Said the president in last night's debate when Romney complained that our fleet was small and likely to shrink more:
I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
This probably comes as a shock to President Obama, but when counting the number of "battle force ships" in our Navy, aircraft carriers and submarines (technically called "boats," of course) already count.
Indeed, what is most horrifying about the idea that our fleet has slipped below 300 ships is what actually counts as a "battle force ship."
We count mine warfare ships whose job is not really about sinking enemy ships.
We count amphibious warfare ships whose primary mission is to move Marines to hostile shores.
We count logistics ships that supply the actual fighting ships.
We count maritime prepositioning ships that haul around military equipment for air and ground forces in order to quickly get forces overseas in a crisis.
We count strategic ballistic missile submarines whose only job is to hide and survive to maintain our nuclear deterrence posture.
We count cruise missiles subs whose job is to hit land targets.
What is horrifying is just how few of our "battle force ships" are actually involved with battling other ships. That would be about 180. With about half underway at any given moment (on station, on the way there, or on the way home).
Not that those non-fighting ships aren't absolutely vital to supporting a global naval presence. But how many people really know that we really have 180 warships as are commonly understood?
And what of our fleet before we entered World War I? Almost all of them were warships--all but 25 of 245 ships--so 220 warships. To be fair, we didn't need the support ships then.
In general, if Romney brought up the ship number because he wants to get more numbers at the expense of quality, I can support that. I've mentioned this before.
But there are limits to trading size for numbers. Remember that we aren't a European power of the Cold War era--or even China or Japan today--whose ships mostly need to leave port and then prepare to fire. They can build small ships heavy on weaponry. We need a ship capable of cruising long distances across oceans, in potentially rough seas, even before we put a single weapon on it. That requires tonnage. That affects the theoretical trade off I'd like with some practical minimum sizes.
Mostly, I worry about the really big carriers--which our president boasted about. Does our president have any idea of the basic debate over the value of our carriers? I doubt he has spent enough time looking at how our military works to be as dismissive as he was about Romney's naval knowledge.
Luckily we have our stealth carriers coming on line soon.
And I think we could afford to have more but simpler ships in a high-low mix for the purpose of patrolling and showing the flag.
I think we have innovative options for numbers, too, in emergency or for peacetime missions in sensitive areas that might not like our shiny warships nearby.
Oh, and the game of Battleship isn't about counting ships. It's about defeating your opponent's fleet by sinking it before it sinks your fleet. But our president has difficulty with that being at war concept.
If our president isn't clear on the objective of a naval game, why should we expect him to be clear on the value of our Navy?
If you want to brush up on naval construction issues and fleet size, this is a good place to start.
