At What Point Does the Navy Think They'll Win This Debate?

The Navy has reduced their ambitions for our fleet from 313 to 306 ships and subs (including logistics, command, and amphibious warfare vessels). It is nice that the Navy recognizes budgetary pressures. But every time they retreat to a new line, the budget pressures have already moved below their new floor. In effect, Navy leadership provides a lovely analysis of a budget battle they've already lost.

It's time for the Navy to pick a number of vessels we need and make ship building plans based on likely resources to reach that number within the money appropriated for them. If that means the Navy doesn't get the types of ships it would like, that has to be the price to have a Navy we can afford to build and maintain so it can go to sea and operate and fight.

These papers the Navy puts out say they believe we need a certain number of ships, but their continued reduction in the number of ships we need indicates that they'd rather have the types of ships and vessels we are building even if we can't get the amount we want.

If the Navy doesn't pick a number, the Navy will always be lowering their sites while struggling to maintain and deploy a fleet that is always too expensive to afford. Then we'll get fewer numbers of vessels and less readiness in our Navy. We will have done what the Russians did with their Soviet-built fleet--far less dramatically, of course--when they refused to accept budget realities after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That is a conscious choice about the state of the fleet, in the end. Don't pretend it isn't.