The Missing Ingredient for a 355-Ship US Navy
What will it take for the U.S. Navy to get to 355 ships?
By Robert Farley
May 29, 2018
Can the United States Navy get to 355 ships without a profound shift in the global strategic situation? Does it need to do so in order to keep China in its box? Steve Wills offers some reasons for skepticism, reasons that can apply equally to China and the United States.
Wills argues both that democracies face specific problems with peacetime naval buildups, and that the buildups often yield less of strategic value than they promise. Technology develops in unexpected ways, the strategic situation does not work out in the way that policymakers had predicated, and democratic governments are saddled with flotillas of ships that cost money to maintain but no longer serve a compelling strategic purpose. Wills points to successive modernizations of the Royal Navy in the 19th century, but also to the 1980s era buildup in the United States, the last major expansion that resulted in a hybrid fleet that kept older ships in service longer than economical, and sent some modern ships to the scrapyard before their time.
https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/the-missing-ingredient-for-a-355-ship-us-navy/
