THE 30 YEAR BACKSTAB

 I think it is safe to say that the US Navy today is just a shadow of what it was and the rival that that Navy was designed to deter, and if necessary, to wage war against, is just a shadow of what the Chinese navy is today and the Chinese navy is still growing at an extraordinary pace. Some people are really alarmed at the ratio of force available for a fight with China and to be honest, it doesn't look at all good. In fact, it looks impossible and the skinny bit nobody is allowed to notice is that this was by design.

Do you really think we forgot how to design and build warships all of a sudden? Do you wonder that the DDGs seem to be really fine warships and you can say exactly the same about all 3 of our submarine classes?  There is no better submarine fleet in the world even if it gets smaller every week. No, this is not a numbers comparison. This is a look at a slice of history that simply fell off the table when we won the Cold War and it got kicked under the table and something dragged it away.

A real navy is a costly thing and the costs are not really understood by anybody especially bean counters who look at the costs they know about and dread paying the bill and think of all kinds of imaginative ways to cut expenses. 

– Cut the shore maintenance staff and facilities to the bone and beyond to save manpower $.

– Farm out depot level maintenance and intermediate maintenance to contractors and let them pay for it.

– Scrap every warship that is simply not needed now or in the projected future that has no real enemy in it.

– Cut fleet manpower costs to the bone by reducing crew sizes to the bone and beyond and farm out maintenance to the lowest bidder for every aspect of maintenance once done by the sailors.

– Scrap the shore infrastructure and training commands that educated every officer and enlisted rating in the skills necessary to be successful in maintaining, repairing and operating the finest equipment we had.

– Reduce costs by reducing complexity and redundancy on all warships and submarines.

–Sell or discard all fleet activities that are not essential to a greatly reduced navy including drydocks. 

They did all that starting in the mid 90s after they demolished the aviation community with Tailhook 91. They then defanged the frigates and removed their missile launchers rather than maintaining or repairing them and then scrapped them without replacement. This is where they got tricky. They elected to stop building the Nimitz class aircraft carrier and decided that the vaporware power point presentations on things such as electro-magnetic catapults and electro-magnetic elevators were the way of the future and built the USS FORD. 

The costs ballooned astronomically so they gutted the follow-on Cruiser replacement program that was designing the replacement for the 30 year old Ticonderoga Class cruisers. They designed a 'modular' ship to do multiple missions but only one at a time which has to be the most stupid naval innovation in all of history. They designed and built a land attack ship that fired ammunition that cost significantly more than a brand new cruise missile and was not as accurate or deadly. In short, they did everything they could think of to reduce and render impotent the United States Navy. Still, they did leave the DDGs alone.

When you look at the history of this almost 250 year old country one thing that strikes you right away is that this country doesn't really have any more need for a navy now than Canada does and Canada gets by with just 3 or 4 ships that may or may not work and half a dozen or so submarines that don't and they do just fine. 

I see you rubbing your heads and asking why? Why don't we or Canada need a Navy right now or even in the future? Well comrades, the answer is simple enough. A navy is necessary for commerce protection and power projection. We have less than a handful of merchant ships and our trade balance has been so whacked out of balance for the last 60 years that having pirates and commerce raiders slash our imports down to nothing really would benefit us enormously. 

What about our exports? Well, we export things that people really want and we don't really have to provide protection for it if we don't want to. We export food and energy to China (remember, they're supposed to be the enemy in some people's heads) and we export cars and trucks to Canada and Mexico and we used to export airplanes and software and some machinery. But the lifeblood of trade that once spanned the world and originated in American ports was squeezed out a long long time ago and the world moved on. We don't need a giant navy to protect our commerce and we never did.

So if you are like me and you despised all those crappy 4 star admirals that brought our Navy to this low estate does it change your mind a little if you consider that each one of them craftily sought to pull this arrow from our quiver so that the idiots and warmongers elites that come along every 30 years looking for a new war to dip their beaks into will find that whoah!!!!! you cannot project power without a huge navy?

Yeah and for that matter, consider the forces available to deploy overseas and wonder that people still believe in it. It's OK because this is a time when war is changing its suit and all the old rags no longer serve much purpose. In other words, we got lucky. We really don't need a standing army either.

Consider the warmongers who demand that we build up our fleet for NO OTHER REASON than to fight China and keep Taiwan away from the dirty rotten Chinese.... I never bought their arguments and would laughingly observe that Taiwan is the unsinkable carrier and that if they were sincere about not wanting to be taken over by the Chinese they could spend THEIR money buying ship killing missile by the hundreds of thousand and hiding them behind every bush and tree on the island and do the same with anti-aircraft missiles and radars. There is no call for us to fight their war and no need. They are an energetic self-actualizing people who can plan their own defense, afford to buy and deploy it and fight their own wars.

So yeah, I'm reconsidering the very low opinion of the admirals that destroyed a navy over the last 30 years and now I'm beginning to think they were rare men of vision who just had to lie about everything in order to get things going their way. On the gripping hand, a country is rarely well served by senior officers who lie to everybody about everything. I cannot actually recall a single country that was served well by lying deceitful officers but it's a new world so so we keep telling ourselves. 

Consider naval operations today. That still enormous expensive and complex Navy is now wasting little tiny drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of America and got its ass handed to it in the Red Sea by a little pirate nation of vicious beasts without a single ship to their name. It's long passed time to rethink how a 21st century superpower wages war and it should be high on the list that the first thing to do in all such eventualities is to eliminate with extreme prejudice the enemy leaders who are making war on us. We have the means and methods and it time now to put into practice a kinder and gentler format for our wars.

Oh and by the way, if you thought the independence wars and nationalism wars of the last century are over, you got another think coming. The really important thing to always keep at the forefront of your mind is that it is NOT OUR JOB TO FIGHT THEM. The outcomes of those wars are simply unimportant as long as they don't come here to roost.

I don't know if promises were made to Taiwan after World War II or in return for favors but it doesn't matter. We are not bound by the words or actions of long dead politicians who curried favor and money from deep pockets overseas and they probably understand that full well. Nations don't have friends/permanent allies, they have interests. Our interests right now and for the foreseeable future do not include making war on anybody. 

This will change when the next bright blue politician sits in the White House but you know what? That's right, look at that quiver over there and not a single arrow remaining in it.....except for the untouchables and it would take a real idiot to face people down and threaten them with the last remaining weapons in our arsenal. There will always be nukes although I do wonder fairly often if any of them would actually explode if used.