Peace Through Strength – Community Driven – Membership Supported
Category: Charting the Course
Charting the Course: Navigating the Future of American Naval Power’ a podcast series that dives into the past, present, and future of the U.S. Navy and its impact on the world.
As the founder of Americans for a Stronger Navy, my mission is to advocate for the naval power our nation needs to secure its interests, project influence, and deter aggression in an increasingly complex world. For too long, discussions about naval strength have focused almost exclusively on traditional, crewed warships. While these mighty vessels remain the backbone of our fleet, a silent revolution is underway—one that promises to redefine naval warfare as we know it.
More Than Just Boats: The Brains Behind the Brawn
What makes these vessels so transformative isn’t just their ability to operate without a crew, but the sophisticated artificial intelligence that empowers them. Both the Sea Hunter and Seahawk were designed and built by Leidos, and they are powered by an advanced software ecosystem called LAVA (Leidos Autonomous Vessel Architecture).
Self-Correction & Resilience: If a system fails or damage occurs, LAVA can reconfigure its mission in real-time. It’s like having a captain who can rewrite the playbook mid-battle without human intervention.
Intelligent Navigation: LAVA constantly processes data from radar, lidar, AIS, and cameras to execute collision avoidance maneuvers in full compliance with international “Rules of the Road” (COLREGS).
Modular Versatility: The same “brain” can be installed across a wide range of vessels, from high-speed interceptors to specialized sub-hunters.
A Fleet of Ghost Ships: The Strategic Advantages
Persistence & Endurance: Without a crew, these ships can operate for extended periods without the need for rotation or resupply.
Reduced Risk to Personnel: Deploying unmanned vessels for dangerous missions like anti-submarine warfare (ASW) preserves our most valuable asset: our sailors.
Cost-Effectiveness: Long-term operational costs are significantly lower than traditional warships, offering an affordable way to expand global presence.
Scalability & Swarming: LAVA enables “swarms” of USVs to coordinate and search vast ocean areas for threats simultaneously.
Looking Ahead: The Future is Unmanned
The US Navy’s commitment is clear. With an expansion from just four small USVs to hundreds projected within a single year, the shift is undeniable. The Seahawk and Sea Hunter have already logged over 140,000 autonomous nautical miles—more than five times the Earth’s circumference.
For Americans for a Stronger Navy, this represents a crucial step forward. Investing in these innovative, autonomous systems ensures that our Navy remains at the forefront of global naval power, ready to face the challenges of tomorrow’s maritime domain with unparalleled strength.
Join the Mission for a Modern Fleet
The transition to an autonomous-integrated fleet is a generational shift that requires steady advocacy and public support. At Americans for a Stronger Navy, we are dedicated to ensuring our sailors have the most advanced technology on the planet to keep our seas free and our nation secure.
Support our efforts today:
Stay Informed: Subscribe to our newsletter for deep dives into naval tech like LAVA and the Ghost Fleet.
Spread the Word: Share this article with your network to highlight the innovation happening in our shipyards.
Advocate: Join our community of maritime supporters and help us champion the 21st-century fleet.
Between January 11 and 15, 2026, China deployed three newly built Shuiqiao-class invasion barges to Nansan Island in the South China Sea. These are not ordinary ships. They are mobile, self-deploying logistics platforms designed to create instant docks, temporary ports, and heavy equipment offload points where no infrastructure exists.
Each barge can drive into shallow water, jack itself above the surface, and deploy roadway systems that turn open coastline into a functioning logistics hub.
This is not experimentation. This is rehearsal.
China is practicing how to build ports on demand.
Why This Is Different
Most people imagine amphibious invasions as waves of troops and armored vehicles storming beaches.
That image is outdated.
Modern war is won by logistics.
Fuel, food, ammunition, spare parts, medical care, maintenance, and the continuous movement of people and equipment matter more than the first landing. Whoever sustains operations longest wins.
These barges are not weapons. They are infrastructure.
And infrastructure is what makes everything else possible.
By deploying these platforms, China is demonstrating its ability to:
Create instant ports
Establish temporary logistics hubs
Sustain forces across islands
Operate without fixed bases
Support heavy equipment transfers
Expand control incrementally
This is how power is consolidated in the 21st century.
My Commentary
If you once doubted China’s intentions, think again.
This is not defensive infrastructure. This is not routine maritime development. This is not a commercial experiment.
This is about control.
This is about reach.
This is about being able to move, land, supply, reinforce, and sustain military forces wherever and whenever they choose.
You don’t build mobile ports unless you intend to use them.
This is not about one island. This is about a system.
Why Americans Should Care
Naval power is not a platform. It is a system.
Ships, ports, logistics, repair facilities, supply chains, workforce, industrial capacity, and governance all matter.
China understands this.
That’s why it is investing in portable infrastructure, modular logistics, and rapid deployment capabilities—while the United States struggles with:
Aging sealift
Fragile port security
Long shipyard delays
Limited surge capacity
Shrinking industrial depth
Vulnerable maritime infrastructure
Power today is not just about firepower.
It is about who can show up, stay, and sustain.
China is building that capability deliberately.
What This Signals About China’s Strategy
This development aligns with a broader pattern:
Artificial islands
Dual-use ports
Civil-military fusion
Expeditionary logistics
Rapid infrastructure construction
Maritime normalization
China is not just building ships.
It is building the scaffolding of dominance.
And it is doing so quietly, persistently, and methodically.
This is how territorial control is modernized.
This Is a Governance Issue, Not Just a Military One
Military capability does not appear by accident.
It is built through alignment:
National will → budgets → priorities → behavior → readiness
China is aligning all five.
The United States is not.
We debate platforms. They build systems.
We argue procurement. They build logistics.
We delay shipyards. They build mobile ports.
This is not about spending more. It is about thinking differently.
What Must Change
America must stop treating naval strength as a niche defense topic.
It is economic security. It is supply chain security. It is alliance credibility. It is deterrence. It is peace.
