Posted on 04/14/2023 2:43:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The “age of American naval dominance is over”, Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.
Hendrix’s article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them. “The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials.” A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has already conceded China’s naval supremacy.
Last month, the Biden appointee stated that China has “got a larger fleet now so they’re deploying that fleet globally.”
The People’s Liberation Army Navy topped the US Navy in 2020. By 2025, it will have an estimated 400 ships. We’re still below 300.
Biden’s current defense plan is to have 350 by 2045. And by then we will have lost.
“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity — one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” Del Toro conceded. “They’re a communist country, they don’t have rules by which they abide by.”
We don’t have China’s shipyard capacity because it isn’t a priority. Biden’s Navy budget would buy 9 ships and retire 24. That means we’ll be down to 280 by 2027. The administration has plenty of money, with over $1 billion directed to Afghanistan aid, hundreds of millions for the ‘Palestinians’, and foreign aid for every one of our enemies, but plans for a shrinking military.
Communist China has its priorities, but so do Biden and Del Toro.
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Tore declared a week after admitting that China had taken the naval lead and would hold on to it for the conceivable future.
The Navy’s 2023 budget wastes $718 million on fighting global warming. That’s more than 10% of the $6.2 billion in maintenance costs for 151 Navy vessels.
China’s Communist leadership is focused on building warships to win a war, ours isn’t.
What does it mean that under Biden, the Navy has made global warming into its priority?
Last year, the Navy joined California and assorted failed blue states in committing to “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”. Net Zero emissions is an impossibility. In practice it means wasting a fortune on buying carbon credits from politically connected leftist companies. It also means that we will not be quickly and efficiently constructing warships because that’s not ‘green’. Winning wars isn’t green either, losing them however might be.
A Navy official absurdly claimed that, “to remain the world’s dominant maritime force, the Department of the Navy must adapt to climate change.” Going ‘green’ means that being a dominant marine force is not the priority. Much like diversity, equity and inclusion, which the woke brass have taken to claiming will improve our deadliness, it’s a betrayal of the mission.
China, which is rapidly becoming the dominant marine force, doesn’t give a damn about adapting to climate change except when it comes to peddling its junk solar panels assembled by slave labor to woke companies that will resell them at a massive markup while gobbling up tax credits because when we go ‘green’, it only weakens us and strengthens our enemies.
Communist China aims for a ‘victory-ready’ force while Biden’s after a ‘climate-ready’ force.
While China builds warships to achieve naval dominance in the next decade, the US Navy’s goal for the next decade is to have “100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035” and “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity”. No word on whether firing torpedoes will also be carbon-pollution free, but that’s not a problem for a leadership that never intends to use them.
There will be “hybrid-propulsion” for naval vessels and more money lavished on “green fuels”.
Apart from the massive waste of money, hybrid systems are more expensive and more prone to breakdowns. Forcing ground vehicles to rely on lithium batteries comes with more expensive maintenance costs and worse operations in extreme weather. All of this pandering to green special interests not only corruptly steals money from national defense, but puts lives at risk.
Del Toro claims that the problem with our shipbuilding capacity is that, unlike China, we don’t use slave labor, but during WWII, we built a massive fleet in a short time with no slaves. But that was an age in which skyscrapers could also be built in a year. It was also a time when there were no environmental reviews and we focused on the mission, not corrupt woke politics.
Under the Democrats, politics, from DEI to climate goals, is the mission: winning isn’t.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy is not investing in “low-carbon fuels” or electric cars for its personnel. Instead it’s been busy holding drills with Iran and South Africa in a matter of a few weeks to show off a growing ability to operate on a global scale with its international allies.
While our military brass obsessed over diversity, equity and inclusion, the PRC turned the South China Sea into its own private backyard, enabling it to potentially cut off traffic to the United States. China has built up chains of islands studded with its naval outposts so that its fighter jets and ant-ship and anti-aircraft missiles now encompass not only the coasts of Taiwan and China, but much of the coastlines of everything from Thailand to Malaysia to the Philippines.
The US Navy brass claim that “leveraging our diversity is the key to reaching the Navy’s peak potential” and that their priority is changing the weather and fighting global warming.
I bet the consequences of that policy will become visible very soon.
Makes me sick.
I think many of our enemies see a great opportunity. It’s now or never.
We are sooooo....Laz
Putin agrees.
It’s all fun and games until you get your azz kicked and thousands return home in body bags...
That'll be Trump's Fault.
Where is Dylan Mulvaney?
Wind power. But the sailing ships will mainly only work well on Chesapeake Bay since they will be dependent upon the blowhards in Washington for power.
Carlos Del Toro
Gluttony is a deadly sin, it leads to sloth. Exactly how can this guy lead the Navy?
It’s almost like they are doing this on purpose…….
Thank little baby Jesus I am not in the Navy today……..
Madness. Democrats will be the death of us all.
You can set your mind at ease.
This is not your daddy’s navy.
We also need to take immediate action to address how changes in technology affect the viability of our surface fleet. Presumably, if we did get into a shooting war with China, we would be very cautious about moving our carrier battle groups or amphibious ships anywhere near China or Taiwan. Given threats such as hypersonic anti-ship missiles, doing so would be taking a huge risk. The Navy we need for beating up on 3rd Worlders is not the Navy we need for high-intensity, modern peer-vs-peer warfare.
Any member of the US military, from just arrived at Basic Training to the top civilian leadership that doesn’t understand that Job #1 is “kill the enemy & break his stuff” has no business being there.
We’re stuck in the demolition phase of Build Back Better.
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