If the Navy had properly maintained the Spruance-class destroyers, they would even today be some of the most powerful naval ships in the world.
Commentary
The United States spends more on defense than the next nine highest-spending countries combined. Yet the trend over the past 30 years has seen our Navy shrink in size and capability.
A number of explanations have been proffered as to why this is the case, but I believe the prescient warning given by Dwight D. Eisenhower, World War II allied supreme commander and 34th president of the United States, in his 1961 farewell address regarding the threat posed by the Military-Industrial Complex provides the best explanation.
After hearing about, and reading about, the shortage of Navy ships 10 years ago, I thought to research the possibility of reactivating and modernizing reserve/mothballed Navy ships. To my shock, I found that our
surface combat ship reserve fleet was practically nonexistent. In particular, I observed a pattern in which ships that are good candidates for future reactivation are no longer being mothballed but instead being destroyed by scrapping or via largely meaningless sinking exercises (SINKEX).
Particularly egregious was the premature retirement of our best anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ship, the Spruance-class destroyer (DD-963). Not only were DD-963s
completely retired by 2006 despite having recently received hundreds of millions of dollars of upgrades, and having decades of potential service remaining, but the retired ships were also rapidly
scrapped and or destroyed via SINKEX. This ensured they would never threaten new ship construction.
For reference, “Spru-Cans,” as they were affectionately known, displaced roughly the same as the Flight I Arleigh Burke destroyer (DDG-51), but they had two five-inch guns instead of one. And prior to the decision to destroy the class, 24 had been upgraded to carry 61 Mk-41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells. Of the
24 ships upgraded with Mk-41 VLS, at least 10, including the Cushing, O'Bannon, and Thorn, had a 21-cell Mk-49 RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launcher mounted on the starboard fantail. They were also upgraded to carry the same towed sonar array that Arleigh Burke destroyers use today and would have been easily upgraded to the
new towed sonar array that is being rolled out to Arleigh Burkes.
So, with unmatched ASW capabilities, more guns, and a large missile load, they were an extremely versatile and powerful warship. Moreover, with a much greater
service life allowance (SLA) than the Burkes, the Spruances had the space and reserve capacity to be upgraded to carry much more equipment and weapons than the Burkes. A demonstration of the Spruance’s much greater SLA is that the Aegis-class Ticonderoga cruisers, which carry 27 percent more missiles than the Burkes (122 versus 96), were built on the Spruance-class hulls.
What’s more, having a more hydrodynamically efficient hull, they had quite a bit more range than Burkes (6,000 nautical miles versus 4,400 nautical miles).
Having 24 large, high-endurance, high-end ASW ships with
significant missile capability over the last 15 to 20 years would have been a huge plus for our Navy as it struggled to meet commitments with too few ships by upping operational tempos and lengths of deployments. The Burkes and Ticonderogas, in particular, suffered from over-deployment and inadequate maintenance, due at least in part to there not being enough deployable ships that actually have some military capability.
To justify retiring and destroying the Spruances, the Navy touted the annual cost saving that comes from operating a new ship versus a ship with a lot of miles on it. While this is somewhat true, having looked at the numbers, it is my opinion that these savings being touted by the Navy are much exaggerated. Further, the overall operating costs of older ships that have gone through a major refurbishment, overhaul, or refit can be significantly decreased, making the annual operating cost differences even less. Consequently, when you factor in the very high initial development and acquisition costs, I find that these annual cost-saving justifications don’t hold much water.
Hence, if rather than intentionally undermaintaining, then retiring and destroying the Spruances, the Navy had properly maintained them, they would even today be some of the most powerful naval ships in the world, and our Navy’s ASW capabilities would be much greater than they are right now. By using the Navy’s
cooperative engagement capability (CEC), they could have been easily networked with Aegis-class ships such as the Burkes and Ticonderogas, making their large complement of missiles a valuable part of Aegis-directed fleet defense or offense. But they weren’t, and they are now sitting at the bottom of the sea having been destroyed in meaningless SINKEX exercises.
Why were they destroyed? They were destroyed because back in 2003, the Navy decided to adopt the
most risky option (option 2) for maintaining a viable force structure by destroying the Spruances to make room for ships that had yet to be designed and tested. This decision resulted in over $50 billion being spent on the
Littoral Combat Ship and
Zumwalt-class destroyer, ships that have yet to deliver even a tiny fraction of the combat power the Spruances would have delivered over the past 20 years.
Option one, which would have involved buying new Burkes, while modernizing and upgrading our existing fleets of Spruance-class destroyers, Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, would have given us a more powerful Navy today.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
