Ep 084 ”Blood in the Water: The US Navy is Sinking”

2026-06-07

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The US Navy is lost at sea and in the thrall of exquisite platform that be the maritime tombs of tens of thousands of sailors in the coming wars of the 21st century.The acquisition system is broken beyond repair, burn it down.The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems,...

The US Navy is lost at sea and in the thrall of exquisite platform that be the maritime tombs of tens of thousands of sailors in the coming wars of the 21st century.

The acquisition system is broken beyond repair, burn it down.

The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.

The US Navy surface fleet is in tatters and shattered by readiness, maintenance and armament issues that are critical indicators of a navy totally unprepared.

More on the carrier dilemma in Chasing Ghosts Episode #034, WarNotes #10 and Dispatch #006.

Note: This post is published a little early due to my attendance at the Military Operations Research Society Annual Symposium in CO this week.

References:

The Documents Exist: Nobody Assigned Them As Mandatory Reading.

What Would Rickover Do?

Jeff Vandenengel National Policy and the Panoceanic Navy

James D, Hornfischer Who Can Hold the Sea: The U.S. Navy in the Cold War 1945-1960

Gregory Vistica Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy

Michael Junge Crimes of Command: in the United States Navy, 1945-2015

Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st Century

David Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air Power

Jeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy