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Friday, May 07, 2021

The Dullest Sort of Vital Missions

As we focus on shooters for great power competition, let's not forget the logistics that will allow us to move and sustain the shooters long enough to shoot and win.

Yes, sealift is a serious problem:

In an era of great power competition, the U.S. military has had to relearn a number of strategic facts. Perhaps the most important of these is the central role that sealift has played in America’s ability to project power abroad. During the Cold War, the U.S. was able to not only deploy large forces overseas but move and sustain entire armies around the world. Today, 90 percent of U.S. forces are based in the continental United States (CONUS). They will have to get to the fight. Over the past three decades, the U.S. sealift fleet has been allowed to decline precipitously. As military leaders have reluctantly admitted, a future high-end conflict might be lost due to a lack of sealift. Fixing this problem has become a strategic imperative for the Department of Defense.

He's preaching to the choir hear at TDR, of course. And maybe convince the Navy to protect the sealift, too.