The US Navy is in trouble. To me, it’s serious trouble, but I’m not a progressive liberal who feels that buying votes to keep me in office is the role of the US Government.
I’m keying in part on Brian McGrath’s article HERE. McGrath writes about the high priority need to replace America’s Nuclear Missile firing submarines (SSBN’s) with a new class of submarine that will carry out the same mission. The current generation of Ohio class boats are aging and the point is coming where they will not be mission-capable.

He writes: Given the mismatch between what the Navy budgets and what the Navy needs, the U.S. is currently on a trajectory to a 230 ship Navy, a figure which does not even take SSBN(X) into consideration. Should the SSBN(X) proceed as planned, its build profile will dominate the shipbuilding landscape for over ten years, and almost certainly shrink the fleet even further.

A 200 (or less) ship navy may sound like a lot of ships to the likes of a political activist/community organizer, but it’s not. Ships are not like a lot of other pieces of equipment. They float in a corrosive environment and have a lot of moving parts. Additionally, they take a long time to build. Crews take a long time to train, deployed squadrons of aircraft must fly all the time to keep up the skills necessary for operational capability in a challenging maritime environment.
The current chatter inside the Washington DC Beltway is that the Navy can make do with four less aircraft carriers. And since we won’t have ships to move them, we can make due with a Marine Corps about half the size of the present Corps. That makes perfect sense so long as there is no war. If war comes — and history tells us that it inevitably does, the people who suffer wear a uniform. If you’re “progressive” you really don’t trust anyone in a uniform, so those folks lose no sleep over the matter. 
The Obama Administration installed John Kerry as Secretary of State. Kerry is viewed by those that he served with in the military as a traitor. When you combine that with the quasi-Muslim Commander-in-Chief whose agenda is not an American one, the state of the Navy is only one of many concerns should America embark on another war.
Allies are important in wars. We’ve seen Great Britain balk in aiding us for the first time in roughly 200 years, and even Brazil snubs us. Russia and China are emboldened and empowered by America’s failed leadership — and the Snowden matter showed that we can’t keep a secret.  Why should any other nation trust the US?
The answer is that they don’t. Look at Mexico. They’re openly hostile toward the US at many levels and it’s due to ham handed diplomacy by the Obama Administration. Does America care? Apparently not, because Barack will be around golfing for the next 3 1/2 years — after which the Democratic party wants Hillary (the Bitch of Benghazi) Clinton in the White House.
Maybe a 100 ship navy is in our future?

I hear you asking what might be done to stop the slide. The US could repeal economy killing “social justice” programs such as ObamaCare and other regulatory quagmires that have been put in place and grow the economy. Part of that strategy has to be drilling and refining more petroleum to try and pay off the crippling national debt that President Obama keeps dumping on us. With these measures, there would be sufficient means to keep the nation strong and in a leadership role — which is clearly not part of the Obama agenda.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Your last paragraph is the key. A strong and vibrant economy, lightly taxed, will pay for everything. The most important military strength is a booming economy that can pay for it.

  3. Concur with all, we (the Navy) are in DEEP trouble! And when you look at the delays in SSBX- lets just say this will cause MAJOR problems…

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