. If we do not control the seas, we do not control our security conditions or our strategic options.


Numbers and priorities


How many surface combatants do we need? Romney proposes a number – a total of 328 ships (the current total is 284), of which surface combatants would represent about 130 – and backs it up with reasoning about a strategic purpose.
Obama’s approach has been budgetary. Under the constraints of the defense budget reductions proposed by Obama – $487 billion through 2022 – the Navy proposed decommissioning 11 ships in 2013, including four Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers whose service life has another 10-15 years left. Three additional cruisers with more than a decade of service life remaining are to be decommissioned in 2014. As noted at the Navy-oriented Information Dissemination blog, when the proposed cuts were first outlined in late 2011, the decommissioning plan will take out of service cruisers that can be upgraded with the ballistic missile defense (BMD) package – now a core capability for the Navy – while keeping five cruisers that cannot receive the BMD upgrade.


Other ships to be decommissioned include two Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships, or LSDs, which transport the Marines and support their amphibious operations. With the planned decommissioning of USS Peleliu, a Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship – although the date is now pending – the loss in capability would amount to the loss of an amphibious ready group, the combat formation in which a Marine Expeditionary Unit deploys. The loss of Peleliu, a “big deck,” which anchors an amphibious group, would drop the number of big decks from nine to eight.


Congress has moved to rescue the four cruisers proposed for decommissioning next year – and has also (see last link) stepped in to ensure the full funding of aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt’s nuclear-plant refueling overhaul. Theodore Roosevelt has about 8 months left in the 3.5-year overhaul, but the lack of a federal budget in the last three years has jeopardized her funding. With the decommissioning of USS Enterprise in 2013, and USS Abraham Lincoln’s scheduled entry into a refueling overhaul in December, the combat-ready carrier force will be down to eight in a few weeks.


In the end, the difference between Romney’s approach and Obama’s isn’t a difference between buying a 328-ship force and having no Navy at all. It never is; the difference is always between one policy and another. Obama’s policy is to cut defense spending, even when that leads to the decommissioning of some of our best ships. Yet in 2010, the Navy could only fulfill 53% of the requirements for presence and missions levied by the combatant commanders (e.g., CENTCOM, PACOM). Cutting this Navy will reduce further its ability to fill warfighter requirements.


Given the constraints of Obama’s budgetary priorities, DOD envisions eventually sustaining a Navy whose size averages 298 ships through 2042. Romney has articulated a national-security policy that emphasizes building faster and having a larger Navy, one that can better meet the requirements of US policy and the combatant commanders for naval power. Obama has used sophomoric sarcasm to imply that Romney’s approach is ignorant and outdated. That pretty much sums up the choice the voters have between them.




In 2010, Navy could only fulfill 53% of combatant commanders' preferences for presence and missions. That chills the bones of any Navy man who's ever sailed the seven seas.

Any Navy man or woman, and most Marine Corps officers and enlisted personnel, for that matter, with a modicum of time and experience in naval warfare (both of the Navy variety as well as the Marine Corps variety), understands why Navy ships and submarines and air power, as well as Marine Corps power, is vital to the United States, mainly because of the role we've chosen to play in the world and on the high seas. At 283 ships, at most (and many of those aren't combatants ships but supply and other logistics/auxiliary platforms), we simply don't have the needed firepower to effectively control the seas as we assume we must. There's certainly no other naval power, at present, that can either, but that's not the point, after all, correct?

I don't know how many the Army has today, but they issued them along with M-16's back in the day. I still have mine, the bayonet not the M-16, so it's possible there are as many out there as there are vets from 1970 to 1990.

Here's a question we should be asking: do we want to continue to be the underwriters for global security? I think people on both side of the aisle have an implicit answer, but this is a conversation that ought to happen in the open. Romney could have brought up those points instead of bringing up ship levels in 1916. That would have been a substantive point not so easily dismissed.

If not us, who?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Agreed. I was thinking it's the difference between the oft used "peace through strength" and some new meme that might be more of peace through collaborative strength...or just hoping to always achieve peace through diplomacy. The two sides certainly differ on how often they expect the last can be achieved.

