“...I agree. What is the latest on these ships?”
They were built around a gun, the ammo for which ran $900,000 per shell. They will stop at three ships. They never issued a purchasing contract for the ammo. Presumably, they’ll replace the gun with something more useful. However, the ship was designed around that one thing, which may limit the modifications they can make.
Part of the military’s problems are, they don’t have a declared enemy. When we faced the Soviets, if they did something, we countered it. That kept them focused. But now the enemy is terrorism. Not a lot of role in that for a navy. Of course, there’s the Chinese, but I don’t think they are considered a comparable threat to the old Soviets. I suspect that’s because we buy so much stuff from them it seems inconceivable they would challenge us. That’s a mistake as the CCP needs hero’s and you get hero’s in wars. I’ve read the party is embarrassed they haven’t fought a war in fifty years with lots of dead hero’s.
The CCP can not survive in a world where the major power keeps insisting they have the rule of law and a free people. The party’s power comes from their absolute power over the courts and predetermined outcomes for civil and criminal trials. If they liberalize even a tiny amount, then the whole CCP power structure crumbles and they know that. It was glasnost that destroyed the Soviet regime. Once you give a tiny amount of power to the people, it’s like the wedge that breaks open the whole box.
This all means, the CCP will try to take back Taiwan. If anyone gets in their way, that power will get hurt. The CCP has decided the US and the West in general, does not have the stomach for the level of casualties required to prevent the seizure of Taiwan and they are probably right. We are used to “wars” where we lose a dozen men in a helicopter accident, not 50,000 and two carrier battle groups in an afternoon.
You make a good point about casualties. The number dead between all of Iraq and Afghanistan combined is still far fewer than the Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima. We as a nation probably don’t have the stomach for it. As regards Commander Luria, her biography mentions that she was assigned to combat vessels her entire career...but managed to have three children during her career. That right there gives you an idea of the state of our military. Once upon a time, it was ‘free a man to fight’; it has become ‘the commander is on maternity leave’. I wonder what the policy in China or Russia is?