北美帝国消息人士透露：军方高层内斗激烈，海军前景晦暗不明——致喵星情报总局

（本文配合我此前编发的《北美帝国海军高层强调：航母不是豆腐做的》一文对照阅读，效果更佳。两者相互印证，充分暴露了北美帝国海军内部的激烈矛盾。虽然现阶段福特级一声炮响，海军马鹿冲上国会山还只是戏言，但是见微知著，一些迹象还是值得我们重视。）

喵星驻神圣泰拉秘密观察员 喵斯拉大王

致 喵星外时空种群特别情报局 第M78宇宙9527号星系第三悬臂分站

神圣泰拉历2020年7月27日；喵族公历MEOW-9999年 小鱼干月 猫薄荷日

分类：人类 军事 海军

威胁评级：星球3级；星系0级

是否建议执行撤喵行动：否

简报： 北美帝国军政高层在海军未来战略方向及预算分配方面分歧严重。近日，北美帝国消息人士马克·佩里在《帝国利益》杂志刊文指出，以国防部长为首的文官体系（海军激进改革派）与海军高级军官团（海军传统航母派）由于理念不同和分赃不均内斗严重，甚至正在接近内讧。由于完全丢开海军高层对30年造舰计划另起炉灶，北美帝国国防部正在打破几十年来各方对利益分配的均衡默契。这其中又牵涉到对帝国海军内部腐败窝案的追责和剧烈人事斗争，关系错综复杂。双方在政府、国会和军队内部的角力已经持续了一段时间。北美帝国海军专家指出，值此微妙时机，作为海军传统派支柱力量的一艘两栖攻击舰发生火灾完全报废，将对这场争斗起到重大影响。他甚至暗示存在阴谋论的可能。

一叶知秋，从中我们不难窥视到，随着北美帝国相对实力的衰弱，其内部各方势力的矛盾正在激化，文官体制对军队的压制正在松动。特别是帝国军队作为帝国内部事实上支撑霸权的决定性力量，存在觉醒独立政治思维的危险。回顾历史，特别是帝国衰落的历史进程，我们不难发现，军队尾大不掉是帝国国运进入螺旋下滑时期的普遍现象。而文官集团对此的提防与镇压，往往适得其反，反而激化了军队的独走倾向。对此，我们一方面要抓住对手内部混乱的时机抓紧发展自己的力量，甚至可以想办法利用这些矛盾；另一方面也要高度警惕北美帝国走向资本-军队一体化的极端法西斯体制。近期，特别是要警惕美国海军传统派为摆脱自身困境铤而走险，重演“误炸”把戏进行军事冒险。特此报告。

The Burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard Could Mean Problems for the U.S. Navy

“好人理查德”号的火灾可能给北美帝国海军带来大麻烦

Mark Perry is the author of ten books on the U.S. military and American history, including The Most Dangerous Man in America, the Making of Douglas MacArthur.

本文作者马克·佩里是北美帝国军事和历史方面的知名作者。

The irony is clear: even as the final embers of the USS Bonhomme Richard were being extinguished, it was the bent, melted and ungainly hulk of the Navy’s budget that was being rethought.

摘要：具有讽刺意味的是：就在“好人理查德”号最后的余烬被熄灭之际，人们重新思考的是帝国海军扭曲、混乱和笨拙的庞大预算。

On July 13, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was issuing a press statement warning China that “the world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” the USS Bonhomme Richard—one of the U.S. Navy’s premier first responders to China’s growing naval presence—had been on fire for twenty-four hours.

7月13日，北美帝国国务卿肥蓬向新闻界发表声明，警告中央帝国“世界不会允许中央帝国把南中央帝国海视为其海上帝国的一部分”。与此同时，北美帝国海军 “好人理查德”号（USS Bonhome Richard）已经着火24小时了。它是北美帝国应对中央帝国日益增长的海上威胁的首要手段之一。

The amphibious warship, commissioned in 1998 and built for an estimated $750 million, had been burning since the previous day when a small blaze broke out in the lower armored vehicle storage area in the aft portion of the vessel.

这艘两栖攻击舰于1998年服役，当时造价约7.5亿美元。自前一天在舰尾下部装甲车存放区发生一场小火灾以来，一直在燃烧。

Within minutes that fire had spread into surrounding compartments. The “BHR,” as it is called, does not have the public profile of one of the Navy’s eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers but it is viewed as one of the service's premier warfighting vessels and named for John Paul Jones’s legendary three-master.

