Texting

Texting
Originally uploaded by kmadams85

So, we got my daughter a cell phone when she entered middle school. Last summer, she discovered texting and ran up an interesting but not painful bill. So we get her a plan that allows 250 messages a month, for the same $5 it would cost to block SMS to her phone.
Money well invested, I thought. Until this month, that is. In the chart, you can see the huge!!! increase in text usage when school let out for summer - from 20 per day to 60 per day, both incoming and outgoing. One thousand, nine hundred seventy-nine since the billing period started on June 8th.
The phone now sits on my desk. There it shall stay, until she presents a plan to pay back the family budget for her wretched excess.

Regaining Contact, the Hard Way

Galrahn has the latest on the story of USS John McCain and her towed array collision with a Chinese submarine:

These details tend to confirm what many of us previously speculated regarding the incident. It is kind of obvious that when a submarine accidentally rams a towed sonar array, the submarine is being tracked by the ship, although it also suggests the submarine was tracking the ship as well.

This is all interesting from a technical Navy point of view, but one point in the Navy Times' latest article piqued my curiousity because it didn't make sense.

The Associated Press reported that the collision took place 144 miles from Subic Bay, potentially placing it in the Mindoro Strait.

If the incident was in international waters, why would AP conclude that it took place in a strait that is inside the Philippine Archipelago? Where did this incident really take place?
Knowing that Google holds the answers to all questions, I decided to break out my trusty copy of Google Earth. Also, it wasn't clear if AP was reporting statute or nautical miles, so a little plotting was in order:

[Click to enlarge]
The red circle in this plot is 144 nautical miles, while the white is 144 statute miles from the center of Subic Bay. The Mindoro Strait is off to the south, and in my mind was probably not the location of this incident. Interestingly, there appears to be a feature located right on the 144 nautical mile ring, just a bit north of due west from Subic. That's Scarborough Shoal, a small clump of atolls and reefs claimed by both The Philippines and the People's Republic of China.
So, could there be more than just a little BUMPEX going on here? It gets curiouser as you look closer - literally. Take a look at this zoomed-in image of Scarborough Shoal from Google Earth:

Google and its imagery providers don't generally obscure things unless they've been asked to do so by a government. Is there some relationship between this incident and something a government doesn't want people to see? I certainly can't answer that question, but I hope someone else can.

USS Iowa - 20 years

Hard to believe it's been 20 years since the terrible day that saw forty seven of my shipmates give their lives in service to their country.
I last wrote about Iowa here. I don't think I can ever forget those men, the events of that day, or the weeks that followed.
Captain Fred Moosally's words from the memorial service have always stuck with me:

I remember turret two. I remember their faces as they toiled at their guns, sweating an honest sweat that comes from young men dedicated to a great cause. Who chose to serve, to grow, and to learn with others, while securing a place in history for generations after them. I remember their strong hands as they wielded their great charges with an energy I could marvel at. The energy of their youth which they channeled towards their love of freedom. I remember as they talked among themselves, looking so much like sailors of our past. Sharing the exuberance of the times and the dreams of the future. I REMEMBER TURRET TWO.

Historical Irony

A friend forwarded this little beauty this afternoon:

Does anyone find it ironic that the ship the Navy dispatched to the Somali coast to deal with the pirate threat is the USS Bainbridge, a ship named after a Navy Captain who in 1803 ran his ship aground while pursuing pirates off the coast of Africa?

This has all happened before...

SECDEF Announces budget for 2010

Wow. Just wow. Secretary Gates has just announced a major remodeling of the entire Defense budget. I live-blogged as best I could on Twitter, but I'm sure I didn't get it all. Transcript is not yet available. Highlights of the Navy stuff, which I'm sure will be explored in much more detail by Galrahn et al.:

• VH-71: dead. Replacement needed but the requirements need to be fixed.
  
• DDG-1000: two ships in Bath, none in Pascagoula. Option for a third.
• DDG-51: try to restart the line in Pascagoula, if they can get the right contract terms
• LCS: plus one in 2010 (3 total), build the 55-ship program
• F-35: accelerate to 30 aircraft in 2010
  
• F/A-18: buy 31 in 2010 (I'm not sure if this is an increase)
• More $$$ for SM-3 production
• Upgrade six more Aegis ships for BMD
• Delay 11th LPD-17 to 2011
• Delay MLP to 2011
• Delay CG(X) program (and re-scrub the requirements)
• Drop to 10 carriers by 2040
• Begin a program for the replacement of the Ohio Class SSBNs

I think the move of DDG-1000 to Bath is probably the most significant decision in the short term. I never understood the concept of splitting production of lead ships between two yards, bearing the pain of first-in-class twice for what would necessarily be a small production run.

