The 100-Ship Navy
Jonathan Panter, Anand Jantzen, and Johnathan Falcone
June 26, 2020
Naval officers pray at the altar of “more ships.†We demand more of them, fantasize about new ways to use them, and assume that the fleet will only grow. In the navalist faith, the post-Cold War period — which saw the fleet fall to an all-time low of 279 ships in 2007 — was an aberration, but happily the “return to great-power rivalry†has obliterated such shortsightedness.
The navalists have reasons to cheer. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act calls for 355 ships by 2030, an increase of 18 percent from today’s 299. The Navy’s FY2021 five-year shipbuilding plan funds another 42. Novel realms are demanding the Navy’s attention. Retreating sea ice in the Arctic, for instance, has fueled new competition with Russia. At the same time, near peers have modernized their navies with highly capable surface and subsurface platforms. For the navalists, the fleet’s strain under these growing responsibilities is not a reason to reduce commitments, but simply to add more ships.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/the-100-ship-navy/
