Amid increased rhetoric from North Korea, combat ship USS Freedom debuts in Pacific

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    Next-gen battleship joining the Pacific fleet

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    US flies B-2 bombers over South Korea

A fast, maneuverable surface warrior, the Navy's first littoral combat ship USS Freedom has joined the 7th Fleet in the Pacific.

Its arrival coincides with further heavy rhetoric from North Korea. News agency KCNA carried the government’s message Wednesday that it had ordered artillery and rocket units into "combat posture" to prepare to target U.S. bases in the United States mainland, Hawaii and Guam.

On its maiden deployment, USS Freedom arrived in the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR) on March 20 -- a zone that covers more than 48 million square miles, stretching west from the International Date Line to the western coast of India. At any given moment, about 100 ships and submarines are deployed there and assigned to 7th Fleet.

On March 15, the fleet marked the 70th anniversary of its maintaining security and stability in the region.

While North Korea is not thought to have ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, it is capable of striking U.S. bases in the region, including Guam, where Freedom will be visiting.

The ship will participate in some large scale training exercises in Southeast Asia, involving maritime security operations with regional partners.

North Korea, meanwhile, has been carrying out its own large-scale military exercises.

Surface and anti-submarine warfare ready
Designed and developed by Lockheed Martin, the littoral combat ship (coastal and shallow water areas are called “littoral”) is quick and agile, and loaded with mission packages that can be configured for surface warfare, countering sea mines and anti-submarine warfare.

'As the U.S. Navy supports the U.S. government rebalance to the Indo-Asia-Pacific, there is no better place to demonstrate LCS capabilities.'

- Vice Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet

Led by Cmdr. Timothy Wilke, Freedom will initially be manned by her crew of 91 sailors, who include mission package personnel and an aviation detachment to operate its MH-60 helicopter.

Freedom can provide critical access and dominance in coastal water battlespaces.

As designed, Freedom can operate with substantially fewer crew, requiring only 40 core sailors plus support crew for the aviation and mission packages.

Should a battle erupt, Freedom can act as a hub to tie together sea, air and land assets.

COMBATTS-21 Combat Systems
The ship’s battle management system, also produced by Lockheed Martin, provides a flexible, next-generation defense system that can be reconfigured for a specific threat in days.

COMBATSS-21 is a self-defense suite and integrates the radar, electro-optical infrared cameras, gunfire control system, countermeasures and short-range anti-air missiles, as well as a variety of missile and torpedo systems, naval guns and more.

Let's say the mission required weapons systems to defeat enemy subs. An anti-submarine package would include an MH-60 Romeo carrying an active dipping sonar, sonobuoys and heavy-weight torpedoes.

What if the enemy had littered the coastal waters with mines? Freedom’s countermeasures package can search twice as quickly as earlier systems. It requires only two operators and would include tech like the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle and Raytheon’s airborne SONAR mine countermeasure detection system, AQS-20A.

Remember the USS Cole incident where American lives were lost? Small boats continue to be an ongoing threat.

To protect the fleet from this sort of asymmetric warfare, Freedom’s tech could include the Gun Mission Module MK 50 MOD, a Non-Line of Sight Launch System Mission Module, a MH-60R helicopter and vertical takeoff drones.

Led by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, the team includes naval architect Gibbs & Cox and ship builder Marinette Marine Corporation.

USS Fort Worth, the team’s second littoral combat ship, was delivered two months early last year and included improved fuel efficiency and speed, reduced weight, improved satellite and launch, recovery and handling systems and landing aids with advanced night vision capability.

The next two ships, the Milwaukee and the Detroit, are currently under construction.

Ballet dancer turned defense specialist Allison Barrie has traveled around the world covering the military, terrorism, weapons advancements and life on the front line. You can reach her at wargames@foxnews.com or follow her on Twitter @Allison_Barrie.

Allison Barrie

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ObamaCare turns three -- rhetoric vs. reality

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    What have we learned three years into ObamaCare?

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    ObamaCare turns 3-years-old

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    ObamaCare vs. health care

Saturday marks ObamaCare’s third anniversary, and President Obama and Democrats across the country will surely celebrate its greatest achievement to date: survival.  The health care law narrowly survived a Supreme Court challenge, repeated attempts by House Republicans to repeal it and, with President Obama’s reelection, seems to be set for implementation next year.

But survival is a pretty low bar for the law, and far from the lofty claims made on its behalf.

