Looking for an answer to the question “Why do we have a Navy instead of spending the money on a bigger Air Force?” I read Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans.
Sadly, the book doesn’t answer my question. Plainly it is bad to have container ships being sunk by pirates or enemy nations, but why can’t they protect themselves with drones that are based on the container ships themselves? Or, rather than spend $5-10 billion on a ship that will be a sitting duck for a drone missile or submarine, why wouldn’t it be more cost-effective to protect shipping with land-based airplanes, such as the AC-130? The author simply assumes that it is good to spend trillions of dollars on a navy.
But maybe the book does explain the two recent collisions between our multi-billion dollar ships and generic cargo vessels:
By reading through a variety of sources (including Clarksons, the “bible” of international shipping), it is possible to estimate that there are between fifty and sixty thousand large commercial ships— bulk carriers, cargo ships, tankers, container ships, chemical ships, passenger and roll-on/ roll-off ships, and liquefied natural gas tankers active throughout the world. … What I felt over the forty years of my career was the way the oceans became more and more full; by some estimates there are four to six times more ships plying the world’s oceans than there were some thirty years ago. If you look at a map of the world from space with the high-density shipping lanes marked in red, orange, and yellow, the strategic highways and choke points are quite clear— red belts through the South China Sea, the Mediterranean, clusters around the Suez and Panama canals, long strips around the bottom of Africa, arrows of red in and out of the Arabian Gulf and through the Strait of Malacca. It is a vast and busy universe in which tens of thousands of vessels of all descriptions are under way at any given moment.
If we are going to invest in these crazy expensive ships do we need to have a peacetime mode where they fully participate in the anti-collision transponder system that is used by commercial ships? Military trucks when they’re out on America’s clogged Interstates don’t operate under different rules from all of the other drivers.
I’ll wait for the conclusion of the investigations. But, it is common for warships to sail under EMCON (Electromagnetic Emissions Control). That is, they turn off the radars, radios transmitters and lights, relying on Passive Electronic Surveillance Measures (ESM) and Sonar to find and track contacts. It is also common, some will say essential, that crew practice such measures in cluttered environments. This is no excuse for collisions, but it is a fact that warships go dark whereas merchantmen don’t — well except smugglers and drug runners of course.
Last thing on this topic that I read was that our plans to create hyper-sonic missiles that can reach any point on earth in 30 minute failed first tests, and it would make world even less safe in several powers joined hyper-sonic missle race, whic will of course happen. Untill than, and maybe when such weapons are created, we need aircraft carriers and drone carriers and ships that carry short and medium range missles and provide stnd-off capabilities and shps that carry troops Modern ship survial is strengthened by all kind of intercept systems. Although militaries are usually getting ready to fight previous wars, navys of the world survived seveal revolutional military technology changes so far. We have large ships because much of the world depends on us to protect shipping and we want to protect shiping in areas we spent much blood and treasure to liberate in the past and thus we need large ships that support personnell for oceanic voyages. Other countries can go by with smaller ships because they do not really need blue see navy and only protect their shores and waters.
A constant sea presence creates our desired posture: the ability to be “provoked” by any new entrant without having to do any provoking. Public sentiment condemns escalation but will tolerate security patrols. So, by removing ourselves during peace time, it means we have to re-assert ourselves during conflict, and it’s a gamble if the public will accept that, or would rather a compromise with concessions to hostiles.
The sea will always provide a base of operations, whereas our land bases throughout Asia, from Arabia to Korea are constantly in political flux, and thus not assured anywhere, except perhaps Australia. Aircraft patrol for entire Indian + Western Pacific already difficult, what happens if Allies/Frenemies deny US airstrips?
Finally, the international shipping industry is not going to act like British Merchant Navy during the blockade. They are going to act the Central Bankers from Game of Thrones: they will do anything to minimizes their losses and align themselves with whatever protection racket poses the most credible threat to their fleet. [See: what Int’l Corp put up with to drill oil and build pipelines.] While our keels are in the water, navigating the same routes they take they’ll be with us.
Would still blame declining knowledge. We finally have an archive of internet comments which lasts long enough to see significant changes in the quality of comments over many years. People really are getting dumber.
The navy is primarily concerned with fighting wars, not so much anti-piracy. A reason a major peer war seems like a weird idea right now is because the USN is big and scary.
You aren’t going to intimidate China into not seizing oil fields, or continue to force all mid-east oil sellers to sell only in USD, with just a bigger air force. You need to be credibly positioned to sink an entire fleet and sustainably rain down death from aircraft carriers.
It is actually in our interest for the Navy to be expensive because its power is enhanced by the barrier to entry the expense creates. Conversely that’s why we stopped developing biological weapons–they were so cheap that we realized anybody could make them, same thing with nerve gas. With these technologies, it was in our interest to disarm and enforce bans. You think there is no ban–after WWII many college and industrial laboratories had the documentation necessary to make nerve gas–not today–that’s a ban. Only nuclear weapons are so difficult to make that we had half a chance of limiting proliferation.
Aside: contrast the Republican posturing against NK with their vehement condemnation of Jimmy Carter’s efforts to limit nuclear proliferation back when it was possible to make a difference.
No defense hardware is cheap or reasonable, but in that context the Navy has a few solid systems. The Standard missile system carried by these destroyers has been developed from a vanilla antiaircraft missile to a theater-based ballistic missile defense. It is valuable as a quick response to a threat like NK.
The aircraft carrier fleet is another story, and they can’t seem to get enough nuclear submarines, so some restraint is called for.