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Author: Yi Pin Wen team big buffalo, welcome to forward!
Money is not a panacea in this world, but it is impossible without money.
The Yankees were rich, and he was both a money-obsessed business empire and a maritime-minded naval power. Now, however, the United States has an awkward problem: the U.S. Navy is getting poorer, and it has to shrink its own staff.
Nuclear weapons are the hallmark of the world's great powers. Trinity's strike capability is a means of nuclear strike currently held and carefully maintained by the members of the Global Nuclear Club. But maintaining a nuclear arsenal costs money, and it's a bottomless pit where you have to keep throwing gold into it to keep going. Land-based nuclear bombs are already expensive, but the Navy's nuclear warheads are more expensive. Because the Navy wants to develop special ballistic missile nuclear submarines. As the times advanced, the Navy needed more and more nuclear submarines with large displacement and low noise to accommodate large equipment. This economic cost has increased several times over the early cost of developing and maintaining nuclear submarine arsenals. In the case of China's nuclear submarines and JLG missiles, the entire country has paid a great price to succeed.
(The Air Force has largely stalled since it developed the Minuteman missile, and the Navy will continue to play.) Because during the Cold War years, the navy directly faced the Soviet Union's front-line pressure. So the Navy can get more money to build new nuclear bomb toys))
(Ohio-class submarines and Trident missiles are the main means of the U.S. Navy's nuclear deterrent strike.)
The U.S. Air Force's land-based nuclear bombs have not developed much since the Minuteman missile. The Navy has not stopped developing. The U.S. Navy developed its nuclear bomb arsenal in the 1970s and 1980s, after all, the Cold War had already reached its peak. At this time, the United States developed the Trident nuclear bomb, which can also carry six sub-warheads of 100,000 tons of equivalent in each warhead, with a range of more than 7400 kilometers. Not only could the missile be equipped with the kind of old-fashioned submarines, but the first eight Ohio-class submarines were also equipped with such missiles. The Navy bought six hundred such nuclear bombs, and at its peak they kept four hundred such missiles ready for firing.
Since then, the U.S. Navy has developed the more powerful Trident D5 nuclear bomb. It had a range of more than 10,000 kilometers; carried eight sub-warheads. The Navy immediately placed an order, totaling more than five hundred. To this day, the Ohio-class submarines are equipped with more than three hundred of these nuclear missiles. This ultimate weapon of destruction will be in service until 2045.
However, the cost of maintaining the "nuclear stick" is very high. The US Air Force's "Militia" missile costs are simply disdainful in the eyes of the US Navy. Trident missiles cost several times more than Minuteman missiles. Do you know how expensive it is to manufacture? In 1983, the cost of building missiles alone went to thirty million DOLLARs; according to official reviews, it is equivalent to the current seventy million DOLLARs (2015 statistics); if today's 2021 this data is at least calculated in hundreds of millions! This does not include the cost of developing and manufacturing nuclear submarines.
(This is the case every time you go to Congress to ask for money, and officers have to have three inches of uncorrupted tongue to get money.) But when you meet a tough old man and a woman, you won't get a penny. You can't do big things without money)
Now that the Life of the Ohio-class submarine is nearing its end, the Navy intends to gradually retire it in 2027. The Navy's desire for nuclear submarines is a little more urgent than the need for missiles. It can now only build 12 new submarines, the Columbia-class, and the number of warheads it carries has been reduced from 24 to 16. The reason for the downsizing is simple: the U.S. government doesn't give money anymore. Because the cost of the new submarine is too expensive! Having been compressed to this extent, the project cost of new submarines is still 100 billion US dollars, of which the cost of research and development is 15 billion US dollars (2015 statistics)! Even after the submarine arrives, it will cost 400 million US dollars a year for maintenance. In 2011, according to an audit by the U.S. Department of Defense's procurement department, the Columbia-class nuclear submarine project cost more than $300 billion; by 2042, when all the new submarines arrived, the Trident missile was about to reach its end of its life, and the solution was either to extend the life of the submarine or simply to have a new nuclear bomb. This requires a lot of financial support, so that even the world's richest U.S. Navy can't hold on.
(As the U.S. economy continues to decline, the quality of life of people declines.) The first option the government considers is certainly to cut military spending. After all, it is not enough to live a full meal by military expenditure, and no one made a nuclear bomb but made sausages in the Taiping era)
(The shipyard owner didn't plan to build submarines for the Navy for free, all in dollars.) Later, it will be necessary to pay money to maintain the operation of the entire system, not to mention the nuclear missile system that is extremely expensive. Now these expenses are basically calculated in hundreds of millions of dollars)
In a word, it is difficult to walk without money. As early as the Obama era, the U.S. government frequently ran fiscal deficits. And its economy has been declining, and by The time of Mr. Trump, the state has been unskilled, and the pneumonia epidemic has deepened and destroyed the structure of the U.S. economy. Don't talk about any additional military spending, even the normal livelihood of the people will be greatly affected.
So the U.S. military is under pressure to promise to reduce military spending by $500 billion over 10 years. But the Navy stopped doing so, demanding an additional four billion dollars a year to complete the new submarine program. The old ladies of Congress are procrastinating and pulling strings for this, and the money is not so easy to approve (in the Trump era, Congress was in the hands of the Democratic Party, and it did not cooperate in everything. After the current government came to power, it encountered economic difficulties). The Navy even threatened to cut down the Burke-class destroyers, Virginia-class submarines and at least 16 other conventional ships if they didn't pay them. Otherwise the U.S. Navy would not have the money to go to sea to work.
(With the Navy's budget strained, the U.S. Navy has long been clamoring to retire conventional ships to reduce surface to maintain its nuclear arsenal.) In March 2020, the US Defense News media released a message: the assistant secretary of the Navy in charge of procurement said that he would formally abandon the life extension upgrade plan of the Burke-class destroyer. The reason is that the project is not cost-effective. The U.S. Navy really does what it says in terms of saving money, and behind it is the real reason for the embarrassment: the overall decline in strength)
The financial and economic strength of the state is the economic foundation of the national defense forces. We can see that in recent years, due to the increase in national strength, our navy has been continuously expanding its ranks and establishments. On the contrary, for various internal reasons, the United States has weakened its national strength and even has to rely on the reduction of the number of ships to maintain its own operations. What does this mean? This shows that the US Navy is in fact declining in strength. The nuclear bomb arsenal is one of the necessary means of deterrence for the world's great powers, and the US military would rather reduce its clothing and food to maintain the operation of nuclear bombs and nuclear submarines. On the one hand, it reflects the status of the Navy's nuclear strike means, and on the other hand, it also reflects the lack of funds of the US Navy, which has led to a great discount in strength. Don't say anything about the "democratic road" to maintain allies, and whether this beacon of your own can exist for how long is a question. References:China's Dongfeng Missile
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