Whither the U.S. Navy

Robert Kaplan is one of the foremost analysts of our military and its strategy. In this month's Atlantic Monthly his subject is the U.S. Navy.

First of all you have to believe that the Navy is still relevant in the 21st century. How else would we ferry soldiers to battlefields? What other force is really so mobile? You don't need the permission of anyone to park a carrier 50 miles off the coast of Iraq.

Then, the question becomes whether we have a Navy that's right for the times; the times will need a military that can defeat non-state armies as well as other nations' armed forces. Kaplan is worried that we don't have enough ships and we don't have enough ships of the right type.

At the end of World War II our Navy had 6,700 vessels. By 1950 we had less than 10% of that - 634 vessels. By 1997 the number was down to 365. And, Former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, thinks we'll be down to 150 if we continue to build only five ships a year.

The biggest obstacle to having the right ships is the Pentagon bureaucracy. It can take decades to get a ship into the water and by the time it is there it will likely not be equipped with appropriate technology.

To have the kind of Navy Kaplan thinks we need - and he does make a strong argument - will cost money, lots of money. He thinks our defense budget will have to go from 4.38% of GDP to 5%. I'm not so sure, as there is probably 1% or more of waste in the current defense budget.