November 10, 2021
Can America's Navy Adequately Protect Shipping Convoys?
What do counterinsurgent warfare and convoy duty have in common? Armed forces hate performing both tasks.
by James Holmes
Here's What You Need to Remember: Dominant navies—the Royal Navy in its imperial heyday, the U.S. Navy today—likewise prefer to gird against rival battle fleets rather than invest scarce resources in vessels, methods and tactics useful for escort duty. The greats of maritime history would be aghast.
Jerry Seinfeld could make convoys the subject of a standup routine: what’s the deal with them? Or, more to the point, what’s the deal with navies that seem bent on unlearning hard-won lessons from past oceanic wars? Navies such as our own. The U.S. Navy leadership has reportedly informed the chiefs of the U.S. Military Sealift Command and Maritime Administration that “you’re on your own” when trying to run supplies or manpower across the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian oceans to support operations along the Eurasian rimlands. The navy can spare no escort ships to protect them.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/can-americas-navy-adequately-protect-shipping-convoys-195994
