Politicians and Analysts Call for Larger Navy: Can We Afford It?

As we've all seen, China has become so emboldened, they are creating islands to become ports where they want them and no one can stop them. The UN can try and condemn the actions, but that is an empty threat. As others have said the only real deterrent is the US fleet being at sea where needed. An impossible goal these days as we just don't have the ships or the personnel to man them.

Will the government do something before it is too late? Probably not, we lack Statesmen who put the Country first. I don't think it is impossible to provide support to our most vulnerable citizens at the same time we provide for a strong deterrent and defense. It takes strong leadership and ethical behavior on the part of ALL our elected officials. Commonsense in funding across the board is needed not slash and burn.

We don't need hungry, homeless families anymore than we need hungry, homeless veterans. We need a strong military presence to prevent the "wolves" from knocking at our door. There is no reason, except for lack of ethical leadership across all parties, that the U.S. can't do it all.

Shouldn't have drown it down so bad in the first place.

We cannot afford not to put together a larger Navy. We have been able to afford it in the past so I'm sure the money is there so just cut out the nonsense subsidies and focus on our National Security.

We better. At one time we had 200 ships under maintenance, 200 underway, 200 getting ready. We were easily able to meet mission and maintenance requirements. Then politicians with no concept of operational requirements cut that number down to less than half while scheduling longer deployments. Now we can meet mission, or maintenance, but not both. Something has to give. Unfortunately, in a salt water environment with a steel hull that something is the ship. With the super aggressive China has taken with dramatic increases in military spending particularly with their stance on sea areas controlled by the Phillipines and Viet Nam. Still, we sit still not bothering to adjust our measured response. It takes a damn long time now to build a ship, put it through trials, and have it ready for deployment. The longer we wait to adjust our inventory of ships, the worse it will be.

Clearly we can't afford it, because our government is so bloated we are still operating at a deficit. The same politicians who want to increase our Navy, are unwilling to cut spending, or eliminate programs that do not even have a reason for being, Constitutionally speaking.

we may need to look to upgrading what all we currently have before we build new ships, and don't forgot about that debt ceiling, though politicians be like, "RAISE THE ROOF!"

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