If we fail to understand how power is now constructed, we will lose it without a single dramatic moment.
That is the real danger.
Not invasion headlines. Not dramatic conflict.
But quiet displacement.
Closing
China just showed us something important.
Not with missiles. Not with warships. But with infrastructure.
And that should worry anyone who believes in a free, open, and stable maritime world.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
A few days ago, we published a piece about rust on Navy ships. Not because rust is the problem, but because rust is the symptom of something deeper: a governance system that doesn’t fund the unglamorous, essential work of maintaining a ready fleet.
Now Captain John Konrad has walked through the 2025 Military Sealift Command handbook page by page in a detailed podcast, and he’s telling the exact same story—from the other side of the hull.
What Konrad Found
Captain Konrad, founder of gCaptain and a licensed Master Mariner with decades at sea, attended the Surface Navy Association’s National Symposium and picked up what he calls “the most important book the Navy publishes every year”—the MSC handbook.
His conclusion after reviewing it: “We are completely unprepared for a war in the Pacific.”
Here’s what the handbook reveals:
$5 billion annual budget for Military Sealift Command—the organization responsible for 90% of everything the military moves overseas, including fuel, ammunition, food, and equipment for all services across all theaters worldwide.
As Konrad puts it bluntly: “Ships are expensive, people. Crewing ships are expensive. Maintaining ships are expensive. And you just can’t do it with a $5 billion budget.” That’s less than 0.5% of the $1.1 trillion defense budget to sustain the logistics backbone that enables everything else.
17 ships laid up—not because they’re broken, but because there aren’t enough licensed merchant mariners to crew them. The workforce crisis isn’t theoretical. It’s operational right now.
A command authority mismatch: MSC is a one or two-star command trying to support operations across all numbered fleets, which are three and four-star commands. When they compete for resources in Congress, they get outranked by everyone.
The Single Point of Failure Inventory
Konrad methodically documents what “running on fumes” actually looks like:
1 Missile Range Instrumentation Ship (to track adversary weapons development)
4 Ocean surveillance ships (we had dozens during the Cold War to track Soviet submarines)
4 Submarine support ships (submarines can’t safely enter or leave port without them)
4 New John Lewis-class replenishment oilers—with only one or two actually deployed due to environmental scrubber requirements making them too tall to fit under 70% of bridges
The oiler situation is particularly critical. As Konrad notes, a former Commandant of the Merchant Marine wrote that we’re 100 tankers short of minimum requirements to fuel the fleet in a Pacific campaign.
This Is the Same Story We’ve Been Telling
In our earlier post on rust, we made a simple point: rust isn’t a Navy problem. It’s an American one.
We showed this governance chain:
National will → budgets → priorities → behavior → readiness
When that chain breaks down, you get rust on deckplates. But as Konrad’s breakdown proves, you also get:
Ships that can’t deploy because bureaucracy matters more than mission
Mariners overworked to the point of tragedy (he references the officer who died by suicide aboard the USNS Amelia Earhart from stress and overwork)
Single ships doing missions that require dozens
A logistics fleet averaging 40 years old with no replacement plan adequate to requirements
The Governance Failure at Every LevelKonrad’s evidence maps directly to our framework:
National will: Americans support the Navy—surveys prove it. But they picture aircraft carriers and destroyers, not oilers and cable repair ships. They don’t know Military Sealift Command exists. They don’t understand that 90% of military logistics moves by ship, or that the Air Force’s entire airlift capacity is less than what China can fit on one modern container ship.
Budgets: When the public doesn’t understand what naval power requires, Congress doesn’t fund it. MSC gets 0.5% of the defense budget to do what Konrad calls “the most important mission” because logistics wins wars.
Priorities: MSC is outranked by every other command. When it’s time to fight for resources, they lose. The result is predictable: deferred maintenance, aging ships, no replacement pipeline, and a workforce crisis.
Behavior: With inadequate funding and low command priority, you get exactly what Konrad documents—ships laid up, mariners burned out, critical capabilities down to single digits, and new ships stuck pier-side because nobody fixed the bureaucratic tangles.
Readiness: We can move the fleet to the Pacific. But we can’t sustain them there. We can win the first battle, but we can’t win the campaign.
What “Lack of Support” Actually Means
This isn’t about public indifference. It’s about invisibility.
The American public sees:
Carriers launching jets (thrilling)
Destroyers shooting missiles (dramatic)
Submarines running silent (mysterious)
They don’t see:
The oiler keeping the carrier’s air wing flying
The dry cargo ship bringing ammunition to the destroyers
The cable repair ship maintaining secure communications
The ocean surveillance ship tracking enemy submarines before they become threats
The submarine tender ensuring boats can safely enter and leave port
What’s invisible doesn’t get funded.
This is why the governance failure at the top of the chain matters so much. If national will doesn’t include understanding what naval power actually requires, budgets will never prioritize the systems that make it work.
Naval Power Is Systems, Not Platforms
We’ve been making this point for months: naval power isn’t platforms. It’s systems.
You can have the most advanced destroyers and carriers in the world, but if you can’t fuel them at sea, resupply them with ammunition, track enemy submarines approaching your bases, repair undersea cables when they’re cut, or crew the ships you already have—then you don’t have naval power. You have expensive hulls that can’t sustain operations.
Konrad’s handbook walkthrough proves this from the logistics side. The platforms get the attention and the funding. The systems that enable them get $5 billion and a two-star admiral.
A Call to Action: DOD and Congress Must Act
We know from surveys that Americans support a strong Navy. They want us to be ready. But readiness isn’t just about how many ships we have—it’s about whether those ships can operate, sustain, and prevail in extended campaigns.
