[ARCADIA]

As it shifts to purchasing smaller, lighter and more agile weapons systems, the Navy isn't losing its ability to counter attacks by major powers such as China, John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said.

Just double speak....rest assured that our leadership has sold this country out.

[A Simple Soldier]

Bad link. Please post correct source.

[A Simple Soldier]

Bad link. Please post correct source.

[DakotaGator]

The Navy's spokesmen will always support "the party line". That doesn't make it any less nonsense. We have the best Navy in the world. But that is totally meaningless if it is too small to handle the threat.

In WWII the U.S. Navy had over a million men and almost 1000 destroyers alone. It was structured to deal with two wars and one major regional conflict simultaneously.

Now our Navy has less than 300 warships and can barely deal with regional conflicts. And this is with naval supremacy, i.e. no naval threat.

Soon we will be down to a measly 200 warships while a regional asian superpower, China, is building her navy to challenge us and win. Gee, that sounds so familiar!

No. Our Navy, as with the rest of the Armed Forces, needs to expand. Sure they need to be lean, rapid, and flexible. That's not incompatible with numbers. But if we keep the current course, we'll become what Britian's Royal Navy is; excellent, but not a contender.

All the babble in the world can come out of the Pentagon. But it cannot disguise the fact we need size as well as quality. Now its a matter of national will.

[Mr. Jeeves]

world-class enemies

There's a phrase you don't see every day. As opposed to "middle-brow enemies"?

Asymmetrical warfare is going to do to the rest of the Navy what Billy Mitchell did to battleships...example: USS Cole. The wars of the future will be fought by Air Force ground controllers manipulating Mach 7 drone aircraft and smart guided missiles, and using them to neutralize the "world-class opponent's" entire offensive capability in about fifteen minutes. Sounds like the Administration is well aware of this and working toward it, but has to keep up the appearance of a vigorous blue-water Navy for a while yet.

[Tallguy]

More broadly, the "entire Chinese naval fleet is projected to surpass the size of the U.S. fleet by 2015," just a decade hence, ASA said. "In short, the Chinese military is specifically being configured to rival America's sea power," ASA asserted.

Numbers are one thing; total fleet tonnage is another. Even during the height of the Soviet challenge, the US Navy maintained a large advantage in tonnage. Larger vessels imply more capability. Coastal vessels tend to be small and single-purpose platforms.

Even so, I'm not saying that the Chinese challenge should be ignored.