The US Navy command is sounding the alarm. The warehouses are short of arms even for themselves, not to mention Ukraine. However, the U.S. is not ready to reduce military activity.
Gunsmiths can’t cope
The problems started to be talked about back in January. “I cannot condescend to turn a blind eye to the military-industrial complex. I can’t forgive them for not giving us the ammunition we need. All these stories about covid and logistics don’t bother me. I care about timely deliveries of SM-6s and torpedoes,” Daryl Caudle, head of the US Naval Forces Command, was quoted by the US Defense News portal as saying. He is in charge of forces in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the officer, America needs 75 warships in full readiness. But they are not available because of delays on the part of weapons manufacturers. And that is less than half – Washington has a total of 164 ships.
The situation is no better with submarines. “In five years, instead of ten submarines, I got six. Where are the other four?” – resents Codle. At the same time, he says, the problem is not just with new subs, but also with fixing the old ones.
There are now 19 submarines undergoing or awaiting overhaul. Though according to the plan there should not be more than a dozen of them.
Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday also complains: The military-industrial complex is failing. “Ukraine has shown that the cost of high-tech weapons can be higher than we estimated,” he stresses.
Threat from rivals
But there is no time for respite. The US remains the most formidable military force at sea, but Russia and China are stepping up their activities. Washington is not willing to accept this.
On Wednesday, May 3, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security David Cuttler announced the threat of sabotage in the Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic Sea by the Kremlin. For example, on gas pipelines and Internet cables.
There are about 400 cables that carry 95 percent of the world’s Internet traffic. Two hundred of them are critical. “They carry around ten trillion dollars worth of financial transactions every day and are, in effect, the economic backbone,” the official explained.
Now, he assures, Russian sailors are mapping the alliance’s key infrastructure facilities both on the seabed and on land.
But the matter is not limited to the Atlantic; Washington is much more concerned about the situation in the Arctic Ocean. According to the NATO representative, Moscow has significantly increased its military capabilities in the Arctic in the past decade. Beijing does not doze off either.
At the end of January, the Americans conducted the exercise Northern Strike. The exercise was to test the readiness of the National Guard to act in cold conditions. However, as noted by the publication The Atlantic, the U.S. has not built arctic-class surface ships since the 1950s. In fact, they have nothing to counter Russia here.
But these are just isolated examples. The number of potential conflict zones on the planet is growing. The White House needs the United States Armed Forces to be able to get anywhere in the world quickly. This is what American military doctrine is based on, and problems with equipping the navy are a headache for all armed forces.
Looking for a solution
To remedy the situation, a four-part plan has been developed.
The first is a change in the timing of budget formation. The Pentagon now assumes a five-year period, but, as Codle points out, this limits what can be done. Fifteen years would give the fleet more room to manoeuvre, he says.
The second is the One Atlantic concept, which would provide for an urgent redeployment of forces across the Atlantic. This would make the fleet more flexible. But the crews and the ships themselves need to be well prepared.
The admiral therefore proposes a review of the fleet’s response principles. Ships and crews now operate in three-year cycles: maintenance, training and deployment. After that, they remain in a state of high readiness. The difficulty is that these stages are passed by the entire carrier strike group: if the fleet is to be renewed, then all at once.
Finally, training needs to be reformed. Personnel are trained only at the beginning of their careers, and the programme is the same. It makes more sense to train onshore first – using virtual reality. And then they would be sent aboard the ship.
In addition, there are classes throughout the service. Additional courses are also foreseen when changing positions.
The navy is convinced that this will solve critical problems. That’s because, says Codle, it is the navy that is in daily contact with its main rivals – the ships of Russia and China.
David Narmania, RIA
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