Navy Altered Destroyer Upgrades Due to Budget Pressure, Demand for Ships

Last week, USNI News reported the Navy would not upgrade 21 out 28 Flight I and II DDGs to the IAMD Baseline 9 standard and the ships would instead have an upgrade focused on hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) systems.

Based on the Navy’s historical record — ships with HM&E centric availabilities can become targets of decommissioning through obsolescence.

Only a handful of the Navy’s destroyers are going to get the new modern computers and systems making them capable of surviving in the maelstrom of naval warfare in the 21st century.    The costs?   How much to upgrade all 62 fleet destroyers?  Less than half a billion.  Less than 300 million.    If you add up the costs of all Barry Soetoro’s golf vacations, cost to the US taxpayers of transportation and security of his family excursions in the last five and a half years you could pay for this,   easy.  If you add in the costs charged to the American Taxpayer for travel and expenses related to Barak Obama’s re-election bid.   You could could re-equip the entire fleet.    No Shit.

How’s your blood pressure doing so far?  If it’s already climbing, do not continue…

Bergdahl’s Army Comrades May Be ‘Psychopaths,’ Says Administration Official

An administration press secretary suggested overnight that U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl might have been justified in deserting his battlefield post, partly because his platoon-mates might have been “psychopaths.”

Bergdahl might “be worthy of sympathy” for distrusting his leadership and for having “walked off,” said Brandon Friedman, a Democratic activist, a former Iraq and Afghan veteran and now a top public affairs official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

My advice, get a paper bag and breath into it slowly.