We're almost to the point we have all our eggs in a few single easy to hit baskets. Pearl Harbor runs through my mind especially after some pictures I've seen of 5 carriers berthed same time at the same base. A trip upstream and a trip across the river and more than have the carrier fleet gone just like that as well as two of three carrier yard left that can do extensive repairs.
China is almost in a position now to out produce us with our own technology. They don't have to build super carriers when they can build subs then just sit and wait on a target. Even an older Diesel Powered sub is bad news. The Navy in it's insane wisdom parked the S-3 Vikings also. F-14 cancellation was another bad move. We had the best mouse trap and it owned the skies. Downgrading our defense technology is insane. Downgrading has been policy for 20 years now.
I agree -- and Pearl is waaaaay too exposed, as Adm. Nagumo pointed out for us in 1941. In fact, Navy exercises in the early 30's proved the same point (Japanese officers observing the exercises, of course), but FDR had other ideas -- namely, about baiting the Japanese tiger. The Establishment has never admitted he did that. In fact, that would make an excellent litmus test someday, for who'll be allowed to vote and hold office in a reconstituted America.
Yards like that need to be upstream of Suisun Bay, hell, up the Russian River somewhere where they can't be reached without overflying powerful defenses ..... and in Atlantic basin, they ought to be in the Mississippi River or Galveston Bay, somewhere in the protected waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Even Chesapeake Bay, when you think about it, is exposed -- first hostile act by the Germans was to lay 24 acoustic mines in the shipping channels there. U-boot came up into the bay by dead of night, slick in, slick out. Not good.
Yeah, giving Dubya that famous ride out to the Lincoln was the S-3's swan song, wasn't it?
It was "Big Dick" Cheney who made the call on the F-14, during Poppy's watch. Great move, Dick!