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Did Biden Just Sink the US Navy?
The US Department of Defense recently rolled out its spending plans for 2022. As part of DOD’s massive $715 billion budget plan, most observers expected an increase in the USN’s shipbuilding budget, especially after the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, army Gen. Mark Milley, said he endorsed an expanded fleet even if it meant less money for the Army, because of concerns about growing Chinese power.
But to almost everybody’s surprise the Navy’s construction budget appears to have been slashed. Apart from the big Ford-class carriers, the 2022 budget request asks for eight new vessels, only four of which are combatants, one destroyer, one frigate, and two nuclear attack submarines. This new construction fails to compensate for the fact that the current budget calls for the decommissioning of twelve vessels, seven cruisers, one amphibious assault ship, and four Littoral Combat Ships. Conceivably, since ships are assumed to have 30-year life spans, less new construction combined with too many ships leaving service could lead to a fleet strength of just 240 ships. In the past, when the USN decommissioned substantial numbers of ships, as happened in the 1970s and 1990s, and then tried to build back the fleet, the Navy was never able to regain the original numbers. According to Breaking Defense, a more likely target considering the current budget environment is 290 ships.
That number is still marginally below the 308 vessels proposed by the Obama administration, and far below the 355-ship fleet the Trump people wanted to build. A 290-ship fleet, or even the old Obama number of 308 ships is still far below the projected Chinese fleet strength of possibly 400 ships by 2025.
It’s been pointed out that US ships are individually very capable and the USN is certainly working hard to improve that capability by embracing the idea of “distributed lethality,” a concept that involves putting anti-ship missiles on virtually everything that floats. Observers who are sanguine about China’s fleet size also like to draw attention to the navies of America’s Asian allies, including the technologically advanced Japanese and South Korean fleets. Additionally, they never fail to mention the power of the USN’s fleet of nuclear-powered carriers.
While such optimism is laudable, it may fail to take fully into account the nature of 21st century maritime warfare. First, the viability of the USN’s big carriers is increasingly in doubt. During any naval war with China in the Western Pacific, US carriers will have to run a gauntlet of cruise missile-armed bombers, advanced conventional submarines, and land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles like the DF-21D.
You don’t have to sink a carrier to make it useless, just put one or more big holes in its flight deck.
Chinese attacks on the US fleet and the ships of allied navies, and their retaliatory response, will undoubtedly take the form of massed missile strikes. In such an exchange of fire, a reduced US fleet may not fare very well at all.
The Okinawa campaign at the end of WWII is the closest example in the historical record to what a high-intensity 21st-century naval war, with its massed missile salvos, might look like. In a desperate attempt to halt the American advance on their homeland, the Japanese flung wave after wave after wave of Kamikazes at the huge American fleet. Before the attacks petered out, the suicidal pilots of the Divine Wind sank or damaged 251 American and allied ships, and those losses were inflicted despite the very heavy air defenses mounted by the allied fleet.
Apart from those air defenses, the saving grace of the US fleet was its sheer size. When WWII ended in 1945, the US Navy had 99 aircraft carriers of all types in service. Having a high-tech fleet is wonderful, but if the numbers are too small, it can be decimated by a much larger fleet whose technology doesn’t have to be superior, just ‘good enough.’
The coming decline in US fleet strength has certainly not gone unnoticed in the capitals of America’s Asian allies. When comparing the growing power of China’s fleet with a shrinking USN, people in Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo, and Canberra might be justified in feeling abandoned by their most powerful ally. If the current lapse in US shipbuilding continues for more than a few years, America’s Asian lies could feel compelled to take other measures to safeguard their security.
Published in Military
Good information, but you may want to take out some of that blank space.
they should look to all measures to safeguard their security. It is not America’s responsibility to safe guard any interest but it’s own. That goes for any nation.
Who is the Grima Wormtongue who is whispering in the doddering Biden’s ear that “More ships seems provocative. We don’t need to keep looking so belligerent, M’lord”?
Where’s Gandalf when we need him?
The Democrats have had a longstanding goal to reduce America’s military stature to that of a second-rate nation. It looks like they will succeed under Biden.
I realize that it is a burden to be the country everyone else comes to for money and help and to have the entire world constantly finding fault with us. But the world is an acutely dangerous place, and the United States is the only country that has the stability and wisdom to lead it.
We do get something out of assuming the responsibility. We get to live in a world that has been shaped by the United States. Imagine the World Court being dominated by Chinese Communist Party.
