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Bottom line up front: its going to cost more to rebuild the Navy. We can spend money more intelligently, but it is going to cost more. That is the cost of three decades of neglect and inviting others to compete. 1. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-04/57091-Shipbuilding.pdf
And the cost is not going to be in shipbuilding. More ships require more people to man them (you can adjust that with some unmanned platforms, but not bigly) and more ships require more maintenance yards, and more training and more operating. All cost more. 2.
And the battleforce size is not an arbitrary construct grabbed out of thin air, numbers like my own 456 ship Navy shipcount are driven by analysis of presence requirements and the size of a fleet that is required to maintain the free seas in peace and win wars when they occur. 3
China is building a capacity driven fleet. Russia is building a capabilities driven fleet. Both seek to undermine/degrade US national interests. They both want to see us exit as the rule-setting/governing world power. We need a larger Navy to thwart their ambitions. 4.
The alternative is stark. They want a centrally controlled, authoritarian based global order where they will set the rules, where they decide who wins and who loses (BTW-we lose in that scenario) and is filled with social scores and face recognition tech to limit dissent. 5.
If you want to avoid that outcome, invest more in the Navy now. It is the best positioned military response to push back on Chinese and Russian activities, operating from free seas without the need to seek permission from local actors. Yes it will cost more in the short term. 6
The alternative will be more costly to humanity in the subverting the concepts of individual freedom and the free exchange of ideas and trade that have done so much to alter the lives of humanity writ large over the past 70 years that the US Navy has protected the free seas. 7.
Final thought. History is going to condemn the fools who talked about "The End of History" and idiotically sought "peace dividends." We'll be lucky to get out of our present predicament with the concept of freedom intact due to their short-shortsightedness. History never ends. 8.
