Guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg in a dry dock in Norfolk in June 2021. US Navy/MCS3 Brandon Roberson
* For years, the US Navy has struggled to complete repairs of its ships on time.
* Protracted delays heighten concerns about maintaining US naval presence in the Western Pacific.
* To reduce workload at domestic shipyards and keep ships at sea, the US is looking for help overseas.
The rapid expansion of China's navy has heightened concerns about the availability of the US Navy's fleet, driving Washington to look abroad for help repairing warships that might otherwise face long delays at home.
China has the world's largest navy, with more than 370 ships and submarines in service in 2022, according to the Pentagon latest report on the Chinese military.
Officials and experts say the US Navy's battleforce of roughly 300 ships has a qualitative advantage, but its edge has been dulled by protracted delays at domestic shipyards, problems that have the US looking to foreign shipyards to perform some maintenance and repairs its ships have had to leave the Pacific to receive.
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WNU Editor: It looks like the US is in a rush to repair and maintain their ships ASAP. So the big question that needs to be answered is "why the rush"?
China can do.
ReplyDeleteNo tickee, no navy
DeleteBecause we have always been in WW3 and it is only because of normalcy bias, racism and other things that prevented us from seeing it.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago it was point out among the armchair general crowd that the Cold War was actually quite hot. A lot of brown people died. Of course that crowd consists of freaks, geeks and losers, so who is going to notice and connect the dots? Most of them do not have country club memberships or dachas.
The periods of peace were merely rest, rea arm and reset.
What did WNU say about china's good neighbor, bad neighbor policy? If you read that without fooling yourself, it reads straight fowardly, we are biding out time. That is not peace. that is looking for an opening.
MSC, (Military Sealift Command) has been doing this for years.
ReplyDeleteCarrier got a paint job in Hong Kong decades ago.
ReplyDeleteI am willing to bet Japan repairs a lot of stuff for the Navy. Unlike Germany Japan pulls its weight.