Navy of the 600 ships
The 600-ship Navy (eng. 600-ship Navy ) was a plan from the office of US President Ronald Reagan , which provided the US Navy to upgrade to a total of 600 ships. The navy minister John Lehman is considered to be the inventor of the idea .
plan
The massive armament of the US armed forces already occurred in Reagan's 1980 election campaign . This benefited the Navy in particular, which under Reagan was to grow to 600 ships (including tenders and other support units). For this purpose, the construction numbers of several ship classes under construction were increased (including the production of the aircraft carriers of the Nimitz class , the submarines of the Los Angeles class and the cruisers of the Ticonderoga class ) and older ships were replaced by so-called SLEP s (these Service Life Extension Programs were intended to keep aircraft carriers that were at the end of their actual service period active longer). In addition, all four Iowa-class battleships were taken out of reserve and put back into service after extensive modernization.
Among other things, the US Navy should operate 16 carrier combat groups, as well as another four "Surface Action Groups" around the four battleships. For the former, even aircraft carriers from the 1940s, such as the USS Oriskany (CV-34), should be put back into service, but this was discarded due to the poor condition of the ships.
End of plan
In 1987 the navy's strength reached its highest level since the Vietnam War: 594, 64 more than in 1980. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War , the number of warships was reduced again. Older aircraft carriers and with them numerous escorts were decommissioned, so that the number of carrier combat groups fell from 15 to 12. In addition, programs for new units have been scaled back, so that the production of the Seawolf-class submarines , which should originally consist of 29 units, was discontinued after the construction of only 3 ships. In the course of this reduction in numerical strength, the Minister of the Navy James H. Webb resigned in 1988 in protest against the downsizing.
literature
- Donald CF Daniel: Beyond the 600-Ship Navy , International Institute for Strategic Studies 1991
- John F. Lehman: The 600 ship Navy , House Armed Services Committee, Seapower Subcommittee 1995
- Kevin N. Lewis: Rethinking the 600-ship navy in light of Gramm-Rudman , Rand 1986
- Alan J. Marcus: Summary report: Manning the 600-ship navy , Center for Naval Analyzes 1985
Web links
- Building a 600-Ship Navy: Costs, Timing, and Alternative Approaches ( Memento of March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Overview of the navy's annual fleet strength ( Memento from December 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive )