Admiral Canute Sits Upon His Chair

I knew it would take time. We are, well others are, a polite bunch. We don't want to make our predecessors look bad. We don't want them to lose face.

On balance, we like for there to be a little time to pass before we start to back away from the really bad things that previous leaders said and did - things that were wrong on its face, though no one could say so.

In that light, I am glad to hear this from David Axe in The Diplomat;

With looming defense cuts of at least $450 billion over 10 years, the U.S. military is reconsidering long-standing modernization schemes. For the U.S. Navy, that means potentially abandoning a six-year-old plan that envisioned growing today’s fleet of 285 major warships to at least 313 ships.

But Navy leaders claimed the reduction will not degrade the sailing branch’s ability to influence world events and deter rivals. At roughly 3 million tons displacement combined, today’s Navy is by far the largest in the world, exceeding the tonnage of the next dozen navies, combined. The Navy maintains around 2/3 of its forces in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

Adm. Mark Ferguson, the Navy’s second-ranking officer, signaled a possible shift away from the 313-ship plan in a recent speech. He said a new shipbuilding plan could take three years to finalize.

No one has thought the 313 was doable for years; one of the reasons Admiral Roughead in his last few years had so little credibility on The Hill.

This is good. Let us be adults and talk plainly among ourselves as adults.