You make a good point with your training and readiness argument. But I would suggest looking at the financial end as well. One reason shipowners do not fly the American flag is that they don’t want to pay the higher American taxes.
It’s those taxes that are used to build American warships, and pay American crews. So the shipowners are getting a service without having to pay for it.
Maybe that’s the way it has to be. After all, a Navy ship cannot ignore another ship in distress. Nevertheless, an unbalance does exist here.
Sometimes we get favors from shipowners... intelligence from their observations, use of their vessels to move things and people discretely, rather than use an in your face method with a big US flag flying to give us away, etc. Since we no longer have a big merchant fleet but the need for such services still crops up from time to time, it is good to have people owe us favors.
Sometimes we get favors from shipowners... intelligence from their observations, use of their vessels to move things and people discretely, rather than use an in your face method with a big US flag flying to give us away, etc. Since we no longer have a big merchant fleet but the need for such services still crops up from time to time, it is good to have people owe us favors.
Especially tankers.
“Nevertheless, an unbalance does exist here.”
Your bottom line is valid. There in lies an unsolvable problem. With perpetual unlimited spending by our DC grifters we are so far in debt that it will never be paid off.
They are like irresponsible credit card holders that spend and spend and spend until the monthly bills exceed income. They realize they are beyond the point of no return, so they just keep spending until all is lost.
But before we the voters realize this and properly adjust the DC government, we have to keep living on and maintaining a good defense is part of that living on.
While I am fully against involvement in places like Ukraine which has zero strategic value for our nation, I am fully on board for using US Naval forces to combat piracy on the open seas, if not simply to establish freedom of navigation.
It is one of the reasons piracy is now found primarily in oceans near the Horn of Africa and some regions in Asia, because the navies of the entire world took the view that if piracy was discovered, intervention by any nation’s naval forces was always appropriate regardless of the nationality.
In that way, piracy largely disappeared, though there remain pockets.