[ad_1]
CCTV, Oct 5 (Reporter Wang Bing) The US Department of Defense is reportedly about to release a document called “Future US Naval Power Investigation”, requesting a substantial increase in the number of American warships, which can reach 530 ships. This will significantly increase the number of small surface combatants and unmanned ships, while reducing the number of aircraft carriers and other large surface combatants. So why does the US Department of Defense want to make such adjustments? Can such a substantial ship expansion plan be realized? On related topics, military observer Song Xiaojun will give you a detailed analysis.
Test scene of a US Navy drone (Global Network)
Commissioned by US Secretary of Defense Esper, the two Pentagon teams presented reports on the size of future US warships. The report shows that the future US Navy fleet should increase from 56 to 70 small surface combat ships. At the same time, the US Navy will build large-scale unmanned submarines in batches, totaling about 40 to 60. Military observer Song Xiaojun believes that the development of US warships in the direction of the lightness and understaffing is, to some extent, to meet the US military’s operational requirements for “joint global command and control.”
Song Xiaojun: At present, the US Department of Defense attaches great importance to a new method of warfare called “joint global command and control.” This tactic uses technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and 5G to connect all combat platforms in the theater, including land, sea, air, and underwater platforms.
These platforms can receive commands from headquarters in real time and fire at targets in real time. If the US Navy disperses the original large targets into smaller targets, it is equivalent to adding attack platforms and adding different firepower points, and the reaction speed of these firepower points is very fast. and they can shoot related targets sparsely. The US Department of Defense now hopes the Navy will transform its ships from large to small, small and large, while at the same time incorporating them into the unified joint global combat command system of the three services. In this way, you can improve your overall combat ability.
Image from US Navy Dual Carrier Training Exercise At Sea (Global Network)
According to the report, the US Department of Defense report also plans to reduce the number of supercarriers owned by the US Navy from the current 11 to 9, and the total number of landing ships in the dock from the current 23 to 15 to 19. Assault ships are also among the cuts. Military observer Song Xiaojun analyzed that the United States plans to reduce the number of large surface warships in an attempt to avoid the high risks it faces in the course of operations.
Song Xiaojun: The US Navy now believes that when large surface vessels implement their so-called “denial of area / anti-access” strategy, the risks will be greater. This is because it amounts to concentrating people and assets on one platform, so if an opponent has a better anti-ship missile and hits their large surface ship at the same time, it can cause heavy losses.
In addition, the current national shipbuilding capacity of the United States has also been counted. Your shipbuilding capabilities and ship repair capabilities can now be doubled at most. In this way, once a major war starts, their complementary capabilities cannot keep up. Therefore, it is better to convert large area ships to smaller ships, so that more shipyards can build and repair them. Once the consumption during the war is great, the supplement will be greater.
The newest guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy, “Delbert D. Black” arrives in Cañaveral (website of the United States Navy)
In addition, the report also noted that the size of the United States Navy should be increased from less than 300 ships to 480 to 534, far exceeding the plan of “355 warships in 2030” proposed by the President of the United States. , Trump. Military observer Song Xiaojun believes that the United States intends to increase the number of small ships to offset the adverse impact on the combat effectiveness of the United States Navy due to a shortage of funds.
Song Xiaojun: The 355 warship plan originally proposed by the United States is currently under-funded. The so-called 500 ships are actually “big and small” and ultimately the total cost is lowered. But this cost is not only the cost of shipbuilding, but also the maintenance costs. Due to the maintenance cost of large surface vessels, if by 2034, the Navy’s plan is probably 30% more than the current maintenance cost, reaching 40 billion US dollars, so the cost of shipbuilding and maintenance is very high. The US Navy does not have this money now, so the Department of Defense has come up with a new plan to solve this problem.
One of two prototypes of the US Army’s “Ghost Overlord” unmanned surface craft designed to launch missiles (Global Network)
Can the US ship expansion plan of this magnitude be carried out in the future? In this regard, the military observer Song Xiaojun believes that there is still an unknown at present.
Song Xiaojun: The biggest obstacle facing this ship expansion plan is Congress. Because Congress challenged this in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021. He believed that the logic and method of the Navy’s manned and unmanned ships did not give a clear concept. Therefore, the US Congress on the ship made some restrictions.
You are also facing this problem now. The Ministry of National Defense has drawn up the so-called 500-ship expansion plan. If their final input-output relationship can achieve what they expected: it is connected through artificial intelligence, which costs less, and instead has combat capacity. Significantly improved. The answer is not certain and the United States Congress is also exploring this issue. Because the US Department of Defense did not make this clear, nor did it present sufficient arguments to convince Congress, let’s see if the US Navy will do this in the fiscal 2022 budget. Return to Sohu to see more
Editor:
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article only represent the author himself. Sohu is an information publishing platform. Sohu only provides storage space services.
[ad_2]