All Our Eggs In One Basket

    As reported in my previous article "It's That Time Of Year"  I reported that the Navy was requesting (and got) 1.1 billion dollars for research on the SSBN-X-class of submarines.  The SSBN-X is a class of ballistic missile submarine slated to replece the Ohio-class SSBNs now in service with the U.S. Navy, the Navy is currently looking to replace the Ohio-class sometime during the 2020s. 

    However, during the last years of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. the Navy went through an enormous shipbuilding program intended to culminate in a 600 ship Navy in order to compete with the Soviets on the high seas. The high point of the 600-ship Navy plan was 594 ships in 1987, rising to 594 ships from the post-Vietnam low of of 521 ships.

     Because of this massive shipbuilding effort during the 1980s, a large amount of the Navy will age out during the 2020s and there is little anyone can do to stop it from happening. Furthermore, with a large part of the Navy being decommissioned it will be extremely hard for the Navy to replace the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and the Ohio-class SSBNs at the same time. Since the SSBN-X has an estimated cost of 6-7 billion dollars apiece the SSBN-X alone would eat up a sizable portion of the Navy's shipbuilding budget, not counting the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers slated to begin replacing the Nimitz-class beginning in the 2015 and ending sometime after 2040.

     Most people might ask what is the solution to this problem? Well, for starters we could have all the Socialists/Communists sent off to Nowhere, USA and have them start a big commune and leave the rest of us alone (that's sarcasm). In reality the solution to ALL of America's budget woes is really quite simple, cut the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Energy, Agriculture, cut about 90% of the Department of the Interior and cut the Department of Homeland Security. If all of this is done the benefits are enormous because we could pay off the debt, have money for defense and best of all have less government. However, the pies de resistance is that all of those things would become the state's responsibility as stated in the 10th amendment to the Constitution which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." lav

     Which ever way the government chooses to go, they must choose quickly, because the U.S. Navy is crumbling before our very eyes.