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I admit that I never served in the military and don't know a lot about it. But it seems to me that most of the people on the stage at the last debate don't know a whole lot more than I do. They all claim that we need a boatload of new ships, no pun intended, but don't say why. Sure, our navy is smaller than it's been in a long time. But the individual ships are a lot more capable than they were 30 years ago, too. The Cold War threats are gone and the U.S. Navy is still infinately stronger than the Chinese navy is. How big do the candidates say it needs to be, why does it need to be that size, and where are they going to get the hundreds of billions of dollars they need to get where they want to go?

With the advent of smart, unmanned weapons & sophisticated surveillance systems, warships are becoming easy targets. Just as manned air power was the decisive factor in WWII, unmanned air power will dominate WWIII, whether it be MIRV ballistic missiles, smart bombs, high speed torpedoes, or supersonic cruise missiles. Manned ships & vehicles will become increasingly dangerous places to be.

I believe a determined enemy of sufficient means could cripple a carrier task force with land & undersea based, non-nuclear weapons before the carrier could get within striking distance of the enemy. This is certainly true of mainland China & Russia, & perhaps NK & Iran, too. The loss of a carrier would devastate US morale & effectively neutralize a significant weapon of our arsenal.

Our money is better spent on air power & missile defense than expensive, hard to replace ships & crews that may not survive their first substantial encounter with a powerful enemy. Especially so when our missiles can flatten any area on the globe with a few mouse clicks.

I admit that I never served in the military and don't know a lot about it. But it seems to me that most of the people on the stage at the last debate don't know a whole lot more than I do. They all claim that we need a boatload of new ships, no pun intended, but don't say why. Sure, our navy is smaller than it's been in a long time. But the individual ships are a lot more capable than they were 30 years ago, too. The Cold War threats are gone and the U.S. Navy is still infinately stronger than the Chinese navy is. How big do the candidates say it needs to be, why does it need to be that size, and where are they going to get the hundreds of billions of dollars they need to get where they want to go?

We may have 273 ships but we do not have 273 deployable ships. Some like a CVN can be down for five years for refueling or at least a year for the required every 5 year drydock maintenance period. Every time a ship deploys for six months it is essential that it enter the shipyards for maintenance which can not be done anywhere but in the yards. Skimp on that part and the service life of the ship is shortened significantly even to half.

It takes rotations of the deployments to allow first for maintenance, then work ups and re-qualifying the crew which takes up to a year in some cases then the six to eight months deployment. Or about a 15 month cycle.

Here is what the politicians and experts aren't telling you. Due to shipyard closures back in the 1990's we no longer have the infrastructure we have had to fall back on since WW1. We turned out ships fast in WW1 & WW2, Korea, and Nam because we had the shipyards and trained shipbuilders. A lot of the skills needed to build Navy ships you don't find just anywhere.

Lets take the figure 272 and see where it goes. 272 minus roughly 25% in the yards means 204 ships. The first 25% would be in maintenance leaving 204. Of the 204 to maintain a once every 18 months rotation would take another 25% off. 204 minus 50% would leave 102 ships. I would say closer to 50 left due to Murphy's Law. Now where is the allowance for battle loss if we were at war? 50 ships? 75 perhaps? And what about trained and qualified crews? To get a sailor from Basic Training through say Nuclear Propulsion school and to a ship and qualified can take over two years. All carriers are now Nuke. A positive about having conventional carriers also was the training issue. It takes a very high IQ and lots of common sense to pass Nuke school. But the Navy can take a high school drop out and within a year or less have a man working in a boiler room and competent to be there.

All our eggs are in one basket.

Worse is we learned Diddly Squat from Pearl Harbor. Naval Operations Base Norfolk home of the carriers had three carrier berths from WW2 up through 1981 or later. Another pier with double berth capacity was built so very regularly now we have five carrier sitting in port because we abandoned deployment zones which were in our interest.

Used to there were two carriers on station at all times in the MED Sea and at least one deployed in the Pacific. The Obama administration has had us down to no deployed carriers. That is not healthy for the ships nor it's crew. You have to be underway for periods of time to keep the equipment in working order and crews battle ready.

If a conventional war breaks out involving Naval battles we are very close to being screwed. All because funding is being put into environmental and other liberal issues that once went to national defense. Reagan had us at almost 600 ships. We are less than half of that and this is counting subs as well. We are being set up to fall. And it is a Bipartisan effort.