Fitting Tribute - Fraters (among

Fitting Tribute - Fraters (among many other bloggers) took due note of the commissioning Saturday of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan - the seventh supercarrier of the Nimitz class.

They also cast aspersions on the planned commissioning, next year, of the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, the latest Seawolf-class submarine.

The Fraters duly note Carter's incompetence as a commander-in-chief, with this Norman Polmar quote:

”Naming the SSN-23 for President Carter further proclaims the bankruptcy of the Navy in assigning names and designations to submarines. According to a leading Pentagon reporter, it also reveals "that Clinton-appointee Dalton is - at best - politically tone deaf.

...as president [Carter] disappointed many senior officers in the armed services, especially the Navy. His personnel policies helped fuel a mass exodus of senior enlisted personnel that at times was so critical that ship deployments were delayed. In 1979, President Carter vetoed the entire fiscal year 1980 defense budget because it contained an aircraft carrier.

For many who served [in the Navy] then, Mr. Carter is at fault for having presided over the hollowing-out of the U.S. military," wrote a Pentagon reporter.”

Friends who served in the military during Carter's administration agree. Still, if you have to name a warship after Carter, better a submarine than a carrier (Carter was apparently a much better submarine officer than President).

No, the real political tone-deafness involved in this story lies not with Carter (whose transgressions were real - but we recovered from them!). No, indeed, the real sleaze in this story lies in - where else - the Clinton administration.

The Seawolf class submarine was the ultimate Cold War weapon. It was designed in the eighties to fight the latest, greatest Soviet attack and ballistic missile submarines, under the Arctic ice. It's big, very fast, and incredibly expensive. The first unit, Seawolf, had just started building when the Berlin Wall fell. The Navy, eager to stretch the budgets that were already starting to shrink, tried to cancel the Seawolf contract. This, in turn, threatened the Electric Boat Company - one of the US' two surviving submarine builders, located in Groton, Connecticut, and one of the state's larger industrial employers.

In the 1992 Presidential campaign, running slightly behind in Connecticut, Bill Clinton promised that if elected, he'd guarantee the construction of at least two more Seawolf-class boats, one of them to be named U.S.S. Connecticut. Clinton came from behind in Connecticut - largely on the strength of this promise, say some analysts - and it may have been this that put him over the top.

The third of the three units, of course, is the Carter.

So - three submarines the Navy didn't want (it wanted to free up money for the newer Virginia-class boats, which are built for the shallow-water, special-forces-heavy operations that the Navy actually expects to encounter in the near future), built at the cost of about $2 billion apiece for purely political gain by the most anti-military administration since the one for which the third boat is named...

If the Reagan is a carrier, and the Carter is a submarine, what kind of ship should the navy name the U.S.S. Bill Clinton? Input is eagerly solicited.

Posted by Mitch at July 14, 2003 08:35 AM