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This being said, to put it bluntly, the US Navy needs more expendable ships. As Gates pointed out, sending billion dollar ships to police up some pirates is not cost effective. By using “cheap ships” to do that work, that are low cost to build, low cost to maintain, and low cost to use, the good ships are kept in reserve.

That is not what those ships are built for. When the balloon goes up, those billion dollar ships are the ones that will be protecting our CVN's from air power and submarine threats.

In the 1940's, when the Japanese caught America flat-footed in both Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines, the 1940's style of war allowed America the luxury to spend years building up its might from nearly scratch.

In the 21st Century style of warfare, you have no such luxury. The entire war may be decided in a couple of hours in the first major engagement.

With most of our “high quality” navy in Reserve, to attack our “cheap ships” would be insane. And yet such ships would be just fine for doing the ordinary, boring jobs, like policing pirates.

The only thing that you need to "police pirates" is the political will that the Russians showed last week. Right now, somewhere off the coast of Somalia, an inflatable boatful boatful of pirates is slowly dying of thirst, cast adrift by the Russian Navy.

Once you have the political guts to kill them, dealing with pirates requires nothing more high tech than tramp steamers fitted out as Q-Ships.

That’s all well and good, if you have a bottomless treasury. But as things stand now, the US will have to cancel Social Security, Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid, and slash Defense by a good 50%.

Russia ruined its navy after the collapse of the Soviet Union by trying to keep too many ships afloat. It ended up with rusting fleets incapable of service. The US could easily get caught in that trap, so the navy needs a graduated plan now, of what it will do when economic push turns to shove.

It could even be put into blunt terms. In FY 2009, the USN Budget was $150B. Plan ‘A’ is if their budget is reduced to $140B. Plan ‘B’ is if it is reduced to $130B. It probably ends up around Plan ‘J’, if the Navy only gets $50B in FY 2012, and Plan ‘K’, only $40B in 2013.

It is that bad. And the Navy will probably do a lot better than the Air Force or Army.

There will likely be a massive contraction of US military forces, from the about 100 countries they are now stationed, to a critical 4 or 5 locations.

So the USN can forget about new aircraft carriers, and its new combat ships will be cheap and cheerful. But they will be doing most of the work, as the high quality ships will be too valuable to deploy, too expensive to operate and maintain, and too important to be put in harms’ way, unless they know they are headed into a fight.

No more routine patrols. No more petty missions. If a US aircraft carrier fleet shows up, something is going to get the pluperfect snot blown out of it.