Romney’s comments on naval strength miss the mark on technological advances
Mitt Romney, vowing to expand the Navy, said the U.S. has fewer warships now than in 1916. Back then, a battleship’s main guns had a range of about 20,000 yards.
By comparison, jet fighters flying today off the Navy’s Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can reach targets thousands of miles inland.
Romney’s pledge in a foreign-policy speech this week to ‘restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions’ ignores technological advances that have increased the reach and capabilities of U.S. sea power, according to Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based policy research organization.
‘Using ship count is an imprecise measure’ of naval power, Harrison said yesterday in an interview. ‘In 1916, how many super-carriers and nuclear-powered attack submarines did we have? While we do have a smaller number of ships, they are much more capable. A single attack submarine can project power up to 1,000 miles away.’
Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said in his Oct. 8 speech at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, that ‘the size of our Navy is at levels not seen since 1916’ and pledged to build ‘15 ships per year, including three submarines.’
The Navy intends to buy 10 ships in 2013. Over 30 years, the Navy’s ship purchases will average about 8.9 vessels per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Well at least he just didn’t get his facts wrong and claim today’s Navy is the smallest since 1916.
Nautical and technological advances aside, Romney also was incorrect to assert that today’s fleet size is the smallest since 1916, Harrison said.
The most recent low was in 2007, when the Navy had 278 ships compared with 285 today, according to the Navy’s History & Heritage Command. At the end of 1916, the Navy had 245 ships, according to the command.
Oh nevermind he did. Regardless, wasn’t Bush the president in 2007?
But it’s not like one of Romney’s advisors on naval affairs is a lobbyist for a bigger navy.
‘Our interests now are more geographically dispersed and our economic interests are deeper than in 1916 and the distances to those interests have gotten no shorter,’ said Bryan McGrath, a retired Navy commander who’s now a consultant at Delex Systems Inc. based in Vienna, Virginia. ‘The fleet we have today is not sufficient to cover our interests.’
McGrath said he has provided advice to the Romney campaign, although he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the candidate.
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