Is our Navy becoming a "Canoe Club"?

"Is our Navy becoming a 'Canoe Club'? Not hardly, but there is still work to do. To keep the sea lanes free and open, we need to be the world's 'cop on the water'. Time is not our friend. We need to get going. How fast? Very fast."   

Not coming close to meeting recruitment goals. Over half our young people not being fit enough for the armed forces. A GFY 24 budget with the armed forces only getting a 3% increase, when the inflation is double that much.

Today, the Atlantic has published an article asking if America has now ceded control of the oceans. In other words, are we headed towards expansionist, dictator countries, claiming large swaths of international waters, as their own. Should that ever happen, it would be a bleak future for many.

When Ronald Reagan was first running for President, he was alarmed at the state of our Navy. He made a pledge that if elected, he would re-build our Navy to a 600 ship fleet. And when Reagan was elected, it was "all hands on deck" for our government contractors. Our Navy was re-built under Reagan, and stood proud for decades. But that was then, and this in now. Joe Biden could not give two poops and a holler about the state of today's Navy. And we have never been in so much peril from the world's bad guys.

About 150 years ago, a Navy Captain named Alfred Thayer Mahan penned an article in the Atlantic called The United States Looking Outward. Mahan argued that without a strong Navy, soon our oceans could become constricted to trade and commerce. A strong Navy was vital to a strong America. He was right. He was right back then, and he would be right today.

For Joe Biden to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is happening in the South China Sea, what could be happening in the Atlantic from the spillover from the Ukraine conflict, and the turmoil which is going on just off the Korean Peninsula, having a strong Navy is just as important today as it was during World War II.

Today we need more ships in number, and each of those ships must be build to fit a purpose. Today's threats at sea are not the same as they were during World War II. Not the same they were during Viet Nam. Not the same they were during the Gulf Wars. Today's stand off, hypersonic environment, calls for new thinking with new defenses. To sink one of our carriers, with 5,000 sailors on board, would be a dream come true for the bad guys. 

It is time we ran the "wokesters" out of the DOD. We need clear thinkers and big budgets to fight off today's threats. More than numbers of ships, we need ships with so many capabilities, so much firepower, it will give any foe of ours - pause. Ronald Reagan's dream was having a military so strong, so fearful, he would never have to fire a shot. "Peace through strength" worked very well, thank you. Now we have the Obama/Biden "lead from behind" strategy. How is that working? Ask someone from Taiwan. They are living in dreadful fear.

We recently saw an example of Russia's hypersonic missiles as they reigned down on cities in Ukraine. The air defenses of Ukraine were over matched by the hypersonics. My greatest fear, is if push came to shove, our carrier battle groups could also find themselves overmatched by a wave of hypersonics. How bad could it be? Game, set, match and over. To lose a carrier, would be devastating for our Navy as well as our country. 

Someone needs to wake sleepy Joe up and remind him the real enemies of this country are not the Republicans (or MAGA anything), the real enemies are all around us. They delight in our fascination with climate change and woke. Why? As we fiddle, the bad guys are going to town with their defense funding. I mean, don't look now, but China has built a Navy on par with ours. Soon it will be bigger (and maybe better) than ours.

Is our Navy becoming a "Canoe Club"? Not hardly, but there is still work to do. To keep the sea lanes free and open, we need to be the world's "cop on the water". Time is not our friend. We need to get going. How fast? Very fast.