In 2009, President Obama said that “it’s important for us to make sure that 46 million people who don’t have health insurance get it.  And I think it’s important for us to bend the curve, separate and apart from coverage issues, just because the system we have right now is unsustainable and hugely inefficient and uncompetitive.”  

On net, we found evidence that ObamaCare will do very little to slow U.S. health care spending, and may actually increase it.

The Obama administration’s claim that the law would rein in spending undoubtedly persuaded wavering Congressional Democrats to push it across the finish line.

In a new report from the Manhattan Institute, Rhetoric and Reality, my colleague Yevgeniy Feyman and I try to summarize the best evidence to date on the impact that the law is having on health care costs today – and whether or not it is likely to contain costs in the future.

Based on the best currently available data, we project that ObamaCare will increase, not decrease, U.S. health care spending.    

Certainly, the near term trends aren’t favorable for the law.  Since the passage of the law, household premiums for private insurance have increased by 11.3 percent, outpacing even the growth of medical inflation (6.8 percent). Last year, Congressional analysts also projected that employer-based family coverage will cost $20,000 by 2016, an increase of 27 percent over 2012 rates.  Looking a little further ahead, premiums are expected to rise steadily through 2021, except for a brief dip in 2014.

(The “dip” kicks in when ObamaCare’s exchange subsidies begin, transferring costs from individuals and families to taxpayers.  But shifting costs is not the same thing as containing costs.) 

In fact, a recent survey of insurance companies by the American Action Forum, a think tank, found that market reforms included in ObamaCare will spike health insurance premiums, particularly for younger and healthier people.  ObamaCare requires insurers to sell richer benefit packages, but the main cost increases come from new rules like rating bands, that limit the discounts insurers can offer to younger policyholders compared to older ones, and prohibit premium variations based on gender and health status. 

ObamaCare also includes new taxes on everything from insurance companies to prescription drugs, costs likely to be passed along to families and small businesses shopping for coverage.

ObamaCare didn’t invent America’s health care woes, and shouldn’t be blamed for the ones we already have. The U.S. already spends over $2 trillion on health care, approaching 18 percent of U.S. GDP.  And health care costs were rising much faster than income or GDP growth for decades before ObamaCare came along. 

But the point of the law was to fix the system – not add to its burdens.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) predicts that the law will add about $500 billion to U.S. spending between 2012 and 2021. 

To be fair, ObamaCare does contain several small pilot projects, all of them well meaning, designed to reform the supply or delivery of health care.  But existing pilot programs thus far have had mixed or disappointing results.  And some projects, like the widespread implementation of electronic health records, seem to have increased costs in some cases, by making it easier for providers to bill for additional services. 

Other experiments, like Medicare’s Accountable Care Organization (ACO) program, may also be cost increasing, by encouraging hospital consolidation that allows them to increase prices. 

One area where ObamaCare devotes far too little attention is reforming the demand for health care services.  For all of our talk about the crushing cost of American health care, on average, consumers only spend about 11 cents out of pocket for health care – the fifth lowest average among OECD countries.  And research suggests that when out of pocket spending is lower, health care spending increases because consumers are only paying a tiny fraction of the total bill.

By 2021, ObamaCare will push U.S. out of pocket spending even lower than it is today, to just over 9 percent. This may accelerate price increases by insulating the newly insured largely from the costs of the care they consume. 

Defenders of the law like to point out that CBO scores the law as reducing the deficit. But this is only because the law brings in more revenues (through taxes and penalties) than it spends over a ten year period. And recently, health care cost growth has slowed somewhat. But there is no reason to attribute the slowdown to ObamaCare, since its main provisions haven’t even kicked in.  And lower Medicare spending is largely (75 percent) attributable to lower drug spending in Medicare’s Part D benefit, which started in 2006.

On net, we found evidence that ObamaCare will do very little to slow U.S. health care spending, and may actually increase it.

While the Congressional debate has focused on repealing ObamaCare, a more politically palatable option may be reforming it by focusing on demand side reforms – like moving most non-poor Americans into higher deductible health plans paired with savings accounts and lowering subsidies on the exchanges (currently subsidies extend to families making up to $94,000 annually) to focus on low-income families, and building effective systems that allow consumers to easily compare the price and quality of health care options.

An anniversary is supposed to be the time for celebration. For ObamaCare, its third anniversary signifies how little the law has accomplished, and the enormous health care challenges still facing the country.

Paul Howard is Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

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