几分钟之内，大火就蔓延到周围的车厢。“好人理查德号”虽然没有海军11艘核动力航空母舰那么知名，但它仍然被视为海军最重要的作战舰艇之一，并以传奇人物的名字命名。

The ship’s mission is to “embark, deploy and land” U.S. Marines in amphibious assault operations—supported by helicopters and, most recently, by F35B aircraft launched from its eight-hundred-foot deck. At the time of the fire, the USS Bonhomme Richard was undergoing maintenance, which was nearly completed, and was berthed at Pier 2 in San Diego.  

该舰的任务是“运载、部署和机降”北美帝国海军陆战队。在直升机的支持下，最近还通过从800英尺甲板上发射F35B战斗机执行两栖攻击行动。火灾发生时，“好人理查德”号正在进行维修，且维修工作已接近完成，停泊在圣迭哥港的2号码头。

The USS Bonhomme Richard’s sailors responded to the fire when they noticed smoke billowing through the lower deck. But the initial blaze could not be controlled, as there were only some 160 sailors on board and the ship’s internal fire system had been deactivated during the maintenance period.

当发现浓烟滚滚穿过下层甲板时，北美帝国海军“好人理查德”号的水手们对火灾作出了反应。但最初的火势无法控制，因为船上只有大约160名水手，而且在维修期间，船上的内部消防系统已被关闭。

The fire grew in intensity into that Sunday afternoon, spewing clouds of asphalt, plastic, paint and other toxic material into the air over San Diego and prompting Navy officials to call on the San Diego Federal Fire Department for help.

大火在周日下午愈演愈烈，将沥青、塑料、油漆和其他有毒物质喷向圣迭戈上空，促使海军官员向圣地亚哥联邦消防局求救。

Shortly thereafter, an explosion ripped through the ship, knocking sailors to the ground, hurling debris across the pier and forcing firefighters into a temporary retreat. A call went out to nearby San Diego city fire stations for assistance—a “desperate measure,” according to a senior retired U.S. Navy officer with whom I spoke at the time. “Well, God bless the San Diego fire department,” he added, “but they don't have a clue how to fight a ship fire. They're just going to pour water onto the thing.”

此后不久，一场爆炸撕裂了整艘船，将水手们打倒在地，将残骸抛向码头，迫使消防队员暂时撤退。当时我和一位退休的北美帝国海军高级军官说，有人打电话到附近的圣地亚哥市消防局寻求援助，这是一个“绝望的措施”。“好吧，上帝保佑圣地亚哥消防局，”他补充道，“但他们不知道如何扑灭船上的火灾。他们只是想把水倒在这可怜的东西上。”

By Monday morning, according to published reports, more than two hundred San Diego firefighters and fourteen local fire engines were on the scene—in addition to four hundred sailors from sixteen other ships—but fire officials feared the ship's superstructure would collapse, killing or trapping those fighting the fire inside the ship.

据报道，到星期一早上，超过200名圣地亚哥消防队员和14辆当地消防车赶到现场，另外还有来自16艘其他船只的400名船员。消防官员担心，这艘船的上层建筑会倒塌，导致救火人员死亡或困在船内。

Smoke billowed through the ship, where temperatures reached one thousand degrees, melting large portions of the vessel's structure. The fire was so intense that two nearby cruisers pulled off the pier, with firefighters calling on three squadrons of water-dropping helicopters and a fleet of fireboats for assistance. In all, fifteen hundred buckets of water were dropped on the ship by MH-60 Seahawk helicopters, mostly to cool the flight deck so that firefighters could board the ship.

浓烟在船上滚滚而过，温度高达一千度，融化了船上的大部分结构。火势非常猛烈，附近两艘巡洋舰从码头上驶离，消防队员呼叫了三个中队的洒水直升机和一支消防艇队寻求援助。总共，MH-60“海鹰”直升机向船上投放了1500桶水，主要是为了冷却飞行甲板，以便消防员能够登上飞船。

A squad of tugboats, meanwhile, poured water into the ship’s hanger bay. By Monday afternoon, the ship had taken on so much water that it had begun to list to port, and officials feared it would sink. The ship was eventually righted but then began to list to its starboard side, before being once again righted.   

与此同时，一队拖船把水倒进了船的起重舱室。到了周一下午，因为船上的水太多，已经开始向港口方向倾斜，官员们担心它会沉没。这艘船最终被扶正了，但随后又开始向右舷倾斜，然后再次被扶正。

By Tuesday morning, with the fire still spreading, firefighters were involved in three battles: to control the flames, to keep the ship’s structure from collapsing and to “dewater” the ship’s interior to keep the vessel from sinking.

