US Navy considers reactivating mothballed warships

[bootneck]

Just seen this on the Maritime Forum, that the US Administration is considering reactivating some Oliver Hazard Perry class and possibly even the USS Kitty Hawk.

 

Mike

[stevehnz]

How do they crew them, reservists?

Steve.

[Brian]

They've reactivated ships before, such as the Iowa class battleships.  No idea where they would find crews.  Comb through the existing fleet crews?

[Steve27752]

Probably lend lease for us as we don't have enough of our own!

[Rob 1]

They seem to be saying the Perrys were good frigates, so would make sense having some of them back but with a better weapons fit - although with the cost of refit on an old hull, would it be better value to knock up some new build Perrys to the existing design? Weapons fit could be the two SH60s, a Mk41 VLS, 3" rapid fire (as existing), CIWS and Harpoon canisters.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Rob 1

[Niall]

At a guess reactivating the Perry class ships would be because of the delay in the Freedom and Independence classes program.

 

It would not be expensive to fit them with a RAM or SeaRAM launcher and 2 quad harpoon launchers on the focsle in place of the removed mk13 launcher.

[Whitewolf]

No doubt they'll take a good look at what they have and then work out what they'll get in return for the anticipated costs. The Iowas were only decommissioned because they were manpower intensive, but fact is these vessels were damned good value for money, and even now, specially if the USN went back to using nuclear tipped Tomahawks, they could be used as command vessels to replace outdated Blue Ridge and instruments of tactical nuclear power projection.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Whitewolf