Unfortunately, they are not alone. Not in foreign terms, with many allied dictatorships which give them common cause...but actual marxist-affiliates, such as Venezuela's Chavez, and Brazil's President, and so on. And domestically we have many of their agents, not just espionage and trade, but of influence. Do a spot check of the politics extant on any major U.S. university. What do you think are the real politics of Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw...and their owners? I remember watching Brian Lamb's interview Mike Wallace on C-SPAN, and he was challenged by a caller about China's intentions to invade and subjugate Taiwan...and he was okay with that.
Will the Navy decommission existing subs or will they upgrade these submarines with increasingly sophisticated sensor suites, fire control systems, submarine launched land attach cruise missiles and long range ballistic missiles.
According to the available evidence we will collapse to only 28 SSN's because GWB and Rumsfeld refuse to budget sufficiently to maintain the force...let alone improve it and keep it fielded as you suggest.
Submarine warfare isn't limited to attack subs; surface ships designed for Anti-Sub warfare, torpedos launched from carriers.
The next carrier, the CVN-21, is on the super-slow track, and won't be finished until 2018!? Our F-14's need to be retired. They are really old. There is no carrier replacement for it. The "Super" F-18 doesn't cut it. The Naval version of the F-22 was cut out by Xlinton in 1993. The entire F-22 program, the nation's key to maintaining air superiority, indeed the linchpin, is basically being shut down in 2007 by GWB/Rumsfeld order. The DDX, the premier new ASW surface warship is at risk of being cut by GWB/Rumsfeld. Never getting off the ways. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark has been campaigning to keep this critical new technology demonstrator from the axe...but it looks like the national security case...which is solid...is falling on deaf ears. He spoke elogquently this past week in front of the American Enterprise Institute. Those who heard him saw the degree of patriotic concern...
It is almost as if, in secret, a "business decision" "at the top" has been made that U.S. superiority will be completely abdicated by the year 2020...or before, so no point in spending any money to maintain that which we aren't committed to keeping. We might even have huge sonar systems displaced through out the Pacific Ocean in a sensor network which would give telemetry to torpedos with increasing ranges.
Uh, we already have such a sonar network for our ships. But it is a deteriorating Cold War legacy item. I don't believe we have any such replacements budgetted. And it is getting old. And also R&D in the military has been taking real and huge hits under the stress of the Iraq operations. The only exception has been UAVs...which could be hacked and turned against us... But UAV's are the preferred budget item because of lesser superficial costs of acquisition...these decisions are being made apparently without enough serious questions at the top of this risk assessment. So no budget for any serious quantitative deployments of manned systems, either aerial or naval (surface or subsurface) appears in store.
No bucks, no Buck Rogers.