Everything our great Presidents build decades ago is slowly being destroyed by Biden’s regime.
And its recent decision will greatly affect our abilities to counter China’s naval forces. This is despite China’s increasing numbers of blue-water forces, the US navy controlled by the Biden administration is planning to decommission 24 ships some only a decade old.
The Navy said getting rid of those 24 platforms would free up $3.6 billion over the next five years to reinvest in modernization and lethality.
The plan would eliminate a large portion of its Freedom-class littoral combat ships that were originally conceived as lightly armed, fast-moving, coastal patrol ships to be used to combat pirates and other threats around the world.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) told Task & Purpose “China has clearly shown their ambitions in the Pacific: Their aggressiveness toward Taiwan,” she added “The Navy is the reason that we have the world order that we have today post-World War II. We cannot cede that maritime supremacy in the Pacific to the Chinese. It requires our presence and that requires ships, and that requires investment.”
The oldest of these ships is only ten years old. And some of them only recently left drydock and were put into commission. According to the Navy, the plan could free p $50 million per ship per year that could be used elsewhere in the Navy budget.
Many representatives in the congress hall were worried the number of US ships is decreasing compared to China which kept on increasing the size of their blue water forces.
Despite these arguments from the congress, chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Gilday defended the navy’s plan and said that the Navy needs to reconfigure its defense posture to blue-water ships — instead of those that patrol shallow coastal waters, such as the LCS force.
During his visit to the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium in Maryland on Monday, Gilday said “We need a ready, capable, lethal force more than we need a bigger force that’s less ready, less lethal, and less capable.”
He added that the Navy is not just looking to eliminate its LCS class but is also looking to dump five cruisers and a pair of Los Angeles-class submarines, too.
The plan is also to replace the huge reduction with a mere nine new, the Navy would decommission nine Freedom-variant Littoral Combat Ships, five Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers, four Whidbey Island-class amphibious dock landing ships, two Los Angeles Class attack submarines, two oilers and two Montford Point-class expeditionary transfer docks.
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma also blasted the plan and warned it to be sure that “moving forward the Navy must avoid similar acquisition disasters.”
Having a large naval fleet is no guarantee of victory, but as we all can see every time the Dems take control of the White House and Congress, our armed forces are materially undermined, reduced, defunded, and weakened and this all happened with Biden’s watch as it continues to gut our Navy away.
Sources: Western Journal, USNI New
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