Somewhat lost in all the discussion this year on whether or not to proceed with the CVN 73 RCOH has been the analytically questionable conflation of the number of aircraft carriers with numbers of air wings. As the narrative currently goes, we need one air wing for each active aircraft carrier (N) minus one to account for the one in RCOH, or ten air wings for eleven carriers. As the Navy provided its budget story for the costs of the RCOH, the costs of the attendant air wing were always cited, in my view unnecessarily "gilding the lily" of how much cost there was.
Additional analytical rigor needs to be brought to bear on the number of air wings necessary to meet operational requirements. It strains credulity that the maintenance and training requirements of an air wing are gear-tooth locked in with that of an assigned carrier. The "N minus 1" formula has the potential to create excess "excess capacity", a luxury that current budgetary pressures discourage.
Congress should direct the Navy to report in detail on this matter, giving the chance for the Navy to justify the requirement or re-do its math.
Bryan McGrath
No comments:
Post a Comment