I don't have a good answer for that. It may be there's no one else. The Romans at least got taxes from the outlying provinces. We're providing security for everyone and we're the only ones paying for it. I'm not sure how much longer that will be sustainable.

Yes. And this where I depart from my libertarian brethren.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

Well, I wouldn't say we are the only ones, but, we certainly are carrying the lion's share. With awesome power comes awesome responsibility.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

My answer would be "who knows?" I'm also not really sure we're doing what we're doing, naval power projection-wise, solely out of the goodness of our hearts but, rather, to ensure we're the dominant power on the world's oceans, because that maritime dominance assures us of a prime position in so many areas in terms of global commerce and policy that I'm not really sure there's really an area that isn't affected by control of the seas. There once was a Pax Brittanica, imposed on the world by the sheer might of Great Britain's Royal Navy and, in the main, the Royal Navy's power worked magnificently. Since World War II, the dominant sea power has been the United States, with its US Navy (backed up by the kind of Marine Corps power projection presence that dwarfs the ground combat power that Britain's Royal Marines were once able to project), a naval force that's unparalleled in world history. Rome and Greece had strong navies, no doubt, but were in some cases inept in how they used them, actually, as were the Phoenicians and other naval powers of the day. Not surprising, given the challenges that the sea presented to nations during those times.

Also, as JSA observes: "If not us, then whom?" The world -- including the high seas -- would be a far more tumultuous and even barbaric place if it weren't for US military might and the nation's willingness to, literally, go to war for causes and for people to whom we really owe nothing, except human decency and charity. Consider that US military might helped to save Muslims in Kosovo, when we really had no 'dog in the fight,' so to speak. It freed Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It faced down numerous despots and tinhorn dictators and it backed up its allies with a kind of ferocious power that's put a halt to many a regional strongman's territorial ambitions. Lately, it's been used to enable humanitarian aid after tsunamis and earthquakes and many of the world's people, when threatened by those with bad intent, or who've just went through a staggering natural disaster, stand in front of television cameras and go "Where is the United States? When is it getting here?" In Indonesia, after the tsunami, US Navy and Marine Corps personnel were on scene relatively quickly, and there were plenty of Indonesians that asked the TV crews "Where are the US Marines?"

This is our role in the world, and it's what the world mostly expects of us, though it often also hates us for our power and strength. But I've haven't seen another nation's people so consistently willing to send its men and women in harm's way for the benefit of other nations or for causes the U.S.'s friends and allies ask us to assist in effectuating. Of course, that aid is reciprocated, most especially by Canada, Great Britain and Australia, whose Diggers have sacrificed so much in Afghanistan. New Zealand and much of the Commonwealth is there, too. But that's what democracies do for each other, quite often. But without the United States to lead the charge, FROM THE FRONT, it would mostly be for naught and most other nations understand that that's just the way of things.

That Marine killed the FUCK out of that tire. Good thing he had that bayonet. I bet he probably wants to trade his V22 support for a few extra bayonets, just to be on the safe side:).

Maybe do we want to at all is too stark a choice. We do need to ask how much we're willing to pay in live, time and treasure though. The money well isn't bottomless and I don think any candidate does well trying to convey those costs - undoubtedly because people hate being reminded of the cost of things. Romney thinks we should have defense spending at 4% of GDP and I would like to hear the rationale for that. He mentioned in passing that the doctrine used to be to maintain capacity for two land wars ( I feel as though there was a point where a third smaller action was supposed to be provided for also). Do we need that much in the way of land forces? Why? I can see the argument for keeping the sea lanes secure. I'm far less clear on what conditions we would need such a large land force for.

There's a reason why it's good to have the ability and skill to fix a bayonet and use it when you, as a combat infantryman, have to close with the enemy, which the modern infantryman still has to do, sir. Also, the OKC (the bayonet) is often a weapon of last resort (next to those dinky pistols that some infantry leaders carry) when in the combat kill environment, which is where it's most useful. They're used to kill people, sir, and they're very good at it, when used correctly by a well-trained infantryman. The bayonet is an excellent tool in combat.

