China’s Shipbuilding Capability: A Threat to the U.S. Navy?
.By James Holmes
The central link in China’s sea-power chain appears stout. By contrast, corrosion has attacked the central link in U.S. sea power and shows little sign of relenting. It will not until the American government, society, and armed forces make the conscious political choice to invest in shipbuilding anew.
At last: I think a zombie has been slain. Zombie in this context meaning an idea that’s hard to kill. You shoot it down coming from one commentator or institution and ten or a hundred others repeat it anyway. It shambles on despite the headshot. This particular ghoul is the fallacy that a navy’s combined tonnage—the amount of water its hulls displace—is somehow the decisive factor in naval warfare. The number of ships in the inventory somehow doesn’t matter much.
This walking-dead talking point—that the navy that weighs the most wins—finds special favor among those averse to devoting more funding and resources to shipbuilding. It’s a kind of rhetorical fudge factor, letting skeptics argue that because the U.S. Navy outweighs likely antagonists, it’s therefore predestined to triumph—even though Congress and presidential administrations have shortchanged shipbuilding accounts for decades. All is well.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/07/17/chinas_shipbuilding_capability_a_threat_to_the_us_navy_966457.html