We pay a high price to make the rules. But I don’t want anyone else making them.
Sadly, this reminds me of the infamous British post WW1 policy of basing procurement budgets on the chance of a war breaking out in the next 10 years. A policy in large part attributable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill.
Before WW1, commenting on the hot topic of the naval race with Germany, “The Navy has requested funds to build 6 battleships. The government has offered 4. We will probably compromise on 8.”
We need to chisel this on a giant monument and plant it right next to the Statue of Liberty.
One more reason that voting for Biden was an act of anti Americanism.
This is a feature not a bug of Biden’s foreign policy. Democrat’s intentions have always been to engineer America’s decline in the world. They are going to succeed and then find the world is a terrifying place. Maybe we will get lucky and our oceans will defend us, but I doubt it.
Trump would not have done this.
Which is probably why they all helped get rid of him.
He said he wanted a 355 ship Navy, which IMO was still 100 ships too small, but his SecNav never was able to publish a plan that EVER got to 355. This is a side effect of the fiscal conservative wing of the GOP gaining too much power as well as the total ineptitude of the procurement programs in the Navy and the Air Force. Complete and total overhauls of the process need to be made and we would likely be best to simple eliminate the entire programs and start from scratch.
Yep.
Same people in GOP who voted against him.
The blood of the future fight when we are not ready is on their hands. I know who to blame when it happens.
The Chinese have already tanked our economy, and have a perfect plan going on that is enabling them in so many ways.
A large proportion of Americans think that if Joe and Kamala were gonna be puppets for the Commies, they would announce it in a forthright manner.
Other Americans are aware that they wouldn’t but still think the Ceedy Cee is on Team American Citizen.
(Even as it is revealed today that one third of the British people who died of the latest COVID variant had both jabs.)
Well, does the number of ships really matter when the deck officers can’t drive them? Or, how about those great Zumwalt class LCSs? You know, the ones with guns that fire rounds at $866,000,000 a pop?(pun intended) Or the ships engines which could be destroyed by sea water? Our military was once great but it is becoming dangerous to its own citizenry. After all, they’re the ones with the F 15s and nukes.
Do you think he really cares?
He’s not aware, so he can’t care.
Nor will we care then – there won’t be a we.
I grew up thinking that the main reason you have a large, intimidating military is so that you don’t have to use it – nobody else gets any ideas. If they start to make any rumbly noises, you just schedule some wargame maneuvers off their coast and they realize that it would be a bad idea. Wasn’t this how we beat the CCCP?
But now we have the Left in charge. These are the people who think it’s a good idea for cops to stop enforcing laws like petty theft, prostitution, public intoxication, simple assault, disorderly conduct, trespass, shoplifting, vandalism, reckless driving, indecent exposure, and possession of drugs. And they laud the police departments for announcing this, because it makes them look caring and humane.
You may stop enforcing some of those laws, but you don’t freaking announce it!! No, you announce the opposite – that you’re going to crack down like nobody’s business. That way the crooks will think twice, and you won’t have any crimes to have to arrest anyone for. If you announce it, then it’s open fricking season. Look at all the shoplifting that is committed brazenly now, while the security guards stand and watch, because the cops have advertized that they won’t do anything.
The Left would have the same thing happen to our country, I guess because they see us as the meanies in the world. They are insane.
Carrier guy so I tend to focus on them, with all the flyboys and girls, and the subs. Vague recollection that Reagan’s goal was a 600 ship Navy. Not sure he ever got there and the Soviet Union collapse would have merited some downsizing. But 290? WTF? Sailors cannot take 10 months at sea for every long. So looking like the CCP, Hunter’s pals, will rule the roost in the Pacific.
Where would they get enough people to man a 600-ship fleet? Aren’t they already having to accept high-school-dropout gang-members as volunteer recruits?
Or lots to trannies who can’t wait get the taxpayers to pay for the surgeries. For the Navy not sure it would be such a bad deal. Don’t need that many sailors with High T levels other than pilots, sub guys and Seals. Army Rangers and Marine a different deal.
That’s why the Trump people were thinking of building a fleet of robotic warships to fill out the numbers. But the Congress, remembering the twin fiascos of the Littoral Combat Ship program and the Ford-class carriers, has said wait a minute.
