US Navy ships and weapon systems

Tsavo Lion wrote:I expect some of them to be transferred to other friendly navies or even to the USCG, as happened with other ships many times before.

Too expensive for other navies and they are rusty as hell.

Many still have at least 15-20 years life left, so could be refurbished/modernised/modified for le$$ than building new DD/CGs- I'm sure they could be useful to some NATO members, Australia, NZ, Chile, India, & Japan.
The latter plans to build big ships for BMD & these CGs could be a stop gap.
Interesting story, & it's not over yet:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/americas-transition-to-a-banana-republic-is-complete-fat-leonard-escapes

Actually I would think if the UK had any brains they would buy some to operate with their new carriers, because 6 new destroyers are not enough to form a decent escort for two carriers.

Sadly the UK does not have brains though while the upgrade and clean up costs would be less than a brand new cruiser it will still likely be rather more than the British are prepared to spend on their Navy.

The operational costs alone would likely be too high for most US allies... there is a reason most countries don't have cruisers.

GarryB wrote:Actually I would think if the UK had any brains they would buy some to operate with their new carriers, because 6 new destroyers are not enough to form a decent escort for two carriers.

Sadly the UK does not have brains though while the upgrade and clean up costs would be less than a brand new cruiser it will still likely be rather more than the British are prepared to spend on their Navy.

The operational costs alone would likely be too high for most US allies... there is a reason most countries don't have cruisers.

US cruisers are probably expensive to operate but what about Russian cruisers? Are they cheaper to operate compared to western cruisers like US, UK, France and Germany?

Ukraine has an old Russian cruiser Admiral Flota Lobov.  Is it worth a country buying and would it have low operational cost?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_cruiser_Ukraina

US cruisers are probably expensive to operate but what about Russian cruisers? Are they cheaper to operate compared to western cruisers like US, UK, France and Germany?

Cruisers and carriers make sense for Russia because the west is not going to give them a free lunch... Russia needs to directly access the various countries in the rest of the world, and no by sending products to the EU to have it shipped to the rest of the world like they have been doing.

Russia needs to assure its own access to the world via the sea, which means a bigger navy and a bigger commercial fleet of cargo and oil tanker and gas carriers.

Note it doesn't need to simultaneously control the worlds oceans like the US tries to... they don't need seven fleets to operate everywhere all at once... in fact some of it will just be a dozen naval infantry on civilian ships to prevent Piracy from actual pirates but also country endorsed pirates like the US and UK and French navies too.

Ukraine has an old Russian cruiser Admiral Flota Lobov. Is it worth a country buying and would it have low operational cost?

Most countries would probably struggle to operate it with the Ukraine in the state it is in as the Ukraine can't make half the weapons and ammo it requires now, so it would have to be sourced from Russia.

The UK buying an old US cruiser is different in the sense that they can buy all the ammo and weapons they need from the US too.

More importantly they could buy several so rather than just one white elephant, they could buy a useful force... perhaps even adapt it to their own weapons too.

Look at the mighty destroyer of the self-declared sole hyperpower of the Galaxy:

Leaving Toulon, France

It seems all the white paint was donated to "Ukraine".

That's stealth paint... you can't understand.

You are joking of course but wouldn't it be funny if the paint they are supposed to use does have stealth in the label which makes it 100 times more expensive than the normal paint everyone else would use so they don't have enough.

Or even more amusing would be if the company that supplies the paint gets it made in China and their factory in China is now under sanction and they can't get it from anywhere else.

Or perhaps they are thinking... it is only France and we have not paid for photos to be taken so who cares what it looks like as long as it is pretty when it arrives home.

The projected service life for the Arleigh Burke destroyers is 35 years, which means that the first in the class should be decommissioned in 2026.
Twenty-one destroyers of the Flight 1 subvariant and seven Flight II destroyers do not have a hangar to accommodate two helicopters and have 90 missile cells.
From the destroyer Oscar Austin (Flight IIA), which has been active since 2000, the ships have a hangar for two helicopters and 96 cells, as well as a 900-ton larger displacement.

It is precisely these ships (with SSN submarines) that are the strike force of the US Navy and in the last few decades they have carried out strikes with cruise missiles before aircraft carriers.

This one was renamed "Fishy" - wonder why?

Makes me sad. Our navy was great once. Still is very powerful but look at it. Even for a vessel returning it looks bad. Is it true that we outsource this kind of cleanup now?

Well frankly speaking it proves nothing. Any ship will such hull after spending lot of time at sea.

Actually it proves it was deployed.

The Frenchman is right because surface corrosion means nothing, however....
The fact IS that the Arleigh Burke was designed quite a long time ago and approval for the construction of the first Arleigh Burke ship was signed in April 1985.

The problem is not the Alriegh Burke class, but the problem is that even in the USA they are not moving forward in terms of innovation and the introduction of fundamentally new classes of ships.
* The construction of Virginia submarines is not going at the desired speed, but it is certainly the SSGN class of submarines with the largest number of units built and the fastest construction speed.
* Cruisers ; there is no successor to the Ticonderoga cruisers.
* Destroyers; another in a series of evolutions of the Arleigh Burke class, while a fundamentally new destroyer is planned through the DDG(X) project.
* Frigates; will be built in Italy and the USA according to the project of the French-Italian FREMM class.

Well frankly speaking it proves nothing. Any ship will such hull after spending lot of time at sea. Actually it proves it was deployed.

True it does show that the ship is actually deployed but still there is a problem. Not so long ago Russian Navy ships were criticized for this exact issue.
The US Navy is huge and it is becoming extremely expensive to maintain these boats at the required cycles. US ships suffer from regular propulsion issues  as well as in electrical and aviation systems due to insufficient maintenance cycles. The Russian Navy is much smaller but during the 90's they had virtually no money for anything - let alone maintenance.

American military power is declining and there is no dispute about that.
For example, only from 1974 to the end of 1984, 29 Los Angeles submarines entered active service, that is, in 10 years.

From 2004 until now, 21 Virginia-class submarines have been built and are in active service.
The US simply no longer has the strength to simultaneously build a large number of frigates, destroyers, cruisers and SSGN submarines. And the construction of America-class LHA ships is going pretty badly.

Sure. I shot down 3 satellites last night with my catapult.

Paulaner.

But seriously...
Missiles flying towards Israel from western parts of Yemen would pass Saudi-Arabia and not the Red Sea.
And the Muricans claim they shot down missiles over the Red Sea, not from the Red Sea, which would make some sense.
So the whole story looks like propaganda BS.

Shooting down cruise missiles and simple ballistic rockets is easy... the Soviets were doing that with standard SAMs in the 1980s... the 1990s was a shock for the US when they found their premier Patriot system was ineffective against both ballistic and low flying cruise missile threats.