Righting the Listing Ship of Navy Readiness — Without Sinking the Pentagon
Mackenzie Eaglen
February 14, 2018
Hearings before Congress on the spate of deadly ship collisions last summer revealed a worrisome state of forward deployed forces’ readiness in particular that must be aggressively confronted. As the Strategic Readiness Review elucidated, training needs an overhaul (especially for operational forces), commanders need to be able to say no to their superiors without losing their jobs, and the Navy requires more ships to reduce deployment lengths and relieve overburdened crews.
The Navy has done well to acknowledge its shortcomings, but it is a long road ahead to get healthy. The recent budget deal is a positive step toward one aspect of giving the service dollars to jump start advance procurement of future ships. While long-term, stable funding is needed to refocus the military toward high-intensity warfare and the modernization of the nuclear triad, raising the spending caps alone is insufficient to address the Navy’s systemic woes.
https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/righting-listing-ship-navy-readiness-without-sinking-pentagon/
