Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The USN Mothball Fleet - Storing up for a rainy day" video.
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In addition to the problems preserving warships, the process for storing auxiliary ships was even more troublesome. Firstly, there were about four times more of them than there were warships. As WWII showed, vessels like amphibious warfare and fleet transports had a far longer useful life than a warship as technology made warships become obsolescent even more quickly. In addition, auxiliary craft had many of the same electronic systems as a warship during and after WWII, and they also needed to be stored or maintained. Many of these auxiliary craft became obsolete not because of any basic material problems like we saw between WWI and WWII but because their electronics were not only obsolete, they just didn't work with the modern fleet. As an example, every piece of electronic equipment, from the lowly morale receiver to the most sophisticated radars and analog computers were powered by tubes, or valves, as they were know to our British cousins. They not only had a very limited lifespan without constant maintenance and replacement, the manpower with the expertise to do those things was slowly being drained away from the Navy.
Tube powered equipment was being replaced by solid state electronics, so an entire new set of skills was needed compared to even a few years previously. Radios and radars operated on progressively narrower and narrower bandwidths and higher frequencies, something tube types just weren't capable of doing. Analog electronics of all types were being replaced with digital, and more and more of that equipment needed to be updated, replaced, or more pieces of equipment need to be added. Older ships either ran out of space or just weren't worth the expenditure. Fleet type auxiliaries now needed to cruise at 20 knots, beyond even the top speed of older units. The need for space and facilities to operate helicopters for vertical replenishment and just transport between ships while underway was also beyond the abilities of ships that were only ten to fifteen years old.
Probably at no time since the Civil War did the Navy scrap as many ships as it has since the decade after WWII, and that process just accelerated as the 2010's drew to a close. While active fleet numbers declined rapidly from about 1300 to 900 after WWII, numbers stabilized between 800-900 due to Korea and the Cold War between 1951 to 1970. The active fleet further declined once again with the fall of the Soviet Union to about 600. As scrapings began to increase again at the close of the 20th century, numbers fell to about 400. By 2017, the active fleet was down to 270. The USN has now fallen to number two numerically behind China. If things continue as they have, and there's no reason to think they won't, we willm fallen to number three, behind...India
How things change.
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