The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS John Paul Jones at sunset. The Navy is moving to slash five Flight III Arleigh Burkes from their five-year budget plans. (U.S. Navy photo by MC3 Kyle Merritt)
Thomas Spoehr, National Interest: Why the U.S. Navy Needs At Least 355 Ships
In future years, however, America must make the hard choices to put the Navy on a solid footing towards achieving the force structure our nation needs. We have done it before, after all. And let’s not forget the stakes: If the U.S. Navy can no longer ensure a free and open global maritime commons, our nation will be less safe.
It’s good news, obviously, that Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he is “fully committed” to getting the U.S. Navy up to 355 ships. That number has been in decline for decades. In 1987, the Navy had 594 ships. Today that number is 294. For those who lack context, 294 ships sounds like a lot. And it is.
But — and here’s the bad news — it’s insufficient to perform what the National Defense Strategy demands. To understand why the Navy needs at least 355 takes a little explaining.
First, though, let’s consider where the Navy’s requirement for 355 ships came from. It’s the result of the Navy’s December 2016 force structure assessment (FSA) of the multiple types of warships it needed to “address the ever-evolving and increasingly complex threats the Navy is required to counter…” It is not, as some have claimed, an unconstrained “wish list.” Indeed, the FSA balanced “an acceptable level of warfighting risk to our equipment and personnel against available resources and achieves a force size that can reasonably achieve success.”
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WNU Editor: A 355 ship Navy is not going to happen .... The US Navy wants more ships but can’t afford them, admiral says (Defense News).
2 comments:
Step 1) Create enemies or paint a picture of "freedom hating" people and "corrupt communist" systems trying to "rule the World"
Step 2) Work with the military industrial complex, ask them and the smart think tanks who have no bias or agenda "how many planes do we need"?
Step 3) Present that number back to the people and do some fear mongering
Step 4) Pass the budget (it will be around 800bn soon, without shadow projects and all.. likely the total long, long ago surpassed 1tn/year and we all know the Pentagon still cannot account for about 5 trillion(!) they "cannot account for" (speak for "gone").. think of that.. here is 1,000 dollars.. nice.. here a million.. 1,000,000.. you can retire on that (unless you live in the US of course).. here a billion.. 1,000,000,000 < if you drop that in 1 Dollar notes you can crush a small village with the weight of the money.. niiiiice.. that's some serious money... but they "cannot account for" this: 5,000,000,000,000 < a US dollar weighs 1 gram.. that's 5,000,000,000 kg (or ~2 billion pounds weight).. you could crush a small city block with the money they "lost" or "cannot account for".. BUT we all are supposed to believe them and pay for more and more because of all the enemies and bad people who hate our freedoms.
Yeah, right.
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Navy Prepares to Slash Funding for New Warships
The Pentagon says if flat budgets continue it will need to rely on smaller, possibly unmanned ships.
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