到了周二上午，由于火势仍在蔓延，消防人员参与了三场战斗：控制火势，防止船体结构倒塌，以及排水防止船只沉没。

The fire control efforts were nothing less than heroic: initial fears that the fire would reach the ship’s lower decks, where tanks held one million gallons of fuel, did not materialize. It took four days to control the fire so that by Thursday morning, inspectors could get into the inaccessible compartments to search for remaining hotspots. What they found was a gutted interior. No lives were lost in the fire, but fifty-nine people were treated for smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion and, as recent reports confirm, some of the firefighters (forced to share protective firefighting gear), have tested positive for the coronavirus. Navy officials speculated that the USS Bonhomme Richard would be a total loss and need to be replaced, to the tune of some $4 billion.  

控制火势的努力是一次英雄的行为：人们最初担心火势会蔓延到船的下层甲板，那里的油罐装有100万加仑的燃料，现在这个威胁已经消除。控制火势花了四天时间，周四早上检查人员进入过火舱室，搜寻潜在的起火点。他们发现舰船内部已经被烧空。火灾中没有人丧生，但有59人因吸入烟雾和中暑而接受治疗。正如最近报告所证实的那样，一些消防员（被迫共用保护性消防装备）的冠状病毒检测呈阳性。海军官员推测，北美帝国海军“好人理查德”号将彻底报废。如用新船，代价约40亿美元。

“This should have been completely preventable because the Navy is supposed to have good practices for stowage aboard ships,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the Wall Street Journal. “If a fire breaks out, the Navy should be able to fight it immediately.” “Commander Salamander”—the U.S. Navy’s most widely read commenter on all things afloat, was even more enraged—airing his personal judgment on his widely read and often controversial online blog: “We got lucky: we got lucky the ship was not full of Sailors and so far there have been no deaths.

哈德逊研究所高级研究员布莱恩·克拉克对《华尔街日报》表示：“这应该是完全可以预防的，因为海军应该有良好的舰上装载办法。”“如果发生火灾，海军应该能够立即扑灭火灾。”北美帝国海军事务评论员在博客上发表了个人判断：“我们很幸运：船上没有满是水手，到目前为止还没有死亡。

We are lucky that there were no weapons on-board. We are lucky this was not a nuclear-powered ship. We are lucky . . . BHR was not sunk. [The Pacific Fleet] has had a bad run the last three years, this is just another black eye.” Commander Salamander also commented on the Navy’s public response, which he described as “slow and clunky.” Put simply, the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard not only a blow to the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, it was a blow to the U.S. Navy’s prestige.  

我们很幸运船上没有武器。我们很幸运这不是一艘核动力军舰。我们很幸运它没有沉没。太平洋舰队过去三年经营不善，这只不过是又一次出洋相。”他还评论了海军的公开回应，形容“缓慢而笨拙的”。简单地说，失去好人理查德号不仅对海军的太平洋舰队是一个打击，也是对北美帝国海军威望的打击。

The fire shook “Big Navy,” the service’s Washington, DC-based senior commanders, who were already staggered by a series of public scandals, including the unexpected retirement of widely respected Admiral Bill Moran, the firing of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, the relief of USS Theodore Roosevelt Captain Brett Crozier and the resignation of Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly.

这场大火震撼了“大海军”，该军种驻华盛顿特区的高级指挥官此前就已经被一系列公开丑闻搞得不知所措，其中包括广受尊敬的海军上将比尔·莫兰意外退休、海军部长理查德·斯宾塞被解雇、罗斯福号航母舰长布雷特·克罗齐尔获释以及代理海军部长托马斯·莫德利辞职。

Worse yet, according to senior civilian Pentagon officials, the Navy was still reeling from Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s under-the-radar announcement that he was taking future naval shipbuilding planning out of their hands and dividing it among three different groups—budget planners in his own office, force planners on the Pentagon's joint staff and Navy experts at the Hudson Institute.

更糟糕的是，据五角大楼的高级文职官员称，国防部长马克·埃斯珀（Mark Esper）已经宣布，将把未来的海军造船计划从高级军官团手中夺走，并将其分配给三个不同的预算规划组织，包括国防部长办公室的规划团队、五角大楼联合参谋部的规划团队和哈德逊研究所的海军专家。

The Esper move was as unprecedented a vote of "no confidence" in the Navy as any in its history. Now, not only was the Navy’s thirty-year shipbuilding plan (its Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment) being rethought “from the ground up,” a potential cornerstone of that project, a high-end amphibious vessel that included a suite of F-35Bs (and thereby recast as a “lightning carrier”), was a smoking hulk.

埃斯珀这一对海军的“不信任”投票举动，在海军历史上是前所未有的。现在，不仅海军的30年造舰计划（其综合海军力量结构评估报告）被“从头开始”，该项目的潜在基石，一艘适于F-35B起降的高端两栖攻击舰（ 轻型航母）也成了一艘冒烟的船壳。

“This is not tinkering at the margins,” as the senior civilian Pentagon official with whom I spoke said in describing Esper’s decision to circumvent the Navy’s shipbuilding planning. “The entire Navy budget is being reshaped, and for good reason. Big Navy assumed that they’d have twelve aircraft carriers by 2050, but that’s thirty years away.