The Department of Defense must:
Elevate MSC to a three-star command so it has the authority to compete for resources
Fix bureaucratic tangles keeping new capabilities pier-side
Properly recognize civilian mariners to improve recruitment and retention
Stop treating logistics as an afterthought in force structure decisions
Congress must:
Fund MSC and the maritime industrial base at levels that match strategic requirements, not political convenience
Expand the Maritime Security Program, especially tankers
Invest in the mariner training pipeline and Strategic Sealift Officer program
Demand readiness reporting that focuses on systems and sustainability, not just platform counts
Acknowledging Captain Konrad’s Work
Captain Konrad has been a persistent, credible voice highlighting America’s maritime readiness crisis. Through gCaptain, his podcasts, and media appearances on NPR, BBC, the New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, he’s documented the decline of our merchant marine, the shipbuilding crisis, and strategic sealift challenges.
His latest breakdown of the MSC handbook is a public service. He’s showing Americans what their Navy actually depends on—and how fragile that foundation has become.
At Americans for a Stronger Navy, we’ve been making the case that rust is a symptom and the system is the cause. Konrad just proved it from the logistics side. His work validates our concerns and strengthens the case for urgent action.
The Bottom Line
Rust isn’t a deckplate problem. It’s a governance one.
Ships laid up for lack of crews isn’t a manning problem. It’s a governance one.
Oilers stuck pier-side because nobody fixed the bureaucracy isn’t a maintenance problem. It’s a governance one.
And a $5 billion budget for the logistics backbone that enables 90% of military power projection isn’t a budget problem—it’s a national priority failure.
Captain Konrad is right: we’re not ready for a sustained fight in the Pacific.
But the solution isn’t just to build more ships. It’s to fix the governance chain that determines whether we fund, crew, maintain, and deploy the capabilities we already need.
The American people support a strong Navy. Now we need DOD and Congress to match that support with the resources, priorities, and leadership that readiness actually requires.
Why This Is Not a Navy Problem, but an American One
This essay explores why the current debate over rust and warfighting readiness is not an internal Navy issue, but a national one. The real problem is not cosmetic—it is systemic. Sailors are capable.The American public is supportive. What often fails is alignment upstream—where Congress, the Department of Defense, and senior leadership decide what gets funded, staffed, scheduled, and rewarded.
Bill Cullifer, Founder
From the Founder
I served on a U.S. Navy destroyer in the 1970s. Some of the hardest-working, most capable people I’ve ever known wore Navy uniforms—officers and enlisted, engineers and operators, deckplate sailors and watchstanders. They weren’t lazy. They weren’t careless. And they weren’t disconnected from the mission.
They were doing the best they could inside a system that constantly forced tradeoffs.
That experience is why I’m paying close attention to the public debate about rust, preservation, and warfighting readiness. Because this is not a Navy culture fight. It’s not a generational fight. And it’s not an internal matter.
It’s a national readiness issue.
What Sparked This Debate
A recent article by LT Spike Dearing, published on the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), argued that today’s surface fleet is being inspected more for preservation than for warfighting. His point was not that preservation doesn’t matter—it absolutely does—but that what leaders choose to inspect shapes what sailors prioritize.
His concern is simple and serious: if warfighting performance is rarely inspected, it will inevitably become secondary.
The article prompted multiple responses in the CIMSEC comment section, including from naval historian and analyst Steven Wills, and was later republished on other defense platforms—signaling that its themes are resonating beyond its initial posting.
This is not a closed-door conversation. This is a public one—because the consequences of readiness, or the lack of it, do not stay inside the Navy.
What Steven Wills Gets Right
Steven Wills made an important point: corrosion is not cosmetic. Rust is not superficial. Preservation reflects discipline. And visible neglect often signals deeper organizational decay.
He’s right.
Saltwater destroys steel. Systems fail. Neglect spreads. No serious warfighting force can afford to treat material condition as optional.
But this is where people often misframe the issue.
This is not a choice between paint and warfighting.
It is about whether the system enables both.
What LT Dearing Gets Right
LT Dearing is also right.
People respond rationally to what leaders inspect.
If leaders inspect surfaces, crews will optimize for surfaces. If leaders inspect tactics, crews will optimize for tactics.
That’s not laziness. That’s survival.
After the USS Bonhomme Richard fire, the Navy made fire safety non-negotiable. Inspections changed. Behavior changed. Training changed.
That’s how priorities shift.
Standards Matter — But Systems Decide Whether They Are Achievable
When defense analyst Brent Sadler says that a clean ship is a well-run ship and a combat-ready ship, he is pointing to something real: discipline, standards, and leadership signals matter. Order reflects process. Process reflects leadership. And leadership shapes behavior.
But that truth only holds when the system supporting those standards is aligned.
A ship can only be clean, disciplined, and well-run if crews are given the time, manpower, training windows, maintenance access, and parts availability needed to meet those standards. Without that support, expectations become performative instead of operational.
This is where the problem becomes systemic.
When standards are enforced without the resources to meet them, discipline turns into distortion. Crews are not failing — they are adapting. And adaptation is not weakness. It is rational behavior inside a misaligned system.
This is why this is not a deckplate problem.
This is a governance problem.
Who sets the priorities? Who controls the budgets? Who defines the metrics? Who decides what gets inspected, rewarded, and penalized? Readiness is not free. It is built—or it is hollowed out—by budgets, manpower decisions, and time allocations.
Those decisions are made upstream.
Sadler’s point about cleanliness is not wrong — it is incomplete without a systems lens. A clean ship should reflect readiness. But that only works when leadership designs a system that makes real readiness possible, not just presentable.
This is why LT Spike Dearing’s argument about what leaders choose to inspect matters. And it is why Steven Wills is right to warn that visible neglect often signals deeper organizational decay. Both are describing the same thing from different angles: signals versus systems.
Signals matter. But systems decide outcomes.
My Experience
When I served, my shipmates worked relentlessly. We fought corrosion while underway. We knew what mattered. But we also knew what inspectors looked for.
So when inspections came, we painted.
Not because we didn’t care about readiness. But because we cared about protecting our command inside the system.
