Gary Anderson
For the United States to credibly deter China from war, ships are needed now, not decades from now. The lack of available ships in the Navy’s fleet has eroded the deterrent effect of America’s sea power and unless current plans and policies are radically altered, China’s power will remain unchecked and undeterred.
The abysmal state of our maritime industrial base makes the goal of a 380 ship Navy seem like fantasy and the idea of scrapping existing ships to build new destroyers and a new frigate perverse.
Two retired Naval Service officers have proposed a solution that is doable, affordable, and common sense in the near term. Colonel TX Hammes Captain R. Robinson Harris writing in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings have proposed putting missiles and lethal reconnaissance drones aboard converted commercial ships in launch containers. This makes eminent sense for several reasons.
First, the hulls already exist. This would go a long way to easing the Navy's shipbuilding woes until the industrial base problem gets solved.
Second, because merchant vessels are highly automated, the need for additional manning would be minimal and can be tasked to the merchant mariners being a purely defensive weapon, thus leaving the Navy to focus on reaching their goals of readiness and lethality.
No comments:
Post a Comment