Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
You're completely correct about the limitations of manpower on force structure, but I think you're completely wrong in the assertion that manpower is cheap.
He didn't say it was cheap; he said -- fairly correctly I think, that there's plenty of money. See below.
You can't save money and divert it to other things nearly as easily as you can with procurement and O&M money.
That's true but that revolves around Congress' penchant for micromanaging personnel issues simply because Service people can vote (wrongly in my view but that's another thread). More important to Congress, so can their families vote (as they should be able to). All that said, it has been done and can be done.
Additionally, moving personnel from one area (carrier battle group) to another (brown water, CB, SF, Army) is neither easy nor cheap.
He didn't say that either. I'm the one that used the CVBG example and you noted, I hope that I postulated that well in the future -- IOW, yes, it takes time to do that. However, it has been done and can be again. Likely will...
Changing force structure is therefore an expensive and slow process.
I think we all agree on that; today's arguments by those that count, not by us, translate into 2018 or later actions.
...This is actually what both the Air Force and Navy have been doing for almost 20 years now - getting rid of "one-trick-pony" capabilities in favor of more flexible capabilities.
True, they have -- but I'd be remiss if I did not point out that over the last 20 years, both those services (and the Army and Marines) have not been very astute in pursuing that flexibility until someone forced their hand. Alacrity is not a strong point...Nor, regrettably does vision seem to be.
but changing a carrier battle group into something optimized for small wars may not be practical or wise for a whole host of reasons.
It's a trade off and I suspect that decisions already been made. It'll be fought, no matter which way it goes, that's all American.

Your argument might be more appreciated if the Navy had not gone through the Burke / Zumwalt fiasco, had not decided the LCS was not really the ship needed for the job and if the USS GHWB didn't cost about $2B MORE than her class predecessors (and considering that the MPN and OMN annual cost is about 20% of build cost...). Carriers are great, no question. The issue is how many CVBGs are needed...

Oh, I've also heard on pretty good authority that smaller carriers are being relooked -- again...