And a lot has changed since the 1970s. The Navy is smaller now and stretched even further. The systems are more complex, the demands are higher, and many of the sailors and officers carrying this load today could be my children. In many cases, they may not even have the time to paint over rust—because they are busy keeping the ship running, the systems online, and the mission moving.
That doesn’t weaken this argument. It strengthens it.
That’s not moral failure.
That’s a warning sign.
Hardworking people will always try to do everything. When they can’t, they triage based on what leadership rewards.
This Is Not a Navy-Internal Problem
This is not about sailors. This is not about pride. This is not about tradition.
This is about alignment.
Sailors are capable.Sailors are disciplined.Sailors are supported by the American people.
What they often lack is consistent backing from those who control resources, manpower, time, and priorities.
Readiness is not a slogan. It’s a system.
And when that system is misaligned, people adapt.
Why Americans Should Care
The Navy does not exist for the Navy. It exists for the American people.
If we want deterrence, we must prepare seriously. If we want peace, we must be credible. If we want stability, we must invest in real readiness—not performative readiness.
You cannot paint your way to warfighting competence.
Implications for the Navy
This debate exposes a dangerous risk: a force that looks ready but is not consistently evaluated for the conditions it will actually face.
War does not care about inspections. Adversaries do not grade on appearance. And there are no do-overs.
Implications for Our Allies
Our allies don’t just watch our ships. They watch our seriousness.
Credibility comes from demonstrated competence under stress—not polish.
The Bottom Line
Preservation matters.Warfighting matters more.Both must be enabled.
This is not about rust. It is about readiness design.
Real readiness cannot be painted on.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Naval historian Trent Hone recently published a thoughtful piece explaining why the U.S. Navy no longer builds battleships—and why, from a warfighting standpoint, it probably shouldn’t.
Hone’s argument is straightforward: the operational logic that once justified battleships has been obsolete for decades. Big guns gave way to aircraft. Aircraft gave way to missiles. Today’s naval combat rewards dispersion, networking, and numbers—not massive armored hulls.
That assessment is widely shared among naval professionals.
But Hone makes a second, more subtle point that deserves more attention: battleships have always carried symbolic power far beyond their military utility. They were never just weapons. They were national statements—about strength, reach, prestige, and ambition.
That symbolic role has not disappeared.
And that’s where the conversation gets interesting.
Two Serious Perspectives, One Shared Conclusion
Hone is a respected scholar and strategist. He holds the Marine Corps University Foundation Chair of Strategic Studies and has written extensively about how naval doctrine evolves with technology and threat environments. His view is clear: building a new battleship today would produce a smaller, less resilient, less lethal fleet than the alternatives.
Others, however, approach the issue from a different angle.
Defense analyst Brent Sadler, for example, has argued that what matters most is not any specific platform but the urgent need to rebuild American sea power at scale. His emphasis is on fleet size, industrial capacity, and the ability to sustain combat operations over time. For Sadler, bold ideas—even controversial ones—are useful if they force the public to confront how far the Navy has fallen behind its global responsibilities.
These two views may differ on specifics, but they converge on something essential:
America needs a stronger Navy.
Not symbolically. Not nostalgically. Structurally.
The Real Problem Isn’t Battleships—It’s Public Understanding
The deeper issue raised by this debate is not whether we should build a new class of battleships. It’s that the American public has lost touch with what sea power actually means.
Most Americans don’t see the Navy at work. They don’t see trade routes. They don’t see chokepoints. They don’t see logistics. They don’t see undersea cables. They don’t see maintenance backlogs. They don’t see shipyard fragility. They don’t see attrition math.
But they do recognize symbols.
Battleships, like aircraft carriers, are easy to understand. They look powerful. They feel powerful. They communicate strength in a way spreadsheets and logistics diagrams do not.
That doesn’t make them good warfighting solutions—but it does make them powerful communication tools.
And the Navy has a communication problem.
A stronger Navy is not only a military challenge. It is a civic one—requiring public understanding, long-term commitment, and new thinking about how we fund and sustain national security.
Why Americans Should Care
The U.S. Navy is not just a military force. It is the invisible foundation of modern American life.
It protects global trade. It stabilizes energy flows. It keeps shipping lanes open. It reassures allies. It deters coercion. It underwrites economic stability.
When the Navy weakens, these systems become fragile.
That fragility doesn’t show up overnight—but it shows up eventually.
Implications for the Navy
Modern naval power is no longer about a few dominant platforms. It is about:
A stronger Navy is not just a bigger Navy—it is a Navy that can take losses and keep fighting.
That requires more ships, more shipyards, more trained sailors, and more public support.
Implications for Our Allies
Allies do not just look at U.S. statements. They look at U.S. capacity.
They ask: Can America show up? Can America stay? Can America sustain? Can America adapt?
A strong Navy reassures allies. A hollow Navy invites testing.
Where We Stand
At Americans for a Stronger Navy, we are not here to pick winners in platform debates. Reasonable people will disagree about hulls, missiles, drones, and fleet composition.
But most serious voices agree on one thing:
The Navy is stretched too thin. The industrial base is fragile. The fleet is too small for its mission set. And the public does not understand what’s at stake.
That is the gap we exist to close.
Not through nostalgia. Not through fear. But through education.
Because a democracy cannot sustain a strong Navy if it does not understand why it needs one.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Two U.S. Navy destroyers just spent weeks tracking, shadowing, and supporting the seizure of a runaway oil tanker in the North Atlantic.
This was not a combat mission. It was not a press event. It was not symbolic.
It was enforcement.
USS Bulkeley (DDG-84) and USS Paul Ignatius (DDG-117) helped support an operation that ultimately boarded and seized a Russian-flagged tanker that had been actively evading authorities across thousands of miles of open ocean.
This is what maritime power looks like in 2026. And most Americans never see it.
What Happened The vessel—initially named Bella 1—was operating as part of what U.S. officials describe as a “dark fleet,” a network of tankers designed to evade sanctions through deceptive practices.
