[ARCADIA]

As it shifts to purchasing smaller, lighter and more agile weapons systems, the Navy isn't losing its ability to counter attacks by major powers such as China, John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said.

Just double speak....rest assured that our leadership has sold this country out.

[Sandreckoner]

It's no more double-speak than the claim that China's sub force and overall navy will eclipse our own in size within a decade. While that may be true, the vast majority of that fleet is well obsolete - even the newer vessels China is pumping out. The fact remains that only a small core of each of China's armed force sectors will be truly 'modern' even by 2020.

That's not to discount the idea of a wave of lower-tech vessels overwhelming a smaller force of higher-tech vessels, but it's not as dire as some would proclaim.

I believe that regardless of all that, we should not be shrinking the fleet, and it should see a minimum floor of 300 ships. There's an array of geoPOLITICAL - indirectly strategic - reasons for not shrinking the fleet further, which seems be missed by the Pentagon planners.