“But Obama does not plan to destroy the U.S. Navy – he wants to modernise it”.

Of course – just as the Royal Navy was “modernised” some time ago.

I believe the next Royal Navy review is being held on Wicky Park lake.

They have demonstrated anti-satellite capability and and talking about carrier killer missiles

Yes, they are “talking about” so-called carrier killers. Yadda Yadda, talk is cheap. What China is actually doing is building their own carrier capability, because unless you want a glorified coast guard, you don’t have a navy without one, and China very much wants a navy.

U.S. policy, Mr. Whittle reminds us, used to be that we should be able to fight and win two wars simultaneously. Great Britain’s policy throughout the 1700′s and 1800′s, and into the 1900′s, was that she would spend whatever it took in order to be able to say that the Royal Navy would be able to defeat a combination of the next two navies combined.

Bottom line: The “single great national security threat is the deficit [and the wasted trillions, and...and...]” because it prevents us from being able properly to protect ourselves.

(Actually, I don’t agree with that, strictly speaking. The actual single greatest national security threat facing the U.S. is the ebbing of the national sense of moral self-confidence–the general understanding of the citizenry that their country is morally worthy. Nothing is easier than to destroy a person or a country, if only he or it can be convinced that he or it is despicable.)

It’s a “members-only” video, but those who do have a PJTV membership can see it at

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=174&load=7616(Link)

Throughout all those years I’ve been watching The Aussie degrading from the noble newspaper that I regarded as one of the best in the world to the quasi centre-right rag unable to muster narrative courageous enough to match barbaric agressiveness of the Labor criminal regime.

Appart from that, its take on the world affairs resembles more Yhe New York Lies than any American conservative magazine.

It is not by accident that the most frequent quoted rags in The Aussie are NYT and Gaurdian.

It is, perhaps, because the management of Australian branch of Murdochs empire has been trasferred onto his son Lachlan who takes virtually no interest in politics and that has allowed the left leaning elements to sneak into the positions of leadership even in The Australian.

Two years ago I stoped bothering to keep spending a dollar and fifty on that rag.

It is still incomparably better than The Age and Sydney Morning Herald though…

Gosh, next they’ll be telling us we need our meat AND our veggies!

But there is a flaw in the logic of building the fleet entirely around them when we start facing near-peer or peer offensive capabilities. If someone comes up with a way to kill them, an entire fleet can get the heart cut out of it. Battle groups are built for interlocking defence. The other units defend the carriers; aircraft from the carrier intercept threats and defend the pickets… but lose the carrier and the rest of the group is in deep shit. Not defenceless, but at risk. Now who would do such a thing?

Look at China. They see the US as the primary challenger to their long term goal of being the superpower in the world. The inherent threat of the US carrier group prevents rhetoric over Taiwan from going hot. So what is China doing about it? They have demonstrated anti-satellite capability and and talking about carrier killer missiles. They are developing their cyberwar capabilities. These two pieces could buy them a window long enough to invade and consolidate control over Taiwan. First they take out enough key satellites to at least partially blind or at least confuse the intel situation; the carrier killers keep the carriers farther away or possibly put the battle group out of action before the invasion; meanwhile they would at least attempt to sow chaos in the mainland US via cyberwar. Whether that would be anything more than annoyance is hard to say, but they would still try it.

Carriers are a major force projector and can defend vast swaths of the sea lanes with a single ship. If there is no near peer threat, the carrier group is practically invulnerable… but I fear that in a near-peer threat environment, they may be approaching their Battleship moment, the time when the Admiral’s flag has to pass to something new because the old capital ship is no longer secure.

No more ‘nation-building’, no more trying to pick winners and losers in other people’s conflicts, no more ‘ensuring stability’ or ‘providing security’ or playing global power games.

The prime purpose of the navy should be to ensure domestic security, and these days, that means securing trade routes. By all means, have plenty of ships and drones and F15s and all the rest of it – but use them solely for providing maritime security for the national interests of the US. What that means, in simplest terms, is free passage, anyplace, anytime.