Over the course of its escape, the tanker: • Changed its name • Reflagged as Russian • Painted a new national tricolor on its hull • Altered its identity • Evaded a U.S. naval blockade • Attempted to disappear into the Atlantic
After weeks of pursuit, U.S. forces—supported by Navy destroyers, Coast Guard assets, special operations forces, and allied surveillance—seized the vessel in waters between the UK and Iceland.
The UK provided support. NATO was not involved.
This was a multinational, multi-domain enforcement operation.
Not war. Not peace. Enforcement.
Why This Matters Sanctions do not enforce themselves.
Every time a government announces new sanctions, it implies something most people never think about:
Someone has to physically enforce them.
That means: • Ships • Crews • Surveillance • Boarding teams • Legal frameworks • Sustainment • Allies • Weeks of continuous presence
Sanctions without maritime power are just words on paper.
The Rise of the Dark Fleet So-called “dark fleet” vessels use identity laundering to move oil, weapons, and sanctioned goods across the world.
They: • Reflag repeatedly • Change names • Operate under shell companies • Transmit false data • Disable tracking systems • Exploit legal gray zones
This is modern maritime gray-zone warfare.
And the U.S. Navy is now its primary counterforce.
Attrition Isn’t Just Combat A Navy captain once wrote: “Wars at sea are wars of attrition.”
What most people miss is that attrition doesn’t only happen during wars.
A reader recently reached out with a thoughtful question. After seeing renewed debate around the Jones Act — including critiques from respected analysts and commentators — they wanted to understand how that debate fits with our advocacy for the SHIPS Act and the recently proposed Strategic Seas Act.
It’s a fair question. And it reflects a broader challenge: America’s maritime conversation has become fragmented, emotional, and often disconnected from strategic reality.
Here’s the clearest way to understand it.
The Core Issue Isn’t One Law — It’s the System
America’s maritime problem did not emerge because of one bad law or one bad decision. It emerged because policy, industry, workforce, logistics, and security drifted out of alignment over decades.
The Jones Act, the SHIPS Act, and the Strategic Seas Act each address different layers of that system. Confusing them — or pitting them against one another — obscures the real challenge.
What the Jones Act Actually Does (and Does Not Do)
The Jones Act governs domestic coastwise and inland shipping — cargo moved between U.S. ports along rivers, coasts, and internal waterways.
Its intent is to preserve:
A U.S. maritime workforce
Domestic shipbuilding and repair capacity
U.S. control over domestic trade routes
It does not regulate international or blue-water shipping.
Critics are right about one thing: the Jones Act did not prevent the collapse of America’s international commercial fleet. That collapse happened outside its scope — driven by tax policy, financing disadvantages, flag-of-convenience practices, and long-term neglect.
That critique is legitimate. But it’s also incomplete.
Why the Jones Act Debate Isn’t Decisive
For years, serious naval professionals and analysts have debated whether the Jones Act is a national security asset or a liability. That debate is not new, and it has often been conducted in good faith.
What has changed is the strategic environment.
Recent analysis has reminded us of a hard truth: wars at sea are wars of attrition. Losses come fast. Ships, crews, and shipyards lost early in a conflict cannot be replaced in time to affect the outcome.
That means no maritime policy — Jones Act included — can be judged solely by cost or efficiency in peacetime. The real question is whether the overall system can absorb loss and sustain combat before a war begins.
What the SHIPS Act Is Designed to Fix
The SHIPS Act addresses a failure the Jones Act was never designed to solve: the collapse of U.S.-flag international shipping and sealift capacity.
Its focus includes:
Rebuilding a viable U.S.-flag fleet in international trade
Expanding and stabilizing the pool of credentialed U.S. mariners
Strengthening sealift capacity the Navy depends on in wartim
Restoring American relevance in global maritime commerce
This is where America’s absence has become a strategic vulnerability — and where reform is long overdue.
Why We Proposed the Strategic Seas Act
Even rebuilding ships and mariners is no longer enough.
Modern global commerce and advanced technologies create maritime security risks at scale — from congested sea lanes and port dependencies to undersea cables and logistics chokepoints. When those risks materialize, the burden falls almost entirely on the U.S. Navy and the American taxpayer.
The Strategic Seas Act starts from a simple principle: strategic risk should be managed and shared, not externalized.
It focuses on:
Accountability for maritime risk creation
Protection of ports, shipyards, sea lanes, and undersea infrastructure
Aligning commercial innovation with maritime and naval security
Closing the gap between private gain and public security cost
This is not about shipping rates. It’s about national responsibility in a contested maritime world.
Why We Don’t Lead With the Jones Act Debate
The Jones Act debate often becomes ideological. The most urgent maritime failures today are strategic and systemic.
Our priority is:
Whether America can move and sustain forces at scale
Whether we have the mariners to crew ships in crisis
Whether our industrial base can repair and regenerate under pressure
That doesn’t make the Jones Act irrelevant. It makes it one part of a much larger system.
Why Americans Should Care
Most Americans never see ships — but their food, fuel, medicine, data, and livelihoods move by sea. When maritime policy fails, the consequences show up quietly: fragile supply chains, higher prices, longer crises, and greater military risk.
Maritime strength is not abstract. It shapes daily life.
Implications for the Navy
The Navy cannot surge ships, mariners, or shipyards after a war starts. Civilian maritime capacity is not separate from naval readiness — it underpins it. Planning without industrial and workforce reality invites failure.
Implications for Our Allies
Allies measure credibility by endurance. A stronger U.S. maritime system reduces dangerous dependence on adversaries and turns alliances into real, usable capacity — not just promises.
Closing Thought
The real question isn’t whether one maritime law should be defended or repealed.
The question is whether the United States intends to remain a serious maritime nation — prepared before the first shot is fired, not scrambling after ships are lost.
That’s why we launched Charting the Course: Voices That Matter — a 24-part educational series breaking down how we got here, what went wrong, and what must happen next. Our goal is simple: educate the public, connect the dots, and build the support needed to close the readiness gap before it’s too late.
