The author of this article on maximizing our forward-deployed fleet withing existing financial conditions doesn't answer the question of why we should need to focus his proposal on deploying more of our ships forward.
He justifies the plan by pointing to war-fighting advantages of having more ships that can be mobilized, but apparently doesn't see any warfighting value in those forward-deployed ships:
Depending on where the war is, half the forward-deployed ships are in the wrong part of the world to fight immediately. Of the continental U.S (CONUS)–based rotational ships, a third are in maintenance, and half of the remainder are more than 30 days from the fight. Face it—any major wartime fight will not occur immediately with the forces on hand. It will occur later, after we’ve had at least two or three months to assemble our forces at the right place. World War II, Korea, the Falklands, and Desert Storm all were fought once available forces were assembled and pushed forward to the fight.
The value of more forward deployed forces is less than zero, for some wartime situations. One, some of the ships won't be in the theater of war and so will have to move to the theater.
But that pales in comparison to the problem of our forward-deployed ships in the theater. The author doesn't even anticipate that the forward-deployed ships will engage the enemy in a major wartime fight until those fleet elements are reinforced two or three months later.
Or rather, the survivors of the forward-deployed forces will have to wait 2 or 3 months before attempting a major fight. Since if war breaks out, we will likely be the ones on defense and our enemies will try to sink what is within reach.
Now, I'm assuming this waiting period doesn't mean we abandon our allies. But we'll fight east of them until reinforced. The air part of Air-Sea Battle will dominate to interfere with Chinese attempts to run wild in those two or three months we are gathering forces.
Which means China's arms build up has already achieved some part of their objective of keeping us away from the western Pacific until China can achieve their objectives against a neighboring state or states that must fight without decisive American help during those two or three months.
So if we need numbers, this idea might be a good idea. I'll leave that discussion to those with far more knowledge about the details of maintenance and reservist usage for major fleet elements we'd need in war.
But unless we forward deploy ships more expendable than the ships we have now, I'm not on board pushing more forces forward--which can't hope for reinforcements against a major enemy for two or three months--where they might just be targets for the enemy in the opening hours and days of a war we aren't expecting.