Also; air-to-ground support is important. But it can rarely help you when you're in a melee or when you're going house-to-house in a MOUT (military operations in urban terrain) situation. You should could call in fire support and level a position or a building -- possibly killing non-combatant men, women and children in the process -- no doubt, but air support can't orbit 24/7 and there are times when the enemy seeks to join itself with you at the hip. That's where a rifle/bayonet combination comes in most handy.

V22's suck at CAS every single ground pounder knows this

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Life is a Near Ambush, ASSAULT THROUGH!!!!!!! https://www.facebook.com/The44thMongolArmy

I'm sure he remembers the V22s from the "Transformers" movies or something. ;-) They were super-efficient and deadly cool. I can remember sitting in on general briefings in the late-1980s on the big Marine Corps push for the Osprey, though I don't remember much at all (actually, nothing at all) being mentioned about possible CAS uses for it. That particular function was ladled on late in the procurement authorization process so that it could attract sufficient support in the Congress to keep it from being killed off.

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/...%202010/1010qdr.aspx (emphases mine)

...

"As a Pacific power, the US presence in Asia has underwritten the regional stability that has enabled India and China to emerge as rising economic powers. The United States should plan on continuing that role for the indefinite future," the report notes. "The panel remains concerned that the QDR force structure may not be sufficient to assure others that the United States can meet its treaty commitments in the face of China’s increased military capabilities."


Adopting this force structure construct would have the greatest impact on the Navy. Whereas the 2010 QDR calls for increasing the size of the Navy fleet from the current 285 ships to roughly 322, the panel recommends a fleet of 346 ships. It also calls for modernizing the fleet with a new attack submarine, a next generation cruiser, and improved countermeasures to anti-access weapons such as anti-ship missiles and submarines. In analyzing the strategic landscape, the independent panel identified four vital interests of the United States, and a handful of current or evolving threats to those interests. As the underwriter of global security, the panel argues the United States and its military forces must adequately defend the homeland; assure access to the global sea, air, space, and cyberspace commons; preserve a favorable balance of power across Eurasia; and provide for the global "common good" through such actions as disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and development assistance.

I don't have the operations research software nor the data needed for input, but my blue-and-brown-water Navy experience tells me our Navy and Marine Corps combat team isn't sufficiently sized at present to meet contingency needs plus combatant commanders' requests for presence and support when and where needed, especially given our desired role in global ocean-related affairs. 285 ships, insufficiently classed, area-deployed and under-maintained as well as logistically supported, simply can't get the job done. The President and his staff people know this.

Nah. Boeing family, my friend! Though recently had a family member start working for a competitor. Buncha profiteers, we are.

Plus they cruise up and down the Potomac on occasion and they are fun to watch.

Ships: where is everybody getting 280 some-odd for our battle fleet? Our current Pennant List (All commissioned USS warships) is only 258 ships long. That doesn't count Military Sealift Command's Fleet Auxiliaries (supply and replenishment ships) but the Pennant List also includes the USS CONSTITUTION and USS PUEBLO, so the number is really 256. The Navy's required capabilities as set fourth by Congress in 2000 (yeah, its been that long) needs a fleet of 313 to meet all requirements with adequate time for training and maintenance. Of course training and maintenance budgets have been cut more times then I can count with my boots on. Oh and for the individual that used to 'design cruise missiles' one word for you buddy...AEGIS! and CIWS, and RAM, and NSSM, and EW, and well, you get the point...GFY

Bayonets; yeah we still use those, even as a Naval Officer I've carried and used one, couldn't tell you how many we have as not everyone in uniform is combat arms, so I don't know if we have more or less than in 19whatever... poor example.

Horses; we have a few of those still, mainly ceremonial units, some were/are used by Special Forces in the 'stan, I know horses are used DAILY in Arlington National Cemetery, far too many friends have made their last trip via the horse and caisson, and the POTUS would know that, if he ever cared enough to cross the Potomac and honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice...guess that Memorial Day golf outing is always more important.

So, if nothing else this entire segment of the debate has highlighted how out of touch and elitist the politicians of all parties are...

Thanks for reading!

::Secure from whisky powered rant::

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Slainte!
-Sea Dog Sends

something I learned from an old friend - - - Sometimes you go to war with the army you've got, not with the one you want.