Americans Support a Strong Navy — and Expect Readiness to Match
While public debate and media commentary continue, Americans for a Stronger Navy looks under the hood — at what Americans are actually saying and feeling when asked directly about naval strength and readiness.
The 2025 Reagan National Defense Survey offers a rare opportunity to move past headlines and examine public sentiment itself. Rather than reacting to daily news cycles, this analysis focuses on the underlying signals Americans are sending about national security, deterrence, and the role of naval power in an increasingly uncertain world.
What Americans Are Saying
The survey shows strong and durable support for military strength. Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe military superiority matters, and seventy-one percent believe global peace depends on American strength. A majority believe the United States maintains superiority at sea.
Naval power remains central to how Americans think about deterrence, stability, and global leadership. This support is not tied to a single region or conflict. It reflects a broader expectation that the United States should retain the capability to protect its interests, allies, and maritime commerce.
The Confidence Gap
Alongside that support, the data reveals unease. Only forty-nine percent of Americans believe the U.S. military could win a major war overseas, and just forty-five percent believe it can effectively deter foreign aggression.
This gap does not reflect opposition to the military. It reflects concern about whether readiness, capacity, and sustainability are keeping pace with the responsibilities Americans expect the Navy to carry. The difference between support and confidence is one of the most important signals in the survey.
Capacity Matters — and Americans Know It
Two findings stand out. Sixty-eight percent of Americans support increased investment in shipbuilding and manufacturing. Ninety-four percent believe the United States needs greater domestic manufacturing capacity.
Americans appear to understand something fundamental: naval strength is not defined solely by ships at sea, but by the industrial systems that build, repair, crew, and sustain them over time. Shipyards, skilled workers, suppliers, dry docks, and logistics networks are not abstract concepts. They are the difference between plans on paper and forces that are ready when needed.
What the Survey Reveals About Deterrence
The survey also sheds light on how Americans view deterrence in practice, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
When asked about Taiwan, seventy-seven percent of Americans say it is important for the United States to help defend the island against Chinese aggression. If China were to invade Taiwan, sixty percent say they would support committing U.S. forces to Taiwan’s defense, up from forty-eight percent the prior year. Majorities also support additional measures designed to deter aggression and strengthen regional stability, including deploying more U.S. military assets to the region, sending additional military equipment to Taiwan, imposing economic sanctions, and establishing air and maritime control measures.
These responses do not reflect a desire for conflict. They reflect an expectation that deterrence must be credible. Americans appear to understand that commitments only matter if the United States has the capacity to back them up.
Deterrence at sea is not abstract. It depends on available ships, trained crews, maintained platforms, secure logistics, and resilient industrial support. When Americans express support for defending allies and preserving stability in the Indo-Pacific, they are implicitly expressing expectations about readiness — and about whether U.S. sailors have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively and safely.
From Public Sentiment to Public Support
Americans for a Stronger Navy is politically neutral. We do not support parties or candidates. But we are not neutral on readiness.
Our role is to articulate what Americans are saying and feeling — and, when appropriate, to state clearly when legislation aligns with those expressed expectations.
Based on the survey data and the readiness challenges it highlights, Americans for a Stronger Navy supports the SHIPS for America Act. This support is grounded in alignment, not politics.
Why We Support the SHIPS Act
The SHIPS for America Act does not dictate naval strategy or force employment. Its relevance lies in strengthening the foundations naval readiness depends on.
It addresses shipbuilding and repair capacity by expanding and stabilizing the yards that build and maintain naval vessels. It supports maritime workforce development by growing the skilled labor base the Navy cannot surge in a crisis. It strengthens industrial resilience and surge capacity by reinforcing the commercial and auxiliary maritime sector that supports naval logistics and sealift. And it promotes long-term sustainability by reducing boom-and-bust cycles that drive cost overruns, schedule delays, and readiness shortfalls.
What This Endorsement Is — and Is Not
Our support for the SHIPS Act is not partisan. It does not imply endorsement of every provision, and it does not replace the need for oversight, accountability, or debate.
It reflects a judgment that strengthening the maritime industrial base aligns with what Americans are asking for — and is necessary to close the confidence gap the survey reveals. If Americans expect deterrence to be credible, then policy should strengthen the capacity that makes deterrence real.
The Signal Americans Are Sending
The survey does not prescribe policy, but it does define expectations.
Americans are saying they value naval strength, deterrence over conflict, readiness that matches responsibility, and domestic capacity that sustains credibility. When expectations and outcomes align, confidence grows. When they drift apart, trust erodes.
Our role is to surface that signal clearly. The data speaks. Alignment is the challenge.
The 2027 Countdown: What the Pentagon’s Delayed China Report Reveals
Bill Cullifer, Founder
Hello friends, and fellow supporters of America’s Navy. Bill Cullifer here with Americans for a Stronger Navy.
On December 23rd, the Pentagon released its annual China Military Power Report. This assessment had been missing all year while Congress debated budgets. Now that it’s here, we understand the delay. The report contains the most direct warning yet: China expects to be able to fight and win a war over Taiwan by the end of 2027. That’s less than three years away.
Why Taiwan Matters to You
As Elbridge Colby, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, wrote in TIME Magazine:
“Defending far-off Taiwan and our allies… is rooted in a practical, hard-nosed assessment of what is in Americans’ concrete economic and political interests. It is about defending Americans’ security, liberties, and prosperity from a very real, and in terms of China’s gigantic scale, unprecedented danger.”
Your Phone. Your Car. Your Hospital Equipment.
Taiwan produces 60% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. A Chinese blockade or invasion would cost the global economy at least one trillion dollars per year.
What the Pentagon Report Reveals
Nuclear Expansion: Stockpile reached 600+ in 2024, on track to exceed 1,000 by 2030.
Space Surveillance: 359+ satellites now track U.S. ships in near real-time.
