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McNamara's biggest stick was going away from Esenhower's 'everything or nothing' approach to US military policy (basically, either be allowed to nuke the enemy or just retreat) to a more flexible one. Congress has always been the biggest enemy of the USN.

No, the USN not getting its fully nuclear fleet is because Congress balked at the costs of such a fleet (remember, the USS Enterprise -the USN's first nuclear CVN- was supposed to be mass-produced until Congress looked at the price tag and canceled the entire class, and the Long Beach had...

The biggest problem is that every nuclear-powered ship that isn't part of a nuclear power's navy is that those ships are going to be fuck expensive until recently. Why recently? Because it took decades to basically turn nuclear reactors into Legos (i.e., the invention of modular reactors).

The NS Savanah, a nuclear hybrid cargo/passenger ship that the US made during the 'Atoms for Peace' program Basically, two things killed her: her reactor (largely all the liability bits) and the fact that containerization was being implemented just as she was launched. The designers...

This is what happens when you choop budgets unnecessarily and decide to run governments like businesses. :rolleyes::eek::rolleyes:

The problem is that there are simply not enough docks to undertake the process. Especially since the '70s was the disastrous privatization binge that only made things worse (and only got worse because people still think that's a good thing despite evidence to the contrary). At this point...

... a US paper 'light cruiser' design using 5"/54cal DP automatics (12 of them in 6 dual mounts) and twelve 3" Mk37 automatics in twin mounts... basically an Atlanta 2.0. The sad reality was, the US managed to get some AA capability in their 152mm automatics... so the project was canned...

Remember, the sonar dome is in its own compartment, which makes repairs far easier and cheaper.

Not really. The biggest reason that the ship was so radioactive was when they were washing it off with still-radioactive water because fallout wasn't that well understood at the time. If she (and other ships) were washed down with uncontaminated water and the leak that developed didn't happen...

That's still going to give some ugly precedent, sadly enough. Seriously? That's a level of stupid that would be seen in fiction. Reality is unrealistic.

Cutting taxes never solves anything. It always makes things worse. 'Trickle Down' is false and failed and, at this point, a memetic hazard. If anything, you'll have to start making sure that the rich pay their share. If you have to pull some Justinian the Great 'brand anyone that doesn't pay...

No, they need that speed to get to their launch positions as soon as possible and evade torpedoes. This also only works on active sonar, not passive. The only reason that the US and NATO have damn good passives is that we've built all of our modern systems on WW2 German systems.

Basically, Lockheed, when working on the F-117, discovered that the stealth setup of the 'Stealth Fighter' was able to deflect sound (via the old polaroid cameras, oddly enough) sensors and Skunk Works went in and designed a concept submarine using this knowledge... which the USN ignored (for...

Only if handled poorly, if I remember right. Then again, we did have a post-mothball explosion because of the powder bags if I remember right. On the third hand, we've been using a modified version of Kriegsmarine WW2 propellants since we've started using Oto-designed guns (which, from what...

Hey, a Montanan city is outright named (Billings)! I'm a happy man. :)

Given that it looks larger than the Yamato, tentative maybe. Also, it's the Maximum Yamato not the original. Think of it as the Tillman version...

A UN patrol cruiser. Basically a pirate boat. A minor ship... Some 6-Commando ships, the top is a landing assault ship that can give our destroyer-weights a hard time and the bottom is an autonomous SSBN. ... Warship Gunner crazy anyone? ... and the Samuel B for good measure.

There is a paraphrased quote that I heard somewhere that explains TR's stance on racism: Put a [insert N-Word here] and a White Man in the same position, you get the same result. TR might have believed in the entire race genetics thing (but who in academia at the time didn't?), but he was very...

Then again, remember that the USN had trouble with keeping a budget as well, given that Congress loved to go 'nice budget, we'll take it' [yoinks budget]. A lot of shit was because of said penny pinching and the sort of culture and norms it produced and compounded by other cultural norms...

Yeah, the Shadow of the Dixies is a very long one... ... wow... Eh, given a lot of the shit that US 'Christians' pulled over the course of the US's history? I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of them went to The Bad Place in the end... if not face annihilation in soul (because even the Big Guy...