U.S. "Warships" in Mothballs

saber964 wrote:
It would be impossible to build new B-52's. The last one rolled off the assembly line in 1964. They currently have the grand children of those crewmembers flying them and more than likely the great great grand children flying them off to be scrapped in 2045.

cthia wrote:
With 10,000 ships in mothballs, as many as 30,000,000 people might have been needed to crew them, if reactivating them all.

Relax wrote:
NIT: Actually it would be quite easy to build more B52's if you ignore the jigs required which would be easy to make. Why? Wing twist/deflection difference between ground and cruise were not taken into consideration at that time. Rather a VERY crude guesstimate was made and in notes is jig position zero with some constant twist applied. When in doubt, make the wings stiffer was the rule. Same goes for the 707 built half a decade later.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:U.S. Warplanes in Mothballs

Anything the Solarian League can do. . . we can do better.

The SL had the right idea. It's crazy not to 'Waste not want not.' The problem isn't hording, it's not knowing when to. . . throw some shit away!

.

It seems to me there are three scenarios where it might make sense to keep a reserve (and the Davis Monthan is partly the later two of these)

1) When you've got a trained reservist force of personnel who can be called up to operate them it makes sense as you put new cutting edge equipment into service that the oldest of your in-service stuff get placed in reserve for their use in training or if called up to war, and the oldest stuff in reserve get scrapped. Kind of a hand-me down system; but only as much as you've got trained personnel to use (so maintaining the reserve doesn't cut too deeply into your procurement and operational budgets)

The UK Royal Navy did this up until the 20s and 30s when the naval treaties forced those 2nd line ships to be scrapped.


2) When you demobilize after a war or build-up and you've got more front-line equipment than you can use at your desired force level. Place the excess into reserve in case the situation unexpectedly changes; or you misjudged how far you demobilize. (While not necessarily a formal personnel reserve you've still got the recently demobilized personnel that could, in a true emergency, be tapped to man that equipment again).

The US Navy did this after WWII when they put lots of ships that had been front line units months before into mothballs. Some of them were pulled back out a few years later for Korea. Some, especially the Essex class carriers were modernized and replaced their never mothballed counterparts as they wore out, and some lingered in mothballs until scrapped.

3) When they serve as a reserve of spare parts for equipment still in service; especially for components that are no longer manufactured. (And often the reserve will transition from category 2 to 3 as they become obsolete for even second line use but can still be stripped for useful parts) Even when an entire model of plane is retired to Davis Monthan often it shares components (engines, etc) with other planes still in service or in the civilian fleet; and it's easier to park the whole plane out in the desert and only strip it as needed than it is to break them down into parts and put them in a warehouse.


But it doesn't make sense to hold onto reserve or mothball equipment when you can't man it, even in an emergency, and don't need it for spare parts. So even planes at Monthan eventually get scrapped when they don't serve any of those purposes.

cthia wrote:The SLN could have, conceivably manned many of their mothballs if they would have been able to formally declare war. They didn't have the innate impractical limits on warm bodies like the SKM does. The League's limit is all red tape that would quickly dissipate in the face of a formal declaration of war. I'm sure they had a contingency plan for reactivation, a plan which was probably in mothballs too, but still.

Which brings me to another point that perplexes me. If the Mandarins would have riled the natives and got that declaration of war - and was really privy to the full extent of Manty tech, thus the force imbalance - they would have needed time. Formally declaring war warns your enemy. It seems more logical and less fatal to accept a war footing amongst yourselves in secrecy before formally going public. In the SL's case, they needed at least a few years headstart, had they really known what they were up against.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm aware that the SLN had no intention of reactivating those obsolete ships, I understand that, but Buccaneer would have been real devastating if it had. .

cthia wrote:The SLN could have, conceivably manned many of their mothballs if they would have been able to formally declare war. They didn't have the innate impractical limits on warm bodies like the SKM does. The League's limit is all red tape that would quickly dissipate in the face of a formal declaration of war. I'm sure they had a contingency plan for reactivation, a plan which was probably in mothballs too, but still.

Which brings me to another point that perplexes me. If the Mandarins would have riled the natives and got that declaration of war - and was really privy to the full extent of Manty tech, thus the force imbalance - they would have needed time. Formally declaring war warns your enemy. It seems more logical and less fatal to accept a war footing amongst yourselves in secrecy before formally going public. In the SL's case, they needed at least a few years headstart, had they really known what they were up against.

Jonathan_S wrote:Given a 5 or 6 years of wartime funding and priority and they could probably get much of the reserve in service. But what kind of a war gives you years to get your existing obsolescent ships into service? (And if you do have years then you've got time to build new ships -- ones that you know are up to your current specs)



Reserves work when you've got trained crew you could call up to man them OR you reasonable expect to burn through equipment much faster than personnel (then you use the reserve for spare parts or just to transfer crew to when their original equipment is unservicable).