Obama’s Navy: Ignorance or intent?
A little more on the abject ignorance Obama displayed concerning the Navy. Or was it, instead, the usual attempt to have it both ways? You know, talk about how everything is under control while in reality it is spinning out of control? Or, as we’ve warned many times, don’t believe a thing the man says, look at what he does.
The Obama administration’s neglect of the Navy can be typified by the early retirement of the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) and its plans to decommission other naval assets. In August of this year, I outlined on NRO why the Enterprise should remain in service, but the Big E is only the most prominent asset slated for premature retirement. The administration also plans to decommission and scrap six Ticonderoga-class cruisers, although the vessels have as many as 15 years of service life left (even without further overhauls). Maintaining freedom of the seas requires hulls in the water — and the Navy hasn’t even started building the replacements for these cruisers. At present, all we have is a design study called CGX, which may or may not enter production.
Got that? 6 Ticonderoga-class cruisers being decommissioned, all with at least 15 years service life left. These are the cruisers, as mentioned yesterday, which protect those things we have called aircraft carriers.
Here’s another report that makes it clear that the administration’s plan is, in fact, leaving the carrier strike groups even more vulnerable than they are now:
As noted at the Navy-oriented Information Dissemination blog, when the proposed cuts were first outlined in late 2011, the decommissioning plan will take out of service cruisers that can be upgraded with the ballistic missile defense (BMD) package – now a core capability for the Navy – while keeping five cruisers that cannot receive the BMD upgrade.
Emphasis mine. That borders on criminal. After bloviating about technology and capability, his plan is to reduce both.
Meanwhile, here’s the stark reality of the situation the Obama administration has created:
His administration, in an effort to cut costs, proposed the retirement of the USS Enterprise (which his allies in Congress passed in 2009) and the six cruisers. Numerous crises are heating up around the world, as recent events show, but there is no indication that Obama has reconsidered these retirement plans. Certainly, it would not be hard to halt the retirements, and extenuating circumstances clearly warrant a supplemental appropriations bill. None of our carriers or submarines — no matter how high-tech they are — are capable of covering the Persian Gulf and South China Sea at the same time, or the Mediterranean Sea and the Korean Peninsula simultaneously.
Or, said a much simpler way, and despite Obama’s ignorant claims, we don’t have enough ships to cover all the contingencies that his failed foreign policy has helped foment. Technology still can’t have you in two places at once.
Instead, we have a Commander-in-Chief who apparently thinks those things we call aircraft carriers are like magic unicorns. You kind of wave one toward a crisis and everything works out. He has no concept of force protection. He has no idea how a carrier strike group operates. He just knows we have these things called aircraft carriers and they’re apparently magic because, you know, we have this “technology” and we’re much more “capable” than when it was all about horses and bayonets. Or something.
Reality?
Yet in 2010, the Navy could only fulfill 53% of the requirements for presence and missions levied by the combatant commanders (e.g., CENTCOM, PACOM). Cutting this Navy will reduce further its ability to fill warfighter requirements.
This guy is dangerous, folks. His ignorance is both appalling and frightening.
He needs to go.
~McQ