与我交谈的五角大楼高级文职官员在描述埃斯珀绕过海军造船计划的决定时说：“这不是在边缘修补，整个海军预算正在被重新调整。这是有理由的。按照原计划，帝国海军预计到2050年将拥有12艘航空母舰，但那是30年后的事了。

Not only are these big-ticket items, it’s not at all clear that they’re the kind of ships we’re going to need in any confrontation with China. If we can be faster and just as lethal at less cost, then why wouldn’t we do that?" Another Pentagon official put the Esper decision in context: “The cost of one aircraft carrier,” as he noted, “is nearly equal to the entire SOCOM [Special Operations Command] budget. It’s bullshit. What a waste of money. Great power competition will play out in the unconventional and irregular realm. Deterrence is important, but we don’t need new fleets.” 

不仅是这些大型项目，海军根本不清楚在与中央帝国的对抗中需要哪种舰艇。如果我们能以更低的成本做到更快、同样致命，那我们为什么不这么做呢？”另一位五角大楼官员认为埃斯珀的决定与此相关：“一艘航空母舰的成本，几乎相当于整个北美帝国特种作战中央指挥部的预算。完全是狗屎，真是浪费钱。大国竞争将在非常规、不规则的领域展开。威慑很重要，但我们不需要新的舰队。”

The burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard is significant. It is not simply that the fire gave a black eye to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, it has solidified the new thinking about the Navy budget that has swept through the Pentagon’s upper reaches—and has recast the way that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff and the Hudson Institute shape the Navy’s future.

烧毁“好人理查德”号意义重大。这不仅仅是因为这场大火使北美帝国太平洋舰队出了一个洋相，它还巩固了席卷五角大楼上层的海军预算新思维，并重塑了国防部长办公室、参联会和哈德逊研究所塑造海军未来的方式。（喵：这是阴谋论的隐喻）

While Big Navy argues for the deterrence value of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which can sustain themselves longer than an amphibious ship like the USS Bonhomme Richard, they are harder to maintain, take longer to deploy and do little good if their ship’s complement is infected with the coronavirus.

虽然帝国海军再三强调核动力航空母舰的战略威慑价值，认为这种航母比好人理查德号这样的两栖攻击舰具有更持久的作战效能，但如果它们的补给被冠状病毒污染，它们就更难维护，重新部署需要的时间更长，也没什么好处。

Then too, as those rising voices in favor of a more mobile fleet point out, the U.S. Navy is undermanned and overbuilt: there are simply too many ships and too few sailors. Navy planners are facing a tyranny of numbers: a Nimitz class aircraft carrier is manned by six thousand sailors, while a Wasp-class amphibious carrier (like the USS Bonhomme Richard) needs twelve hundred.

此外，正如那些支持增加舰队灵活性的呼声所指出的那样，北美帝国海军人手不足，建设过度：船只太多，水手太少。海军的规划者们正面临着一个庞大的人力缺口数字：一艘尼米兹级航空母舰需要6000名水手，而黄蜂级两栖攻击舰（如好人理查德号）则需要1200名船员。

The most recent Nimitz class carrier, the Gerald Ford, cost $12.8 billion, while the USS Tripoli (commissioned even as the BHR was burning), cost one-third as much. In an era of flat budgets, the Navy is being forced to choose between funding operations, maintenance and personnel—or funding more ships.

最新的核动力航母“杰拉尔德·福特”号耗资128亿美元，而“的黎波里”号两栖攻击舰（在好人查理号燃烧之际服役）的造价则是后者的三分之一。在这个预算吃紧的时代，海军被迫在为作战行动、后勤维修和补充人员提供资金，还是为建造更多船只提供资金之间做出选择。

Which is why quietly, but inevitably, Navy planners are mulling a fleet of fewer Nimitz class carriers (perhaps no more than seven in all), while adding more BHR-like amphibious ships. The irony is clear: even as the final embers of the USS Bonhomme Richard were being extinguished, it was the bent, melted and ungainly hulk of the Navy’s budget that was being rethought.  

这就是为什么海军规划者们悄悄地，但不可避免地在考虑削减核动力航母（可能总共不超过7艘），同时增加更多类似好人理查德号这样的两栖攻击舰。具有讽刺意味的是：就在“邦霍姆·理查德”号最后的余烬被熄灭之际，人们重新思考的是帝国海军扭曲、混乱和笨拙的庞大预算。

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