The US Navy's rust problem

[LittleLebowski]

They've been painting over rust since my time. Us dumb jarheads busted the rust on our vehicles down to bare metal, primed, and then hit it with CARC paint.


https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37094/check-out-how-rusty-and-battered-uss-stout-looks-after-spending-a-record-215-days-at-sea

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-surface-fleet-rust-problem/


https://www.thedrive.com/content/2020/10/32424356.jpg

https://taskandpurpose.com/uploads/2021/03/02/rust-buckets-all-1352x2048.jpg

[rcbusmc24]

Minimal manning and back to back deployments will do that but Cold war era sailors must be spinning in some graves seeing that. It's sad....

[MickAK]

Nothing a little Albright and muriatic acid won't fix

[Dave Williams]

I didn't see a spec of rust in my three days aboard the Stennis last year.

[Stephanie B]

Minimal manning and back to back deployments will do that but Cold war era sailors must be spinning in some graves seeing that. It's sad....

That is no shit.

ETA: I knew a FF sailor back in the day. He had a single-page calendar for an entire year. He used colored highlighters on it: One color for deployment, another color for non-deployed days at sea, a third color for in-port duty days. Upshot was that he got to sleep off the ship for sixty days that year. And this, mind you, was during peacetime.

With all that time away, none of them looked like modern-day rustbuckets. “Ship-shape and Bristol fashion” was a point of pride.

[Bergeron]

I was only ever a filthy civilian during my employment with the Navy, and I never did anything with the surface fleet, but as an American and as a navalist, I am ashamed by the material conditions of our proud ships.

I can't find an immediate citation, but I'm under the impression that the paint used on the ships has switched in the last decade(ish) to a more "environmentally sound" formulation with decreasing effectiveness, in addition to all the horrible effects of minimal manning and unfocused requirements that burden the surface force.

The recent report on the fleet's culture (https://www.scribd.com/document/515524363/A-REPORT-ON-THE-FIGHTING-CULTURE-OF-THE-UNITED-STATES-NAVY-SURFACE-FLEET) is both unpleasant and unsurprising, and I appreciated blogger CDR Salamander's review (http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2021/07/culture-is-upstream-of-everything.html) of the document. The culture over the last several years has appeared to be a contributing factor to this place we now find ourselves.

If we intend to remain the world's dominant naval power we must start acting like it.

[Joe in PNG]

Besides, isn't sitting through endless powerpoint presentation about diversity the real mission these days?

[Trooper224]

Minimal manning and back to back deployments will do that but Cold war era sailors must be spinning in some graves seeing that. It's sad....

Some of us aren't dead yet and are far from happy.

I've watched our Navy circle the drain for the last couple of decades. The USN is in no way capable of prosecuting a blue water navy war at the present time. They've forgotten how to do everything except launch aircraft and drop bombs on the sand. The infrastructure for building and maintaining a capable war time navy doesn't exist anymore. The USN is one short step away from being a paper tiger.

[rcbusmc24]

Some of us aren't dead yet and are far from happy.

I've watched our Navy circle the drain for the last couple of decades. The USN is in no way capable of prosecuting a blue water navy war at the present time. They've forgotten how to do everything except launch aircraft and drop bombs on the sand. The infrastructure for building and maintaining a capable war time navy doesn't exist anymore. The USN is one short step away from being a paper tiger.

My Dad has got to be turning circles in his coffin up in Arlington over what is happening to his Navy. He was in from 68 to 93 (E1- E5 then O1 to O5). I remember walking around on (mostly amphibious) surface ships in Charleston SC, Little Creek Va and Norfolk VA as a kid and seeing the pride he had in how his ship looked, and the pride that the crew took in the ships and their mission. I remember him taking me on the USS Little Rock Museum ship that's up in Buffalo NY and showing me his compartment and where he ran messages as a radioman back in the day. I compare that to what I see now and what I experienced as a Marine NCO and SNCO out on floats with the fleet. Shit, I used to send my malcontents when I was a Plt Sgt to deck division in coveralls to see the Senior Chief or First LT and help chip paint and paint the decks. Deck loved us..... the sailors were great, mostly... but they were soooo overworked, and constantly tired and undermanned and....neglected is honestly the only word I can come up with to describe it. I was originally going to join the Navy, took the ASVAB with them and everything, then ended up going USMC at the last minute for some reason I can no longer remember.... Signed up in March of 2001, with a early Sept ship date.... Then a ground war happened and it seemed like I made the right choice... But the Fleet has been neglected pretty much the entire time I have been on active duty it seems to me.

I'm getting ready to retire from the Marine Corps in a few months myself and honestly I'm a little worried about my boys that the Commandant wants to leave out on all those shitty little islands to wait for the Navy to show up to the fight.....The fleet looking like that is making me start to have visions of Maj Devereux and Wake Island dancing in my eyes....Hopefully I'm wrong...

[Joe in PNG]

Seriously, those photos are like looking at post Cold War Soviet Navy ships. Sad, sad, sad.

But I'm sure Biden is going to make it all better!

[Borderland]

That's not how I remember it. Is Boatswain's Mate still a rate? Are they all cruise missile programmers now?

[ccmdfd]

Saw this on another forum yesterday.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9783807/Navy-disarray-focusing-diversity-training-warfighting-report-says.html

[JohnO]

Perhaps the Navy needs to concentrate less on Wokeness and Drag Queen shows and more on fleet maintenance.

[LittleLebowski]

Minimal manning and back to back deployments will do that but Cold war era sailors must be spinning in some graves seeing that. It's sad....

I saw painting over rust before the GWOT started. On a near brand new ship.