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Navies Need Practice
April 3, 2009
There is no navy in the world that poses a military threat to the U.S. Navy or to the United States proper. Even the much improved Chinese Navy is not yet deemed capable of defeating the U.S. Navy in waters off China, much less anywhere near America.
On Tuesday, March 31, the Navy sent some sailors to Ukiah to talk to the public about its plans for expanding its Northwest Training Range Complex. Except that the geographic range of the Complex is not expanding. It goes as far south as the northern boundary of Mendocino County. The Navy has filed an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) because it is changing the training it does. It does not "test" weapons in training, though in my mind using weapons in training is certainly a way of testing them in near-realistic conditions.
Do environmentalists are anti-military activists apologize when they overreact to and misinterpret a situation? No, but then the Navy is not known for its apologies or honesty either. It was a great day for local politicians to grandstand, and legendary politician Mike Thompson gets credit for getting the Navy to explain itself (Mike is a hawk who has always supported high military expenditures). Many legendary local activists got to speak, most credibly considering the circumstances.
The Navy guys emphasized they do not plan to kill marine mammals. Nor do they make winter coats out of puppy skins. Their job is to blast to atoms any other country's navy that gets in the way of U.S. commerce, and to act as a floating platform to destroy designated targets on land, and to conduct similar actions. They actually almost never get to do that. The last big naval battle involving the U.S. Navy was towards the end of World War II, and the last substantial naval battle in the world was during the Falkland Islands War back in 1982, in which the U.S. Navy was not involved.
The U.S. Navy is really big. According to Wikipedia, it is larger than the next 13 largest national navies combined [See United States Navy at Wikipedia].
The real question Mendocino citizens need to ask the local political machine headed by Mike Thompson is: do we really want to go the way of the British Empire after World War II, and of the USSR (Russia) towards the end of its imperial era? Do we need to have a such an expensive Navy, when we can't compete with other nations in basic economic terms? Would not a Navy that is just a little bit bigger and better trained and weaponized than the next largest Navy do us just fine?
And the final problem, if we should come to the conclusion that a Navy about one-fourth of its current size would protect us just fine, is that we are part of larger political entities. Mendocino citizens alone can't just put in a new Congress that wants an economically sound sized military establishment all by ourselves. Even Mike Thompson's congressional district is far larger than Mendocino County. The American voters need honest information about the Navy's capabilities, how they compare to other navies, the true expenses involved, and how that impacts the economy. We need to see beyond the local jobs created by bases and military contracts; we need to see how much good that money would do if it stayed in the pockets of the tax payers. Because the historical examples are grim. We must face up to the fact that the decline of the American economy has causes, and one is that other nations spend less on their militaries, and more on competing with us in the production of goods and services.
William P. Meyers
