Got Navy?

In May 1983 I had the privilege of serving on the USS-Nimitz (CVN-68), as part of my Navy ROTC training. Today it’s the third oldest aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy. It went into service in 1975. The time it took to put it into service, from order to commissioning, was eight years.

With the Cold War at its hottest in the 1980s, the goal was to ramp up to 15 aircraft carriers. Using the old life estimate of 45 years, to achieve the 15-carrier fleet, you need to start building one every three years. A Rand report states that the life of an aircraft carrier is now estimated at 48 years. Also using the same equation, it said that if we want to maintain a 12-carrier force, we need to keep making carriers at a rate of one every four years. It looks like that’s happening now. The two oldest aircraft carriers—USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) and USS Enterprise (CVN-65), both commissioned in 1961—will be replaced by the USS Gerald Ford (CVN-78) and the USS George HW Bush (CVN-77) next year. There are more planned.

That Rand report also had some other scenarios, such as if we had forces of 10 or 14 carriers. Whatever is decided, it’s a 50-year commitment for each one.

Each time an aircraft carrier goes to sea, it is accompanied by a group of support ships, such as destroyers, cruisers, refueling ships, resupply ships, and maybe a submarine or two. It’s different for each mission. In a carrier task group, you may have 10,000 – 20,000 sailors and marines away at once.

A carrier costs about $5 billion dollars to build and about $150 million to maintain each year. The other ships in that battle group I mentioned above also cost hundreds of millions, or a couple billions of dollars each. You can see, this adds up quickly. So how many of these floating airports do we need? Can we get by with just 10? Or 8, or even 6?

I’m picking on the surface Navy. I could have easily looked at the number of Army personnel, or the number of strategic bombers, or the number of nuclear missiles. They are all expensive. But how many do we need?

It really depends on our foreign policy goals. The role of the military is to enforce the policies of our civilian government.

With each election cycle, the voters have a chance to express what they want their representatives to do. Our Army was designed to prepare for war in two theaters for a period of four years. They are exhausted. The operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are not sustainable without continued funding at over $200 billion per year above the base funding of the Defense Department of $475 billion. There may need to be a draft to keep supplying the Army and Marines with replacement troops. Reservists have been called up for multiple tours.

Instead of a policy of nation-building, let’s say we adopt a new policy of non-intervention. We would release some of our most creative individuals back into the workforce. We would not have run-away government deficits at hundreds of billions of dollars. I don’t know if there would be enough savings to give taxpayers their money back, in the form of lower taxes. Perhaps there would be enough money left over to at least fund existing domestic commitments at current taxing levels? I haven’t worked out the numbers.

We won the Cold War with the Soviet Union without a single direct battle. The Soviets imploded after running their domestic economy in the ground and engaging in a ten-year war in Afghanistan. They tried to propagate their ideology onto a people that didn’t want it. We were the insurgents, supplying the freedom fighters with shoulder-launched missiles. I see parallels with our involvement in Iraq.

Maybe we need to get back to the Monroe doctrine. We have enough issues to take care of in this hemisphere. I believe we started on our empire-building mentality at the end of the 19th century when President Theodore Roosevelt showed how awesome we were with his Great White Fleet of battleships. Our egos were further bolstered by our success in WWII. But it’s time to bring the boys home.

On this Veterans Day, I’m thankful to all the men and women who have served our country. The United States would not even exist today if it had not been for the sacrifice of those who came before us. As civilians, who elect those who make and execute policy, we need to be careful not to put our military into harm’s way needlessly. Let’s be careful and think this through.

Anchors Aweigh!