After a Decade of Debate, Cruisers Set to Exit Fleet in 5 Years

[rebewranger]

   
After a Decade of Debate, Cruisers Set to Exit Fleet in 5 Years
By: Sam LaGrone, Mallory Shelbourne and Christopher P. Cavas
April 21, 2022 6:23 PM • Updated: April 22, 2022 9:40 AM
 
NORFOLK, Va. – USS Vicksburg (CG-69) is in the middle of a $200 million repair period meant to keep the guided-missile cruiser in the fleet well into the 2030s. Shrouded in scaffolding and white plastic at BAE Systems Ship Repair, shipyard workers have been upgrading Vicksburg since 2020.

The repair work was part of a controversial decade-old Navy modernization plan to keep 11 of the remaining 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers in the service’s inventory into the 2030s to operate with carrier strike groups and host their air defense commanders.

But now the Navy wants to abandon the modernization as part of a wide-ranging cut of legacy platforms the service says cost too much to fix and maintain. In the next five years, the Navy plans to shed its entire cruiser force, including the ships part of the ongoing modernization program, according to the long-range shipbuilding plan released this week.

https://news.usni.org/2022/04/21/navy-plans-for-all-22-ticonderoga-cruisers-to-exit-fleet-in-5-years

[Smokin Joe]

Considering these cruisers were there to provide antiaircraft capabilities for a carrier group, and there is no replacement, this just isn't wise.
I get the impression that refits were slow walked on purpose, to allow those hulls in for a refit to deteriorate under the watch of skeleton crews so the case could be made that they were no longer viable for refit.

Look for traitors in the service, it appears we have lots of rats in the grain bin.