A candidate for the presidency needs to have some background in military and naval affairs, either through personal involvement or study.
The comment by Mitt Romney in the last presidential debate quoting a campaign staffer and comparing our number of naval ships today to 1916 was so irrelevant that it shows a dangerous lack of basic understanding of the history and current status of naval science.
First, we have the mightiest navy in the world by far. Since Pearl Harbor in World War II the most important naval vessel has been the aircraft carrier.
The U.S. Navy has 11 atomic powered supercarriers in active service, and two more in the reserve fleet.
The rest of the world combined can't equal that total. China has only one obsolete old carrier bought from Russia and not ready for combat. It is not of the supercarrier class.
Another important class of vessel is the modern atomic powered submarine equipped with ballistic missiles. The U.S. Navy leads in this category also.
It is true that in 2007 (not 2008 as quoted by Romney) the total number of U.S. warships shrunk to a low point. It is also true that the U.S. Navy would like a few more ships. But service chiefs, like other government leaders, always want more resources. With no navy or likely combination of navies capable of challenging our own fleet, and serious annual deficits continuing, any proposal to increase the size of our fleet is fiscally foolish. We fought our last ship versus ship naval battle in 1946.
We also have allies. NATO is a close knit alliance, to the point that different NATO fleets specialize in specific tasks. For example the UK Navy specializes in anti-submarine warfare. When we established a "no fly zone" over Libya the U.S. Navy initially took the lead, then turned the task over to our NATO allies. Wise presidents nurture the NATO alliance. Candidate Romney never mentions it. It is not clear that he understands the importance of NATO to our overall defense structure.
The technology of warfare changes, and any nation's investment in equipment becomes obsolete.
History is full of examples of obsolescence in equipment and in tactics leading to defeat. In our own Civil War, the rebuilding of the Merrimac as the ironclad Virginia, and the parallel construction of the Monitor, instantly rendered all the wooden hulled warships around the world obsolete.
In WWII, France had more planes and more tanks than Germany. France also had the formidable Maginot Line. But the French technology and tactics were both obsolete. France was defeated with ease.
The huge galleons of the Spanish Armada were ultimately defeated by the smaller but more maneuverable ships of Sir Francis Drake.
The emergence of cruise missiles and drone aircraft may render huge aircraft carriers obsolete, just as the aircraft carriers and submarines relegated mighty battleships to a secondary role.
We need to reserve some capital for new technologies, and not overbuild our carrier based navy. It is already bigger than we need for any likely conflict. But Romney is fighting a political battle, not a naval one. Virginia is a swing state and has lots of voters dependent on Virginia's naval installations.
What bothers me is not just the political cynicism of Romney, but the glaring lack of comprehension of matters military and naval. If he is elected, the infamous military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us against will play him like a violin. I do not see him as a competent commander-in-chief.
