Is the Navy totally at sea?
By Steve Cohen, opinion contributor — 10/21/21 01:00 PM EDT
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The U.S. Navy is adrift in unfriendly seas. Befuddled by tough choices, dogged by inadequate training and crippled by poor judgment, our sea service is ill-prepared to meet its greatest challenges since World War II.
Look at the forces lining up against it: A bellicose China that threatens Taiwan and the entire Western Pacific, as well as a resurgent Russia, bent on claiming the entire melting polar region as its own. Our Navy appears to drift from shoal to shore, pursuing strategies and tactics that seem obsolete from the day they are implemented. From fleet design to basic training, our admirals and senior civilian leaders are behaving in ways reminiscent of Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
The most egregious examples, of course, involved two destroyers stationed in the Pacific. In separate incidents in 2017, each collided with a merchant ship in what were clearly avoidable accidents. A total of 17 sailors lost their lives, and investigations by the Navy and journalists concluded that the collisions stemmed from inadequate training combined with understaffed and overworked crews.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/577338-is-the-navy-totally-at-sea
