Advocation: Stop scrapping and start repurposing retired aircraft carriers, other warships, and utility ships with advanced weapons, technologies, and capabilities.
Security and Incentivizing Ideas: Keep repurposing projects strictly shrouded in mystery for potentially adversarial forces, the press, and unreliable partners as would bleed information. Put the projects under direct military command, strict counterintelligence oversight, and utilize only vetted personnel with no overseas family living in countries in which adversarial forces have significant presence, influence, or leverage. Limit congressional oversight to non-public meetings in secure facilities. Get serious about deterring unnecessary wars and prevent the folly of unnecessary human attrition in our Armed Forces so as to keep force-parity, morale, and recruitment power. Wherever possible, put cleared, vetted, well-treated, well-led military personnel on all technical jobs refitting, repurposing, and upgrading on all projects. Reward service member innovation with innovation education, training, bonus pay, and percentage royalties for produced innovations for as long as innovators stay in the Service, then IP credit references without disclosing specifics on transition to private sector.
Short Discussion: This topic will be short for security reasons. It is this outlet’s intent to discourage undue bleeding of high quality ideation in open sources on the 5 W’s of repurposing, and the How. In so close a race among major power military buildups with current gray warfare and industrial capacity disparities, there is no excuse for:
- Wasting vessels and craft that can be renewed and repurposed faster than new ones can be built;
- Failing to use bold and pragmatic imagination for new and old capabilities, producing new parts using new manufacturing capabilities from old drawings and scanned parts;
- Failing in boldness to bridge the gap as new vessels and technologies come online;
- Failing to resolve objections with ample solutions to those objections given that new manufacturing and shipbuilding capacity requires solutions, not stymied gridlock;
- Failing to establish guarded port entries and transportation methods masking the identities of crew members and support staff for the repurposed vessels and craft;
- Failing to make the case for special authority under the Defense Production Act and other authorities to fast-track such projects and provide powerful security envelopes around same with strong positive incentives and clearly defined, agreed-to, and memorized security rules with mutual protection in preemptive activation to prevent, not react to risk factors;
- Failing to bring honorably retired, transitioned, vetted veterans with special subject matter knowledge back into service to advise and troubleshoot repair, renovation, renewal, and special insights on the potentials of naval assets set for repurposing.
Preliminary Conclusion
The objective of repurposing is to effectively adapt to outmatch new warfare modes, potential enemy capabilities, and save time to stand-up new leveraging assets in service to United States defense, security and freedom. Assets lose leverage with PR or press disclosure and or lobbying inquiries or efforts wrongfully given any access to information. Leaks, disclosure, and loose lips must be proscribed completely for defense adaptation to work.
Note:
SPC / Strategy Shelf will only respond to verified official contacts from appropriate United States government inquirers into topics of idea research, generation, and critical vetting. SPC anticipates custom security terms to exceed existing legal requirements in establishing what works to keep all consultations, contents, and subject matter secure, undisclosed, and mission-loyal. SPC commits to work with the United States on a results-oriented, proportionate-value compensation basis to establish secure, protected concepts going forward.