Cyber Weapons: Operations like Volt Typhoon have burrowed into U.S. power grids for wartime sabotage.
Taiwan Pressure: 3,067 air incursions in 2024—nearly double the previous year.
The Timeline Should Terrify You
The Western Pacific is becoming a “Kill Zone.” As one naval officer put it: “We no longer build the Navy the Navy needs. We build the Navy the accountants will tolerate.”
America is not outmatched; we are under-mobilized. The decisions we make in 2025 determine whether deterrence holds in 2027. Visit StrongerNavy.org to request your copy of our 2025 U.S. Navy Year in Review.
Thank you for caring about America’s maritime strength.
Fair winds and following seas,
Bill Cullifer Founder, Americans for a Stronger Navy StrongerNavy.org
Pete Hegseth’s 2024 The War on Warriors has ignited fierce debate across America. As I write this, decorated veterans like Senator Mark Kelly and Pete Hegseth—both men who’ve served with distinction—are in public conflict.
Americans for a Stronger Navy is not going to adjudicate those battles.
What started as an effort to understand Pete Hegseth’s perspective through his book and interviews evolved into something else entirely. As I watched his past interviews and listened to the three-hour conversation with Shawn Ryan, I found myself repeatedly pulled back to our core mission: the urgent need for a Navy capable of deterring China and defending American interests.
While I agree with many of Hegseth’s principles about building a stronger fighting force and improving resources for veterans, I also recognize that his book and interviews reflect a specific moment in time—the period leading up to and following publication. The debates they’ve sparked are important, and good people disagree on the solutions.
But while we debate internally, China doesn’t pause its carrier production.
Our lane is clear: advocating for the naval power necessary to protect America’s future. While others debate military culture, we’re compelled to focus on what both Shawn Ryan and Pete Hegseth spent significant time discussing in their three-hour interview: the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Our veterans deserve better care than they’re receiving. When the VA is failing the warriors who already served, spending defense dollars on elective procedures while vets wait months for basic care is unconscionable. This isn’t a cultural position—it’s a resource management position. Every dollar matters when China is building carriers faster than we can.
With that stated, let’s focus on what should unite all Americans regardless of political persuasion: “China has us by the balls,” says Hegseth. And by our best estimates, we’re running out of time to do something about it.
The Strategic Reality
The most critical parts of the Hegseth-Ryan interview aren’t about DEI or pronouns. They’re about strategic vulnerability to an adversary that’s been playing the long game while we’ve been distracted.
Here’s Pete Hegseth’s unvarnished assessment:
“When they’ve already got us by the balls economically, with our grid, culturally, with elite capture going on around the globe, microchips, everything—why do they want Taiwan? They want to corner the market completely on the technological future. We can’t even drive our cars without the stuff we need out of China these days. They have a full-spectrum, long-term view of not just regional but global domination, and we have our heads up our asses.”
Here’s the short 50 second YouTube clip, watch it for yourself.
Let’s break down what “by the balls” actually means:
Economic Leverage: Our Grid is Their Weapon
China produces all of our electrical transformers, solar panels, and wind turbines. Not most. All. They’re already embedded in our power grid infrastructure. FBI Director Christopher Wray has publicly confirmed Chinese operatives have pre-positioned malware in our electrical grid and water treatment facilities.
As Wray stated, “the dashboard is flashing red and smoking.”
Think about what this means: In the opening hours of a Taiwan conflict, before a single shot is fired at a carrier strike group, China could potentially darken American cities, shut down water systems, and cripple our ability to mobilize.
Our Navy can’t sortie from ports without power. Our sailors can’t fight if their families are in crisis at home.
Naval Asymmetry: We’re Losing the Numbers Game
Hegseth reveals what Pentagon insiders know but rarely admit publicly:
“In the past 10-15 years, the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China. We lose every time.”
Every. Single. Time.
Why? Multiple factors:
Numerical Inferiority: China’s Navy now exceeds the U.S. Navy in sheer hull numbers. They’re building aircraft carriers and advanced destroyers at a pace we cannot match with our current industrial base.
Hypersonic Missiles: China has developed hypersonic weapons specifically designed to defeat our carrier strike groups. As Hegseth notes: “If 15 hypersonic missiles can take out our 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict, what does that look like?”
Our primary tool of power projection—the carrier strike group—may be obsolete on Day One of a Pacific conflict.
Supply Chain Dependency: When Shawn Ryan mentions defensive technologies like directed EMP weapons (from companies like Epirus) that can counter drone swarms, even he expresses concern: “I don’t know if anything’s coming from China. I don’t know what other weapons we have and what’s manufactured in China or what IP they’ve stolen from us.”
We can’t even be certain our most advanced defensive systems aren’t compromised by Chinese components or stolen intellectual property.
The Microchip Chokepoint: Taiwan is Everything
Why does China want Taiwan? Not reunification nostalgia. Taiwan is the beating heart of the global economy and modern civilization.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) doesn’t just produce “the majority” of advanced microchips—it produces over 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. These aren’t chips for smartphones and laptops. These are the chips that power:
Every advanced weapon system – F-35s, guided missiles, radar systems, naval combat systems
Every AI system – From civilian applications to military command and control
Every modern vehicle – Cars, trucks, tractors, commercial aircraft
Every communications system – Cell towers, satellites, internet infrastructure
Every financial system – Banking, stock markets, payment processing
If China controls Taiwan, China controls the technological backbone of human civilization.
This isn’t hyperbole. During the COVID chip shortage, automobile production halted worldwide. Factories sat idle. Dealership lots emptied. That was a supply chain hiccup. Imagine China with a monopoly, deciding who gets chips and who doesn’t.
American weapon systems would depend on Chinese approval for components.American hospitals would need Chinese permission to operate.American banks would require Chinese consent to process transactions.
This is why Taiwan isn’t just another regional territorial dispute. Taiwan is the strategic fulcrum upon which the entire 21st century will turn.
