Does Biden Have the Right Naval Strategy to Take on Russia and China? History Has an Answer.
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By James Holmes
June 17, 2021
U.S. Navy photo by MC2 Nathan T. Beard
This week Chief of Naval Operations Mike Gilday and Marine Corps Commandant David Berger went before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee to talk budgets and fleet design. Representatives grilled the sea-service chieftains in particular about their “divest-to-invest” approach to procurement, questioning whether shedding aging ships and other hardware to free up funding for future acquisitions is a sound idea when the services confront near-term threats in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere.
Good question.
As they deliberate, lawmakers might also requisition testimony from none other than King George III, an erstwhile archenemy. Or, more precisely, they might summon up William Pitt the Younger, who served as His Majesty’s prime minister from 1783-1801 and 1804-1806. Prime Minister Pitt put Great Britain’s Royal Navy back on a solid footing after the navy’s suboptimal performance in the War of American Independence—a performance traceable to Parliament’s scrimping on shipbuilding budgets during the years leading up to that war.
False economies in peacetime ended up costing Britain dearly in wartime.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/06/17/does_biden_have_the_right_naval_strategy_to_take_on_russia_and_china_history_has_an_answer_781815.html