Shipbuilding As A Priority For Our Navy? What A Concept!

The recent firing of the Secretary of The Navy was a reasonable action if one assumes that the members of the administration are subordinate to the President and are tasked with implementing his policies. That the former secretary was resistant to some of those policies is ample reason to fire him, and in fact should have been expected.

“He’s a very good man," Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office, referring to Phelan. "I really liked him, but he had some conflict, not necessarily with Pete. He’s a hard charger, and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships. I’m very aggressive in the new shipbuilding.”

The issue of course is that ship building in the United States has declined to almost nothing, and the design and procurement process for military vessels has become so unbelievably convoluted and slow, that we essentially have no military shipbuilding. When it takes 10 years to design, approve, and build a new navy vessel like the pathetic Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), it is clear that the system needs revamping, or wholesale destruction and rebuilding from scratch!

Any Navy secretary must understand that and work to change the status quo. Instead, Phelan slow-walked it!

So now we have Hung Cao, whose resume is impressive, and whose dedication to the United States Navy is clear.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao Lists Shipbuilding as a Top Priority

Cao said his first and foremost priority is to care for the sailors and Marines of the force.

“We will take care of your needs and make sure you can do the mission,” said Cao, who previously served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the Navy and participated in special operations assignments in combat zones.

Cao listed his second priority as shipbuilding.

“We need the platforms we need in order to defend this country,” he said.

President Donald Trump said the previous Navy secretary, John Phelan, was “an excellent guy” but that he had conflicted with other members of the Trump administration on shipbuilding efforts.

Is he politically astute? Can he navigate the rats nests in Congress and the Pentagon that are filled with craven opportunists whose every waking hour is consumed by the single-minded goal of personal aggrandizement, or financial gain, or both?

Inquiring minds want to know, but keeping corporatism out of the military seems like a good start!

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

| Access Comments