The market impacts of these announcements are interesting. A major Lockheed program is completed (F-22), and others are cancelled (VH-71, TSAT), but LMT is up 5.6% as I write. Similar big gains are seen across the defense industry -- GD 2.6%, Raytheon 5.0%, Northrop 5.3%, while the Dow is off 1.5%. Even Boeing, which is less dependent on defense, is flirting with positive territory on the news. I think this is probably a reaction to the reduction in uncertainty that was priced into the markets, rather than to any specific program changes.

---

Update: The transcript is available here and at the USNI Blog.

Handguns

I am a: Colt model 1911 in 45ACP

What kind of handgun are YOU?

via Lex.

Observation on shipbuilding

Congressman Gene Taylor (D - MS) is pushing the Navy to get costs under control for its shipbuilding programs or face losing them. The Navy Times, reporting on testimony by RADM William Landay, Program Executive Officer for Ships, closes with a telling quote from the Congressman.

Whatever it takes, Taylor said, the Navy has to force its vendors to be better stewards of public dollars.

“When I walked through the Austal shipyard a few weeks ago I saw absolutely no effort to save the taxpayers’ money,” he said, adding a motorcycle reference: “We’re building Orange County Choppers when we oughta be kicking out Hondas.”

Very interesting comment about a Gulf Coast shipyard from a Gulf Coast Congressman.

Obama Gutting the Navy

CDR Salamander asks (at his place)

$55 billion? What does the Navy throw on the alter? At the low end, I would think that we will have to eat at least 30% of that - let's call it $18.3 billion that needs to go as a baseline.

His question at the USNI blog gets right to the point: Which child do you sell first?

Lets check the numbers.

According to the 2009 budget (Figure 2 on page 1-14), the planned Navy Department top line budget was $152.8 billion. The 10% cut if applied to all of the services would mean $15.3 billion, taking the budget down to $137.5 billion. Phibian's $18.3 billion would put the top line at $134.5 billion. The lowest Navy top line in the Bush administration budgets was $140.6 billion (constant FY09 dollars). Capabilities will have to be cut. Let's assume that Phibian got it right and the $18.3 number is the real deal. The question is, where?

I'll assume that Marine Corps personnel accounts will go up by 6% to meet President Obama's stated goal of increasing the ground forces, and that Navy personnel accounts will go down to pay that bill. That will take 2.5% out of the active account and 10% out of the reserves. Combined with the pay rate increases, a 2.5% funding cut is probably a 6% end strength reduction, from the current 337K down to about 311K.

Next, whack 25% from MILCON and housing accounts. This saves us $1.2 billion, but will be nearly impossible to sell in a Congress dependent on those accounts.

Six percent increases in Marine Corps O&M (to support the 6% increase in personnel expenses) mean we need to cut 20% from Navy Reserve O&M and 10% from the active side. This results in a net savings of $3.4 billion (about 10%), so now our top line budget is down by $4.6 billion. This leaves $13.7 billion that must come from either procurement or R&D funds. Twenty percent from R&D would be about $3.9 billion, so the remaining $9.2 billion has to come out of procurement.

Level loading that $9.2 billion across the procurement accounts, we would need to cut each by 24%. That means the cuts would be broken down along the following lines:

• Aircraft - $3.5 billion

• Shipbuilding and Conversion - $3.1 billion

• Other Procurement - $1.3 billion

• Weapons - $0.9 billion

• National Defense Sealift Fund - $0.5 billion

• Marine Corps - $0.4 billion

• Ammunition - $0.2 billion

Achieving these reductions is going to be very difficult, and will disrupt ongoing contracts in significant ways. Take aircraft procurement as an example. To cut $3.5 billion, we could eliminate all of the non-combat aircraft, and still have to cut 40 out of 155 combat aircraft. Spares and Support equipment costs would probably have to go up because of the additional wear and tear on the existing fleet.

Shipbuilding and Conversion is probably even harder to cut than aircraft. The unit quantities are so low right now that deferring a ship for a year just increases its net cost. The FY09 new construction account was $11.1 billion for seven ships. Killing the FY10 DDG (either flavor) and the 10 ^th LPD 17 is probably the only viable option to get $3.1 billion.

We need $1.3 billion out of OPN. The biggest lines available there are ship support equipment ($1.7 billion) and communications equipment ($2 billion). A lot of those dollars are related to shipbuilding, so it may be that they come down naturally if we cut ships. $900 million from weapons procurement can be approached if we cut all of our 2009 tactical missile and torpedo purchases in half, or if we forgo a year of Trident II upgrades and make moderate cuts to other programs.

Whatever approach our naval leadership takes in response to the president's direction, it is going to be painful. Making cuts like these while the military is still fighting a war is irresponsible if not dangerous. And as I pointed out in my previous post, it is a false savings. Eliminating billions from defense procurement only to shift those funds into unemployment accounts is a net reduction in the productivity of the American economy, and a huge cut to the military power of the United States.

To the good Commander, I'm afraid the answer may be "all of them."

Defense Budget Cut 10%

The problem: cut 10% from the military budget. How is it possible to slash $55 billion from our national defense accounts? The president has stated as one of his goals the need to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps. If that's to be realized, then his staff will provide some direction to Defense on how the cuts are to happen. I suspect they will think in terms of budget categories rather than services first. The distribution of Total Obligation Authority (TOA) may be able to give a starting point. Operations and Maintenance and Military Personnel make up 59% of the budget, so if they are left essentially unchanged the bulk of the cuts will fall to RDT&E and Procurement. (click for larger image)

I took a swag at one scenario, where the ground force growth increases personnel funding by about 2% in 2010 and O&M goes down by about 1%. To get to a $55 billion cut with those assumptions, each of the remaining accounts has to go down by 26%. In that case, we are likely to see $27 billion out of procurement and $21 billion out of RDT&E. (click for larger image)

What's the impact of that size cut? Twenty-six billion dollars out of the procurement budget, based on 2007 numbers, would eliminate 62% of Lockheed, 81% of Northrop Grumman, 95% of General Dynamics, or 122% of Raytheon. Add on half of the RDT&E cut (since the government labs do quite a bit of research), and you could put half of Raytheon out of work again. Looking at the number of people employed by these companies, that size cut will result in the elimination of between 122,000 and 137,000 jobs.

It's a good thing the “stimulus” package adds $36 billion in expanded unemployment “benefits” to make up for the $36 billion in valuable work that will be lost here. I know how important it is for the Democrats to make us all dependent on the government, and moving those highly-skilled defense workers from productive careers to the dole is just the ticket.

GAO Reports on Weapon Systems

In much discussion of US weapons systems, the Government Accountability Office is often cited as a source of information on costs, risks, and performance. For the basic facts, I think this is a good thing; they have access to data from multiple primary sources, and present it clearly.
That said, I have some concerns about their ability to present program assessments - their opinions - without spin. All too often, a report seems to lean toward the conclusions desired by the Congressman who requested it. Reports favorable of weapons systems acquisition programs seem rare, probably because no one really cares when things are going well.
My concern lead me to dig into the GAO archives, searching along the lifetime of the Aegis Weapon System since it has been in service for so long and is regarded as quite successful. What I found was quite interesting. First up, a June 12, 1980 report of the Comptroller General to Congress on Issues Identified in 21 Recently Published Major Weapon System Reports. This summary, written whe the Aegis weapon system was in limited production and the then-DDG-47 lead ship had started construction, expressed concerns about several key areas:

Foremost are Aegis availability problems, software reliability, ship weight, reduced antisubmarine warfare capability, and ship vulnerability.

The concern about ASW was the most interesting of the bunch, given the current debates about Littoral Combat Ship capabilities:

REDUCED DDG-47 ANTISUBMARINE CAPABILITY
The DDG-47 will not have its planned full antisubmarine warfare capability when it is deployed. Neither the Tactical Towed Array Sonar (TACTAS) nor the LAMPS III helicopter is yet in production and will not be available until the follow ships are built.

The next report, Opportunities for Improving Management of Navy's Aegis Cruiser Program, was issued in February 1981. This report concluded that "serious questions surround [the Aegis Weapon System's] readiness to support naval carrier battle groups." This conclusion appears to be drawn based on the facts that the full system had never before been deployed, that "much of the weight allowance for the planned weapon system [had] been consumed," and that the program office had selected a power inverter for the first ship.
A report in February 1983 concluded that "the AEGIS combat system was not adequately tested before it was commissioned in January 1983" and notes that such testing was scheduled for May-September of that year.
Cost and schedule issues with the DDG-51 class were detailed in January 1990. Between the 1983 report on combat system testing and the cost issues for DDG-51, I found nothing on issues with the capability of the Aegis cruisers.
I think this is interesting, because it shows that given the right set of conditions, the Navy was able to manage and deliver a robust capability, even when the watchdogs found fault with the design and implementation of the first in class. Lets hope that they can replicate those conditions for LCS, and provide the fleet with a ship that performs its assigned missions remarkably well and with little publicity.

