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What you say is true regarding the shipyards (to our shame IMHO)...but still, IMHO, gearing up to do it would be a lot cheaper than what's coming if we don't contain the CHinese in a similar fashion as how Reagan contained the Soviets.

It would be a lot more painful at this point...but less painful than what I believe is going to be the war we have to fight at a severe disadvantage from the outset precisely because of the shipbuilding reasons you cite.

As to the money...oh, we have more than enough. What we lack is the will to stop spending on some of the things that are of no use to us, and start spending in areas that will help preserve us..

But that's just my opinion.

As to the money...oh, we have more than enough. What we lack is the will to stop spending on some of the things that are of no use to us, and start spending in areas that will help preserve us..

A 300 ship increase would mean a shipbuilding budget of between $300 to 900 billion, compared to our current budget of $10 billion per year. Manning those ships would mean that we need to more than double the headcount, at a time when the military is having enough problems maintaing current staffing levels. Then those ships have to be homeported somewhere and docked and repaired. And while this doubling of the Navy is going on, the Army and Air Force will hardly be standing by. So by the time you're done the defense budget, currently at almost $500 billion, will more than double. And that money will come from where?

The entire defense industrial base is verging on the same condition as the US shipbuilding complex. Capacity has shrunk across the board by more than 50% since 1991. The Clinton administration starved manufacturers, cut the force levels 50% below what the first Bush administration targeted as post-Cold War strength levels. On top of the relentless reductions in both combat forces and infrastructure the endless involvements in places such as former Yugoslavia, Haiti, and Somalia as well as the interminable 'bloodless' blockade war with Iraq inflicted major damage on the equipment base that was left.

The depletion of the US defense base is nowhere better illustrated than in the disorganized program to arm and equip the new Iraqi army and police. Their literally was so tiny a small arms industry in the US that we have been reduced to using a Chinese manufacturer who for some reason we haven't been able to figure out is moving with the dispatch of frozen molasses to fill its orders. Artillery and heavy equipment are simply not available and trucks and other tactical rolling stock are being gathered from what we can beg or buy in Europe. This program would be a joke if it weren't for its tragic implications both for the Iraqis who sign on and for us as a nation.

The current administration has elected not to try and play catch up with what are constantly called 'legacy systems', i.e. tanks, tube artillery, small arms, and most convention explosives and weapons systems. instead it is plowing large amounts of money into black programs that will be available several years to a decade from now or more. The theory is these systems will so revolutionize the conduct of military operations that we will be a generation ahead of any potential peer competitor (read China,China and maybe Russia).

This is all to the good but right now watching the problems less than 20,000 Arab cutthroats are giving the US Army and Marines as well as witnessing the day to day consequences that the Clinton wrecking ball has wreaked on the very structure of the armed forces one can be forgiven some queasy feelings.