You can get by with a smaller fleet as long as the numbers and tech gap isn’t too great-the old Soviet fleet was bigger than the USN. But the problem here is a lack of willpower more than anything else. But then again, with the ongoing advances in AI and surveillance tech, building larger numbers of surface warships might mean just producing a large number of targets, which is how submariners are supposed to view the surface navy.
No, the Reagan people never got to 600. But that may have been due to the USSR collapsing before they could finish building all those ships. But with 290 ships, the USN will be hard put to defend the Western Hemisphere. The problem gets even worse if you have to consider the distinct possibility of Czar Putin getting frisky in Europe if a crisis erupts in Asia. We can probably get away with it if the hiatus in shipbuilding doesn’t last too long, I hope. Personally, I think one of the main things holding the CCP back is the US nuclear arsenal. The main reason there hasn’t been a big power war since 1945 is nuclear weapons. Both China and the USA have nukes, and the CCP may be thinking carefully about how far they really want to go in creating a crisis.
Unfortunately, with whispering Joe in the Oval Office, their decision making may have gotten a lot easier.
I agree with you 100% on the domestic front, and the Left is obviously extending its poisonous tentacles in into the military as well. They don’t seem to realize the consequences for their hold on power if the USA suffers a catastrophic military after they cripple the military. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people in China right now who are laughing at the USA because the Left is just mimicking Mao’s lethal antics during his 1960s Cultural Revolution. Those antics included slacking off on military modernization in order to concentrate on making China into his version of a pure Communist state while trashing his political enemies at the same time.
As a result, during a series of border clashes with the late USSR in 1969, the Soviet Army handed the PLA its head,
That’s why Congress has put a hold on the USN’s plans for a fleet of robotic warships. Because of past fiascos, they don’t trust the Navy to come up with any sensible building plan.USN planning is so screwed up that they’ve been forced to adopt an Italian design for its new frigate. However, the Arleigh Burke-class and Virginia-class SSNs (two a year) still appear to be on track. But they need more, more, more!
Fake, I’m going to ask you to consider the tactical doctrine called “defeat in detail.” Does that affect your position?
How old are those classes of ships? Seems to me the Burke class must be about thirty.
The Zumwalt is a DDG and while it has a number of fantastic features, it attempted to bring something like twelve brand new technologies to fruition at the same time. By the time most of those technologies are actually ready for use, the 4 Zumwalts will be nearing the end of their expected life cycle. About the only two things that make them useful are their forwards compatibility when things like directed energy weapons, and their modular design that will allow them to be reconfigured should those systems ever get into use. I am not hopeful they will anytime soon because our procurement system is fundamentally broken and the people in charge of it appear to be incompetents.
As for the LCS classes of vessels, the Independence and the Freedom both suffered fundamentally from a mission that didn’t exist as the ships were designed. They also suffered from poor design (the Freedom) class and construction issues which were magnified in both by the very small crew that was assigned to them. It was expected that automation would mean smaller crews, but the design issues and construction issues that often occur in lead ships with new features (like the modular mission systems) meant that the crews didn’t have the capacity to perform routine maintenance at the level required and most vessels suffered engineering casualties. Then, when the Navy woke up from its drunken bender in port and realized that they had scrapped the OHPs and had no deep water frigates anymore they tried to turn the LCS into a Frigate which wasn’t going to work. I was like turning an El Camino into a stretch limo. At any rate, the LCS, at least the Independence class was very good at the mission it was designed for per the Navy. That the LCS mission really didn’t exist, nor were the Navy requirements actually going to be survivable in a modern conflict was another issue. The Zumwalt is another fascinating concept that needed to be baked a bit longer before being built.
We got to 594, which is darn closer to 600 than anyone has gotten to the force requirement goals since 1987.
Considering the PLAN is building 10-15 combatants per year and currently has 661 ships it is already more than twice the size of the US Navy and would have a significantly shorter logistical train to maintain. The PLAN is moving from a coastal defense oriented force into one that is designed to project power around the world.
We should have 12 carrier groups (minimum) to allow for 4 to be deployed at any given time. I would prefer 15 so that we could deploy 5 (two in the Pacific). The Arleigh Burke is a fantastic ship, but we also need to get the new Frigate into production (licensing the Italian/French design will make that faster, but we are way behind the curve on that). If we aren’t making 6-8 of them by the end of next year, we are really going to be hurting. Of course, we have 3 awarded so far with only one schedule for construction and we won’t have her until 2026. By then the PLAN will be even larger and more capable.