I snagged this from the 3rd party email, yeah I’m an Army guy that happens to know a bit about Navy stuff, especially Carriers. I still think they need to go back to naming them for battles, and not politicians. I am glad to see the Enterprise coming back though.
The U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers are about to turn 50. But given the demand for the carrier air wing and delays to the Nimitz-class replacement—the Ford-class—the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) itself is unlikely to retire as soon as expected.
The Navy’s fiscal 2023 budget has already called to extend the first-in-class CVN 68, commissioned in 1975, for another deployment cycle instead of decommissioning it in 2025 as previously planned. Service officials say the upcoming budget request could include a final decision on extending the next in the class, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, beyond its 2027 projected end-of-service date—though extending just that ship likely will not be enough.
“Extending Nimitz, extending Ike, it’s going to happen for every Nimitz-class carrier. At least one extension,” Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, then-commander of Naval Air Forces, said during an Aug. 25 discussion at the Tailhook Symposium shortly before retiring from the service.
- USS Nimitz extended, Eisenhower likely to follow
- The service seeks Ford-class advanced procurement change
- Repeated extensions could worsen strike fighter deficit
The future of the Nimitz class and oversight of ongoing issues facing production of the second Ford-class carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, was a focal point of the discussion at the symposium. The Navy’s current plan for the Nimitz calls for $200 million for extension work as part of a 5.5-month maintenance schedule, according to a March 2023 report to Congress.
“Carriers are the linchpin of everything we do in naval aviation,” Director of Air Warfare Division N98 Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly said. “Our requirements are designed and aligned within our air wings to provide the capability out to the [combatant commands] for our ability to conduct the mission. Our ability to get the carriers out on time, whether it is new procurement or maintenance, is essential.”
The first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is now deployed to the Mediterranean, about two years after it achieved initial operational capability. The Ford was extensively delayed and over budget, commissioning five years before the deployment and 15 years after its naming. Originally projected to cost $10.5 billion, the ship ended up costing $13.3 billion. Though it has advanced capabilities such as the new electromagnetic catapult system and improved weapons elevators, it is not yet able to bring on Lockheed Martin F-35Cs.
- See also: USS George Washington Tests New Systems Following Extended Overhaul
- U.S. Navy’s Venerable ‘COD’ Prepares To Fly Off Into The Sunset
The Kennedy (CVN 79) was christened in December 2019 and is scheduled to be delivered in 2025, one year later than its prior expected delivery. The next in the class, the USS Enterprise (CVN 80), has also been affected by labor and supply chain issues, with its delivery date at least a year late as well, now scheduled for 2028.
The Navy has also faced issues with midlife servicing of its ships. The USS George Washington (CVN 73) came out of its Refueling and Complex Overhaul process in May, about two years later than expected. “We are dependent on Newport News, Virginia,” Whitesell said of issues in the Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding yard.
To address the Refueling and Complex Overhaul issues, the Navy is executing a performance-based contract for the process on the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). For new builds, the service is also looking at extended advance procurement contracts to have more of a lead time in the supply chain, switching to a three-year period from the current two years, Donnelly said.
“We have to look at our procurement strategies so that we are designing the budgeting and programming [and] buying those on the right centers [to] keep the momentum going in the industrial process,” he says.
Demand for carriers will not likely abate soon, as evidenced by the Ford and Eisenhower operating together in the Mediterranean. The Navy has been stressed in fulfilling its post-Cold War plan for a permanent 1.0 carrier presence on station in three hubs—the Western Pacific, the wider Middle East and Europe. To keep up this presence, the service needs 15 carriers—a 3:1 ratio because of maintenance and deployment process requirements. This plan was outlined in the 1993 Bottom-Up Review under then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, but the service has been unable to meet it since, says Steven Wills, a navalist with the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League.
Navy policy has shifted to the Fleet Response Plan, which focuses on being able to surge aircraft carriers forward when needed, as with the six carriers deployed for Operation Desert Storm and the five for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The current fleet size of 11 stresses this model, and with reactor time left on the ships, multiple extensions are possible, Wills says. “We beat our ships up. We’ve only got X amount of carriers, and constantly keeping one-third deployed, that’s rough,” he says.
In some ways, keeping the carriers active may be easier than decommissioning them, says Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology. Taking apart a massive, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is a long, expensive and difficult job of which few companies are capable. Just three responded to a request for proposals to decommission the USS Enterprise. This process requires dismantling the nuclear reactor before shipping it to a nuclear waste storage facility, all while the ship takes up space in a dry dock.
As the Navy is planning its future carrier fleet size, it also faces math problems with its air wings. The service customarily had one more carrier air wing than its total number of carriers before deciding it did not need to keep that many aircraft. The Navy currently has nine air wings to serve on 11 carriers. “That means each air wing is getting worked at max availability,” Clark says.
Not all air wings are populated with enough strike fighters, he notes, and the Navy is not looking to buy more. Current F-35C production is capped by Lockheed Martin’s capacity and issues facing development of new capabilities, such as the Block 4 package. Early Super Hornets are reaching service-life caps, as Boeing’s Block III upgrade process has proven more time-consuming than originally expected, while the Navy wants to end new production.