Any global security or balance-of-power issues that you want to deal with, as a sort of hard diplomacy, are already overwhelmingly dealt-with by the boomer fleet and the assets already available domestically.

I can well-believe that this restricted role could well require as many as 600 surface ships. But the US Navy has been busy repurposing its cold-war assets for 25 years now, and it’s not working well. Just like in times of past threats to trade, you don’t need a few 80-gun first-raters (= carrier battle groups) – you need lots and lots of sloops and frigates.

The goal should be – no place on a major sea trade route within 1000 miles of land where there isn’t a major US warship within 200 miles. By major, I mean one that packs a couple of attack helicopters, multiple missile systems, several large rifles, lots of small-arms systems and the capacity for extensive small-boat operations, and some big radar and surveillance. Around hot spots like the Horn of Africa and the various Indonesian and Chines routes, a permanent and dense patrolling presence – the Royal Navy used to have the permanent ‘China Station’, and another one is needed now.

Plus, of course, a President who is prepared to say ‘Any threat to peaceful, unarmed trading vessels will be met by immediate and overwhelming force. No exceptions.’ I wonder where we can find one of those?

llater,

llamas

In the end, whatever we as a society decide to spend on social programs and transfer payments is an entirely separate matter from what we decide to spend on “defense”.* I’m only looking at the latter here. And in my opinion, taking on all the burdens of the world, and spending more on “defense” than the next 15 largest nations combined, is totally unjustifiable, to the point of being obscene. But no one in any position of authority, or even influence, is willing to step up and say that.

* Sneer quotes because there is a huge difference between “military spending” and spending that is truly for national defense. Much of the Pentagon’s budget bears no rational relationship to the defense of this country.

Sorry, Rhukatah, but I disagree with most of your post. Most of the world (and all of the developed world) is “trading nations.” Everyone has the same interest in preventing disruptions to world trade that we do, and many are far more dependent on foreign trade than we are (the US can be completely self-sufficient if necessary; most countries can’t). And there are no large global hegemonies (other than the US, of course) capable of (let alone interested in) world wars. That’s just not happening. Yes, there will be local, and maybe even regional, conflicts, but that’s not new and, for the most part, is simply not our business. Let the people involved, or directly affected, deal with them.

Alisa, when I said “Middle East” I was speaking (perhaps too) broadly, to include all of our current military activities in that corner of the world, including Afghanistan. We have troops on the ground in a number of countries in that region (including parts of Northern Africa, from what I hear), drones in the air over even more, as well as two large fleets in the area. I want them all gone as soon as possible. I recognize that can’t happen overnight. However, there is nothing preventing us from pulling all of our troops out of Europe tomorrow. That would be a fine place to start. Then get out of Asia: the Japanese can defend themselves (from whom, anyway?), and Korea needs to begin to take over all of its own defense. Again, it will take time, but we have to start the process.

We do need to provide some defense of trade routes, I will grant. But we shouldn’t do it alone, and should only concern ourselves with routes used by American vessels. Let others (the UK, France, Germany, China, Japan, etc.) carry some of the burden. The only real reason for a navy is to defend against piracy, which is just about the only thing we’re not using it for today.

Chuck, with regard to your post, you are missing some history. The reason for the two-year limitation on appropriations for the army is that the Founders were in great fear (rationally so) of standing armies. They saw how the great powers in Europe maintained huge armies and were constantly at war with each other, which is precisely what they wanted to prevent. They also saw how such armies could be used by kings against their own people. A navy posed no such risk, and was necessary to deal with piracy as well as depredations of our merchant fleet by other nations. Hence the different rules for both. (Note that the Marine Corps was, and is, a part of the Navy, and so is covered by that rule. They’re necessary when there is a need to project force, but not large enough to actually engage in a war. That’s an important distinction.)

We post troops all over the world largely because we have them. A radically smaller military would force our rulers to be more circumspect in such deployments, to better define their missions, and to use their (reduced) resources more wisely. The Pentagon doesn’t merely need to go on a diet; it needs to undergo a gastroplasty.