I get what you’re saying. Remember when they announced that they weren’t going to make the 600 ship Navy goal, and James Webb resigned as SecNav in protest?
I had a friend who was assigned to a Garcia-class Frigate at the time. He said that the thing was a deathtrap and the crew was afraid to take it to sea. They were thrilled when the decommission order came down, thought Webb was a primadona idiot for his resignation stunt.
I had a friend who was assigned to a Garcia-class Frigate at the time. He said that the thing was a deathtrap and the crew was afraid to take it to sea. They were thrilled when the decommission order came down, thought Webb was a primadona idiot for his resignation stunt.
After the Soviet collapse came there was cause and room for some cautious reduction. It was anything but cautious. A 50% reduction was unreasonable which is where we are now. Actually we hit the 50% mark of the 595 we had under Reagan in 2003. A rational compromise of say 425 minimal 475 maximum would have left some breathing room.
Older ships unfit for sea should be decommissioned. There's no sense of unnecessarily risking lives in unfit ships. There still though needs to be some room still left in the fleets to where it could happen without having a serious impact on other ships. Carrier wise? Thirteen sounds good six per east and western with one for unexpected malfunctions. We also need to loose our dependency on the Suez. Actually we did just that from The Six Day War till 1981. No carriers transited through in that time frame. With hostilities as they are now I don't think using it for a CVN transit is smart. At 10 left there's not many options left.