Go NAVY!

BEAT ARMY!

Piracy!

It seems that to catch a pirate, one must think like a pirate. The Coast Guard seems to have taken that a step further, and their blogging team for the Valour-IT competition is acting like a pirate crew. They've hijacked the other teams' thermometers, and they are demanding ransom.
Fortunately, you can still track (and build on) the superior might of the Navy team via this:



One wonders if the Commandant is paying attention to the creativity and ingenuity being displayed by "his" supporters. Their actions, in the spirit of a friendly competition

Valour-IT

As I've done each of the last several years, I am supporting the Valour-IT fund drive. This project provides laptops so that injured service members can reconnect to the world outside of their medical facilities.

The project came from the experience of Major Chuck Ziegnefuss, and armor officer and military blogger who was wounded in Iraq. Chuck, who blogs at From my position... On the way!, has said that using a voice-activated laptop "was the first time I felt whole since I’d woken up wounded in Landstuhl."

Many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been helped by this program over the years, but there is still a need for more funds. Please support our Navy team by clicking the image below and making a tax-deductible donation. Our goal is $25,000, and we are only one tenth of the way there.

Cost Growth in Shipbuilding

It seems that western navies are not the only ones having trouble keeping costs under control. According to an opinion piece in RIA Novosti, "Project 20380 ship - the corvette Steregushchy - has gone up in price during its construction from 1.8 billion to 5 billion rubles" -- 177% over the initial estimate.

Piracy a legal problem?

Over at Information Dissemination, Galrahn has an informative and interesting post about one of my favorite subjects: A Team Effort at Sea, A Legal Problem Looms. Russia has sent a frigate to the Gulf of Aden to work with the US and EU in combating piracy. Galrahn commends the cooperative approach, but points out that there is a significant question of what to do with the pirates.

The world is in desperate need of a legal framework for dealing with pirates captured. France has a legal framework for dealing with pirates, and several Somalians will serve time in a French prison because France has the political will to carry that obligation without an international legal system. Many in the world require a more international legal approach, and the foundations for such a legal framework would come through international organizations like the United Nations.
Without the step of creating a legal body to serve as an enforcer of international law against piracy, whether it is conducted like war crimes tribunals or some other framework, response may indeed turn out to be inconsistent. The Russians may be more like France, and take prisoners home to face justice in a Russian court, but we have already seen the Danes release pirate prisoners on the beach.
If Americans have a serious desire to stop piracy, the action to be taken is political and begins in the UN. There is almost no public advocacy for this step, and it could be that Gitmo is a reason why this administration lacks the political will to call for such a system. Without that political action towards building an international legal system to deal with pirates, results may indeed be inconsistent.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea provides a framework for states to deal with this issue in Part VII, Article 105 (emphasis added).

On the high seas, or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State, every State may seize a pirate ship or aircraft, or a ship or aircraft taken by piracy and under the control of pirates, and arrest the persons and seize the property on board. The courts of the State which carried out the seizure may decide upon the penalties to be imposed, and may also determine the action to be taken with regard to the ships, aircraft or property, subject to the rights of third parties acting in good faith.

Unfortunately, Article 106 muddies the waters with this: "Where the seizure of a ship or aircraft on suspicion of piracy has been effected without adequate grounds, the State making the seizure shall be liable to the State the nationality of which is possessed by the ship or aircraft for any loss or damage caused by the seizure." This clause effectively ties the hands of the United States, since every "human rights" advocacy group will attempt to clog up the courts to fight for the "right" of the filthy pirates to steal from other people.
This problem, however, is not a legal one, per se. The U.S. Constitution grants the Congress the power (in Article I, Section 8), to "grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water." Congress has, in fact, done so. For example, 18 USC 1651 states clearly that "Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life." Section 1653 further clarifies how this applies to aliens engaged in piracy, and calls for the same penalty.
We have the legal means to deal with the issue. We don't seem to have the political will to enforce our own laws, which are well-supported by so-called international law in the case of pirates.