WT Forums

What will the Navy look like in five years? Ten years?
Twenty years?

A5: Boy, I wish I knew that. It's going to be more lethal.
It's going to be more responsive. It's going to be more
technologically driven. It's going to have smarter and even
more sophisticated Sailors in it. And it's going to take those
smart, sophisticated Sailors to run the kind of technology that
we're going to inject into it. That I'm certain of. How many
ships we'll have? I don't know for sure, but we'll have an
airplane called the JSF. It'll have more combat reach than
anything we dream of today, in fact, twice as much combat
reach. My favorite new word in warfighting is "persistence."
Persistence is a derivative of combat range. Ten years from
now, we'll have that kind of capability. For example, in
Afghanistan, we were going to the target area, and it was 800
or 900 miles away from the carrier. We never ever do
operations like that on a routine basis. We could do it in a
strike surge, but I'm talking about every sortie. Eight or 900
miles, going to the tanker four and five times, hanging on the
blades, waiting in case a Special Forces troop needed help on
the ground. They were there, 24 by 7. JSF will go all the way
there and back and never go to the tanker. That's persistence.
That's combat reach. There will be more like that. Tactical
Tomahawk is coming. You'll be able to reprogram it in-flight.
More precision targeting, not less. More pervasive knowledge.
You know this thing called FORCEnet ... it's at the heart of
Sea Power 21. Ten or 15 years from now, it'll be about people
knowing things, about pervasive knowledge. It's going to be
incredible. I'm going to be too old.

-USN-


Looks like hes definitely for the JSF and while he wasnt specific I thought indirectly at least hes not that happy with the SH. And the force structure for ships even he concludes is anybodies quess. The USN right now appears to be split into factions that are having a difficult time coming to agreement on anything. I think however for the long-term this might be a good process we are enduring right now.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to ALL. Rick

[quote]
For example, in
Afghanistan, we were going to the target area, and it was 800
or 900 miles away from the carrier. We never ever do
operations like that on a routine basis. --------

Hmm, I seem to recall A-1s on the nuke mission running about that range without tanking and carrying a serious load.

Least the CNO is pushing to keep the human in the loop.

It's going to cost us serious billions no matter what we do.

Jack