CSBA in the News

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has released its new Fleet Architecture Study, which includes recommendations for what kinds of ships should make up the future U.S. Navy fleet, and how it should be organized. 

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former Navy submariner, said the amount of acoustic coating missing on the Mississippi “could create enough flow noise to be a sound problem at even relatively slow speeds. Also, there is enough tile missing that it could reduce the coating's ability to absorb sonar energy and make the submarine easier to find with active sonar.” Clark said it isn't clear from the photo if the tiles came off due to debonding, meaning a loss of adhesion, “or if they got stripped off from something rubbing against the submarine. Nets and cables adrift at sea can do this.”