‘Golden Age’ In Seapower
WASHINGTON: The Navy sails on the cusp a new “golden age” of seapower despite the fact that it will have one of the smallest fleets in recent history, a top service leader believes.
Navy Eyes ‘Golden Age’ In Seapower, Cuts Or Not
While actual ship numbers have dropped, the Navy has roughly the same number of large warships — cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers — as it did in the “600-ship” fleet of the 1970s, Navy Undersecretary Navy Bob Work told the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference. Over the past decades, the Navy slowly nixed out its smaller vessels from the fleet. But increased multimission capabilities of newer ships like the Littoral Combat Ship and the LPD-17 have allowed service officials to do this.
What is left may be a smaller fleet, but it is one that is light years ahead of older fleets in terms of capability and flexibility, Work said.”This is a different fleet,” Work said. “We have the 600-ship Navy [now]” capability-wise.”
Work’s comments came…………[access full article]