For now, this means the service has been shuffling aircraft around its squadrons to populate those underway. It is a workable approach for now, but it is not necessarily sustainable, he says.
The Navy plans to address the potential aircraft shortages by leaning heavily into uncrewed aviation. The 2022 Navigation Plan authored by then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday, who has now retired, called for carrier air wings to be 60% uncrewed and 40% crewed. This plan hinges for now on the Boeing MQ-25 Stingray, slated to be the trailblazer for uncrewed carrier-based operations ahead of new programs such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft on which the Navy is working with the Air Force. Those uncrewed “loyal wingman”-type aircraft, which are to fly alongside F-35s and Next-Generation Air Dominance platforms, are expected to begin to be fielded by the end of the decade.
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S&W 32 DA Top Break Revolver
On November 21, 2023, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found the State of Maryland had violated the Constitution with their recent handgun purchase law. The law requires considerable delay and process before a person can legally purchase a handgun. The opinion specifically states the recent add-on law enacted in 2016 infringes on the Second Amendment by hindering the right to acquire a handgun. From the opinion:
But—for handguns specifically—before you do any of that, there is an additional, preliminary step: You must also obtain a “handgun qualification license.” See § 5-117.1. Getting that license requires, among other things, submitting fingerprints to undergo a background “investigation” and taking a four-hour-long “firearms safety training course” in which you must fire at least one live round. Then, after submitting your application for this extra license, you must wait up to thirty days for approval before you can start the rest of the process.
Plaintiffs seek to enjoin the state from enforcing only this additional, preliminary handgun-licensure requirement. And Plaintiffs’ challenge must succeed. The challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one. Under the Supreme Court’s new burden-shifting test for these claims, Maryland’s law thus fails, and we must enjoin its enforcement. So we reverse the district court’s contrary decision.
The three-judge panel was split. Two judges voted for the majority opinion. One judge wrote a dissent against it.
The dissenting judge, Barbara Milano Keenan, is a senior judge, which means she is a semi-retired judge who helps out. She was born in Austria but schooled in the United States. Keenan was appointed by former President Barack Obama. One of the arguments put forward by Judge Keenan in the dissent is to claim “infringe” means to destroy totally. It is an exceedingly weak argument. Judge Richardson, in the opinion, comments on the argument in footnote 8, on page 11. Richardson stressed the dictionary meaning from the contemporary Samuel Johnson Dictionary. From footnote 8, page 11, commenting on the dissent.
Compare Samuel Johnson, 1 Dictionary of the English Language 1101 (4th ed. 1773) (“Johnson”) (defining “infringe” as “[t]o destroy; to hinder” (emphasis added)), and Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (“Webster”) (defining “infringe” as “[t]o destroy or hinder” (emphasis added)), with Johnson at 1007 (defining “to hinder” as “to cause impediment”), and Webster(defining “hinder” as “to obstruct for a time” and “[t]o interpose obstacles or impediments”). So too do other sources that the Supreme Court has used to interpret the right. See1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 143 n.40 (1803) (“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed . . . and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree. . . .” (emphasis added)); Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846) (“The right of the whole people . . . to keep and bear arms. . . shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree.” (third emphasis added));
You can see Judge Keenan uses the same definition from the Johnson dictionary but puts forward exactly the opposite meaning. Hinder is far from destroyed, yet Judge Keenan would have us believe they are the same thing. From the dissent by Judge Barbara Milano Keenan in footnote 9, page 36:
9 Notably, some definitions from the Founding era of the term “infringe” support the construction that the Supreme Court appeared to endorse in its discussion of shall-issue regimes, namely, that a particular provision will “infringe” an individual’s rights under the plain text of the Second Amendment only if the statutory condition is so burdensome that it ultimately prevents law-abiding, responsible individuals from possessing or bearing a handgun. Samuel Johnson, 1 Dictionary of the English Language 1101 (4th ed. 1773) (hereinafter Johnson) (defining “infringe” as “[t]o violate; to break laws or contracts” or “[t]o destroy; to hinder”);
Judge Keenan would have us believe the word “infringed” in the Second Amendment is a synonym for “destroyed.” This is a word game Progressives love to play. Change the clear meaning of words to achieve political objectives.
The next step in the Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore case will be up to the State of Maryland. They, as defendants, could ask for the case to be considered by the Fourth Circuit en banc (by the whole Court). Such a request may or may not be granted. This case will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. Whether the Supreme Court will decide to hear the case is uncertain.
Many Second Amendment supporters focus on the phrase “shall not be infringed.” Judge Barbara Milano Keenan argues the phrase means “shall not be destroyed.” When you change the meaning of words to win an argument, you are not arguing in good faith. Progressives have never argued in good faith about the Constitution and the rule of law. They believe both are impediments to unfettered power wielded by the government. As such, gun control is in the DNA of the Progressive movement.
Progressive judges work exactly the opposite of what the founders believed the role of the Judiciary should be. Instead of a check on governmental power, Progressive judges work to increase governmental power.
Court Strikes Down Maryland’s Infringement of Second Amendment Rights by AmmoLand Shooting Sports News on Scribd
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
