Ghost of a flea

There is also the matter of striking power. Remember that the US Fleet carriers have no match anywhere in the world. And that few navies have ships to match the Aegis-class cruisers. Most navies have sea protection capabilities, and our own navy is losing even that capability. The US Navy retains, and is one of the few navies to do this, the capability to project power across the planet. However, the relative decline of numbers is a concern...does that mean capabilities decline accordingly?

This last issue is, it seems to me, the big question. There a threshold number of ships beyond which the navy remains capable of retaining necessary capabilities but what that number might be is beyond me. More important, it seems likely that the people charged with making and implementing policy connected to that magic number cannot themselves be certain. I would rather they erred on the side of caution.

I am most impressed with the big surface ships and especially the super-carriers. While it is possible my imagination is still stuck back in the Falklands exclusion zone (and my loyalty to the UK's SSN manufacturers) I remain of the opinion the West's ace-in-the-hole are U.S. and British SSNs. Whatever the PRC's Taiwan Straight strategy might be, for example, I do not see how they can count on moving anything by the SSNs which are presumably on permanent station in the area.