The Navy is pissing and moaning about old ships again

[unhappycamper]

Machinist’s mates aboard amphibious ships — like MM3 Angelo Felipe, here on the Peleliu — could see many of their steam-powered vessels decommissioned in the next three years, but lawmakers may force the Navy to keep the gators.


Machinist’s mates await fate of aging amphibs
By Philip Ewing - Staff writers
Posted : Monday Jun 14, 2010 6:25:12 EDT

A political showdown brewing in Washington could leave thousands of engineering sailors in career limbo if Congress and the Pentagon can’t agree on the near-term future of the Navy’s oldest, steam-powered amphibious ships.

At stake is the future of machinist’s mates, experts in operating the steam boilers aboard the fleet’s remaining two Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships and four Austin-class amphibious transport docks. Although the Navy wants to decommission all six of those ships over the next few years, lawmakers want to keep them around, potentially for much longer, to help the fleet grow to 313 warships.

The fate of the machinist’s mates also could affect the Navy’s other big engineering ratings — gas turbine systems technicians and enginemen — if a billet crunch prompts MMs to try to move to the other rates. As steam ships go away, replaced by ships powered by diesels and gas turbines, MMs trying to become ENs or GSMs or GSEs could increase competition.

The machinist’s mate rating — which merged with boiler technicians in 1996 — is already overmanned, with few vacancies that give junior sailors chances to re-enlist or advance. Advancement opportunity for MMs in this spring’s cycle for E-4, E-5 and E-6 was 2 percent, 7.8 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

One active engineering duty officer, who was not authorized to talk about personnel matters and so asked not to be identified, presented a simple explanation:



unhappycamper comment: Last November there was a Navy Times article about sailors having to buy their own tools to work on Navy ships --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=26924

The military is getting shafted the same way We The People are getting shafted paying for their war toys. The word of the day?

BOHICA

[old mark]

1. Why do we NEED 313 ships? Are we going to invade Europe again? nt

[WCGreen]

2. We have to keep the sea lanes open so all the shit from China can

make it to WalMart and all the oil keeps flowing...

[mmarsh]

5. They are preparing for the possibility of a President Palin, and her plans to invade Jupiter,

apparently she says she can see it from her house.

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. No we have to keep our mineral interest

in Afghanistan safe.

[Obamanaut]

3. Seems like only yesterday the Navy, when I retired in 1988, had a 600

ship goal.

[Dennis Donovan]

4. At least they've finally gotten around to doing something about the old reserve fleet derelicts...

They're literally rotting away in the James River and Suisun Bay (leaking contaminents and oil) - vessles as old as 65 years old! Obviously, they'll never be used again (except as, in a few rare case as museum ships). The Bush admin did NOTHING about them (instead, rolling the money to scrap them - there's alot of money involved in decontaminating them before they can even BE scrapped -into funding the Iraq war disaster). At least now they're finally prepping the oldest ones for dismantling in Brownsville, TX...

[old mark]

6. I saw those ships in Suison Bay when I lived in Berkeley in 1975-76...

They were rotting away even then...Should have been sold for scrap or to some small shipping companies-they were mostly old merchies and transport ship types, IIRC, at least the ones that I saw...even a small profit on them would have been better than paying for their upkeep all these years...


mark