The Sinking U.S. Navy Realizes It's Getting Wet

by JASmius



From Ted Cruz's campaign website:

[Red] China and Russia continue to develop and deploy increasingly advanced maritime fleets. While their navies are rapidly expanding the ability to project power offshore, we have reduced the number of operational aircraft carriers, the centerpiece of our naval forces, to just ten. America’s ability to effectively deter our adversaries, but rapidly and overwhelmingly project power in multiple theaters when needed, requires a commitment to twelve carrier strike groups. The United States must significantly increase the number of ships to at least 350, with an appropriate mix of large and small, surface and subsurface combatants that ensures we can counter our adversary’s anti-access/area denial strategies.

Once access into our adversary’s littoral region is accomplished we need the ability to project that power ashore; the U.S. Marine Corps must be provided sufficient sea and air lift capacity to conduct large-scale amphibious and air assault operations in a contested environment. The Marines are our first responders, the first to fight, in times of crisis. We need to reverse the cuts to the manpower of the Marines. I will commit to you this – I will not simply bow down to political correctness; I will also review the Marine Corps’ request for exemption from the policy of requiring women to serve in combat positions....

Today, we face not just one, but many adversaries who would topple our great nation from its pedestal. And we face internal antagonists who seem content to let it happen, who insist that Defense spending be relegated to luxury status – something nice to have if we can afford it after all of their pet programs. Entitlement programs have soared in the past decade and reckless spending has spiked our national debt so high, that interest payments on our debt will surpass what we spend on defense within the next decade.

While we neglect our military modernization, Russia, [Red] China and Iran continue to invest heavily in theirs. Russia has announced aggressive plans to continue the modernization of their military; [Red] China has an indigenous aircraft carrier program, is aggressively pursuing the ability to project power far from its homeland, and for the first time can place intercontinental ballistic missiles on strategic submarines; and Iran has just been gifted $150 billion from the current administration to fund their global terrorism. The result of this disparity is predictable: our adversaries cross line after line to see if Barack Obama will react. We recently watched in humiliation as our sailors were held at gunpoint by Iranians. They were taken hostage the same day Barack Obama spoke ardently about his nuclear agreement with Iran; and yet he said nothing about the plight of ten Americans detained by that same terrorist nation.

His recent speech along these same lines on the USS Yorktown can be found here.

And - shazam! - proving that Gomer Pyle's descendants did, indeed, migrate to the Navy....



....Barack Obama's ballast has finally taken notice of the fact that that the fleet....



.....is drowning as he is going down for the third time:

The U.S. Navy will likely increase its requirement for a 308-ship fleet given the rapidly changing world security situation, including the U.S. battle against the Islamic State, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said on Thursday.

That Mitt Romney predicted three and a half years ago.

Richardson said the Navy was reviewing an assessment completed in 2012 and updated in 2014, before Russia’s reemergence as a “global power competitor,” and the start of the U.S.-led campaign to defeat Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“I would bet a paycheck that it’s going to be a number greater than 308 ships, just by virtue of the additive nature of the complexity and the contestants that are confronting us right now,” Richardson told an event hosted by Washington defense consultant Jim McAleese and Credit Suisse.

I could use one of your paychecks, Admiral.  It'll probably hold me for a year.  Thank you very much.  Even if you're only now admitting what was gapingly obvious four years ago.  For which you should, quite frankly, be forfeiting ANY more paychecks as well as your generous pension, which would certainly be a godsend in my direction.

But you were "just following orders," right?  You can't help it if your commander-in-chief is a traitor and a fool.

Here's what I wrote just yesterday:

If you wait to be "directly threatened," as Bolivar Trask said in Days of Future Past, it'll be too late..... If we practice genuinely "tough diplomacy" - which is to say, backed up by the credible threat of credible military force - we're less likely to have to resort to that force - Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, after all. If we don't, if we throw away our military capabilities and not even lead from behind, but switch sides and try to join our enemies thinking that they will leave us alone, then we will be overwhelmed, overrun, and destroyed. It is inevitable. [emphases added]

The direct threat is almost at our doorstep, Admiral.  And all we have with which to meet it in battle is....a dinghy.



Not enough, I fear, against what's coming....



I might even have a swig of Captain Sparrow's rum myself.