If our military doesn't get its head out of its backside and focus on training to fight and win, Bonhamme Richard won't be the last ship we lose.
We shouldn't have lost one of our big deck amphibious ships while it sat in port:
On 12 July 2020, a fire set USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) ablaze for more than four days, and left the ship damaged beyond economical repair. Although the fire was started by an act of arson, the ship was lost due to an inability to extinguish the fire. In the 19 months executing the ship’s maintenance availability, repeated failures allowed for the accumulation of significant risk and an inadequately prepared crew, which led to an ineffective fire response.
Can't navigate. Can't do damage control. What do they do?
The U.S. Navy is adrift in unfriendly seas. Befuddled by tough choices, dogged by inadequate training and crippled by poor judgment, our sea service is ill-prepared to meet its greatest challenges since World War II.
I can't believe that we even have to ask if our Navy can fight and win a war:
Writing in The Hill last week, Steve Cohen asked “Is the US Navy totally at sea?” But a more worrying question is whether the U.S. Navy is fit and prepared for a conflict with an adversary that is at least as well equipped and armed as it is.
But no worries. Our Pentagon has its eye on the ball. It has a shiny new climate risk analysis to guide it. Our EPA director secretary of defense said of that document:
The Department of Defense will continue to work with the interagency, our allies and partners, and the international community to tackle the existential threat of climate change. We share this planet, and shared threats demand shared solutions.
As the Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis makes clear, climate change is altering the strategic landscape and shaping the security environment, posing complex threats to the United States and nations around the world.
Well that's just effing splendid.
The climate the Pentagon should be focusing on is the military climate that accepts less than fully trained personnel if they know the right Goddamn pronouns to use. The Navy, especially, has been worrying me in recent years:
Victory in the Cold War was sudden. And in the aftermath, the Navy surface warfare elements forgot that their core task is to control the seas and not merely exploit control of the seas[.]
But here we are. We have one fewer expensive Navy ship but made a commitment with like-minded militaries to "understanding national security risks posed by climate change, which will be key to ensuring that the Department fulfills our mission to defend the United States today and into the future."
If only our enemies shared that commitment to battling climate change. Sadly, they probably just want to kill us and alter the strategic landscape by kicking our ass. It must be damned tempting (full article behind the paywall):
You have to wonder how long before some other major power will take a look at a sickly creature like [America's military] and try to put it down.
Pity our military doesn't see fighting and winning our nation's wars as its highest and only mission.
Will America ever get the needed flag officer purge?
Yet there is hope amidst the ruins of our woke military leadership: "All told, five admirals are in Big Navy’s crosshairs for failures that led to the flattop’s loss."
That would be a good start, as the joke goes. But if not there will be a lot of grey hulls at the bottom of the sea--and burning vehicles and flaming plane wrecks--with the senior leadership we have.
