{"id":282829,"date":"2016-12-06T00:13:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T23:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/new-navy-ship-leaking-tax-dollars\/"},"modified":"2016-12-06T00:13:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T23:13:54","slug":"new-navy-ship-leaking-tax-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/new-navy-ship-leaking-tax-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"New Navy Ship Leaking Tax Dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> The New Cold War with Russia provides a stronger budgetary lifeline for the Military-Industrial Complex than the War on Terror does while helping to quiet critics of wasteful spending, as Jonathan Marshall describes.<\/p>\n<p>By Jonathan Marshall<\/p>\n<p>The world\u2019s mightiest navy is at risk of being sunk \u2014 not by a superior enemy, but by its own inability to acquire ships that work at a price that even the richest military on the planet can afford.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Navy today has only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.navy.mil\/navydata\/nav_legacy.asp?id=146\">272 deployable warships<\/a> \u2014 a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.navy.mil\/research\/histories\/ship-histories\/us-ship-force-levels.html\">decline<\/a> of more than 50 percent in just the last three decades \u2014 of which fewer than a third put to sea at any given time. Although the U. S. Navy remains by far the <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/feature\/the-five-most-powerful-navies-the-planet-10610\">strongest force<\/a> of its kind, current fleet trends <a href=\"http:\/\/csbaonline.org\/research\/publications\/deploying-beyond-their-means-americas-navy-and-marine-corps-at-a-tipping-po\">call into question<\/a> its future ability to meet inflated global missions that include tracking Russian submarines in the Arctic, patrolling the Persian Gulf, and defeating China on its home seas.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_21840\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-300x169.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21840\" alt=\"Warships of the U.S. Navy. (Photo credit: U.S. Navy)\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-1028x578.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-160x90.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21840\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"Warships of the U.S. Navy. (Photo credit: U.S. Navy)\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-1028x578.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9-160x90.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/0434_09_ships_at_sea-4O_CRP-16-9.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warships of the U.S. Navy. (Photo credit: U.S. Navy)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.navy.mil\/cno\/docs\/CNO_STG.pdf\">Rather than rethink those missions<\/a>, the Navy is clamoring for more appropriations to pay for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/general\/2014\/08\/09\/the-us-navys-most-expensive-warships-for-2014.aspx\">budget-busting weapons systems<\/a>. For example, the Navy wants a dozen new ballistic-missile-carrying nuclear submarines at an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armscontrol.org\/ACT\/2016_03\/News\/Budget-Would-Raise-Nuclear-Spending\">estimated cost<\/a> of about $140 billion. A single new Ford Class nuclear aircraft carrier will cost taxpayers nearly $14 billion \u2014 and that doesn\u2019t include the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/421473\/f-35-throwing-good-money-after-bad-mike-fredenburg\">inordinately expensive<\/a> aircraft it will carry or the support ships needed to help protect it.<\/p>\n<p>Now soaring costs and operating snafus are crippling a class of vessels the Navy was counting on to bulk up the fleet at relatively low cost: the littoral combat ship (LCS). A senior Pentagon official just admitted to Congress that ill-managed attempts to fast-track the design and construction of the LCS have all but \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2016\/12\/02\/acquisition-chief-lcs-program-broke-navy.html\">broke the Navy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The LCS began entering the fleet in 2008 for various missions in coastal waters. With high performance engines and fast hull designs, the ships were meant to outrun speedy patrol boats. With a modular design, they could be reconfigured for different missions, including surface combat, mine-sweeping and hunting submarines. Smaller and less heavily armored than a frigate, they were supposed to be&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/12\/05\/new-navy-ship-leaking-tax-dollars\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: The New Cold War with Russia provides a stronger budgetary lifeline for the Military-Industrial Complex than the War on Terror does while helping to quiet critics of wasteful spending, as Jonathan Marshall describes. By Jonathan Marshall The world\u2019s mightiest navy is at risk of being sunk \u2014 not by a superior enemy, but by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-282829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}