And China knows it. That’s why they’re building a military specifically designed to take Taiwan before we can effectively respond. That’s why every hypersonic missile, every carrier, every amphibious assault ship they build is calculated toward this single objective.
Salt Typhoon: They’re Already Inside
In late 2024, U.S. intelligence agencies revealed that Chinese hackers operating under the codename “Salt Typhoon” had achieved deep, persistent access to American telecommunications infrastructure.
Not a probe. Not a test. Deep, persistent access.
They’re inside AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile networks. They can intercept phone calls, text messages, internet traffic. They’ve targeted senior government officials, military personnel, critical infrastructure operators.
This isn’t theoretical preparation for future conflict. This is active intelligence collection happening right now.
Combined with their penetration of our electrical grid (FBI Director Wray’s “flashing red dashboard”), their control over our transformer supply chains, their dominance in 5G infrastructure, and their positioning in our water treatment systems—China has achieved the infiltration necessary to paralyze America without firing a shot.
When the Taiwan crisis comes—and it will come—our response will be shaped by what China has already positioned to cripple us from within.
The Indo-Pacific: Where Our Future Will Be Decided
The Indo-Pacific region isn’t one theater among many. It’s THE theater where American prosperity and security will be won or lost.
Consider the stakes:
Economic: Over 60% of global maritime trade flows through the South China Sea. $3.4 trillion in trade passes through the Taiwan Strait annually. If China controls these waters, they control global commerce.
Alliance Structure: Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, India—our entire network of Pacific allies depends on American commitment. If we cannot or will not defend Taiwan, why would anyone trust American security guarantees?
Resources: Critical minerals, rare earth elements, advanced manufacturing—the Indo-Pacific is the industrial and technological center of the 21st century. Ceding this region to Chinese dominance means accepting permanent economic subservience.
Naval Power Projection: If China controls the First Island Chain (Japan-Taiwan-Philippines), American naval power is effectively contained to Pearl Harbor and San Diego. Our ability to operate globally collapses.
This isn’t about the military-industrial complex wanting another war. This is about the economic and security future of our children and grandchildren.
This is Nothing Like Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan
I understand the skepticism. Both Pete Hegseth and Shawn Ryan expressed it in their interview—they’re both “recovering neocons” who supported Iraq and Afghanistan and now recognize those were strategic disasters.
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were wars of choice built on questionable premises:
Nation-building missions in societies we didn’t understand
No vital national interests at stake
No clear victory conditions
Counterinsurgency in impossible terrain against irregular forces
Decades-long occupations with no end state
Trillions spent with nothing to show for it
The potential Taiwan conflict is fundamentally different:
1. Vital National Interests: Taiwan semiconductors aren’t optional. Modern civilization depends on them. This isn’t about abstract concepts like “democracy promotion”—it’s about maintaining access to the technology that runs everything from hospitals to power grids.
2. Deterrence, Not Occupation: We don’t need to occupy Chinese territory or rebuild their society. We need to make the cost of taking Taiwan prohibitively high. That’s classic deterrence, not nation-building.
3. Conventional Warfare: This would be state-on-state naval and air conflict where American technological advantages matter, not counterinsurgency in urban terrain where they don’t.
4. Clear Objectives: Maintain Taiwan’s de facto independence and semiconductor production. That’s it. No “hearts and minds,” no transforming societies, no endless occupation.
5. Alliance Structure: We’d fight alongside Japan, Australia, potentially South Korea and others with shared interests. This isn’t America alone trying to remake a foreign society.
6. Existential Stakes: If China controls Taiwan’s chips, they control the global economy. If they demonstrate American security guarantees are worthless, our entire alliance system collapses. If they dominate the Indo-Pacific, American prosperity ends.
The lesson from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan isn’t “never fight wars.” It’s “don’t fight stupid wars based on lies about stupid objectives in stupid ways.”
Deterring China from taking Taiwan is none of those things. It’s the most strategically vital mission American naval power faces.
This is about ensuring our grandchildren grow up in a free, prosperous America—not one subordinated to Chinese Communist Party dictates because we couldn’t muster the will to maintain our position when it mattered most.
Economic Warfare: The Crypto Scam Example
Hegseth and Ryan discuss an underreported aspect of Chinese strategic operations: systematic economic extraction through crypto scams.
Chinese operatives run sophisticated confidence schemes:
Approach target with small crypto investment opportunity ($15,000)
Deliver real returns quickly ($45,000) to build trust
Escalate to larger investments ($200,000)
When target invests life savings ($1,000,000+), disappear with everything
This isn’t individual crime—it’s organized economic warfare to extract American wealth before potential conflict.
Ryan’s local sheriff’s department just tracked one operator across multiple states to Las Vegas. “It’s happening all over the place,” Ryan notes.
Cultural Infiltration: TikTok and Beyond
As Hegseth observes: “We let in TikTok where they can trans our kids and they don’t trans their kids.”
Whether you agree with his framing or not, the strategic point is valid: China operates TikTok to influence American youth while banning it domestically. That’s not cultural exchange—that’s information warfare.
The CCP understands something we’ve forgotten: The side that controls what the next generation believes controls the future.
The Long Game: China’s Strategic Patience
Here’s what separates China’s approach from ours:
China’s Strategy:
Multi-decade planning horizon
Systematic IP theft and technology acquisition
Economic positioning for future conflict
Military buildup specifically designed to defeat the United States
Letting China manufacture our critical infrastructure
Outsourcing our industrial base for quarterly profit margins
Assuming the international rules-based order will protect us
Internal political warfare consuming our attention
As Hegseth puts it: “China is playing chess while we’re arguing about pronouns.”
The Timing Question: When Will They Strike?
Both Ryan and Hegseth wrestle with a critical strategic question: When will China make its move on Taiwan?
Ryan’s analysis is chilling:
“If I was them, I would put in the scenario into war games and see what the probability is that we’re going to come out on top. I wouldn’t make a move until after this election because they know what’s going on. They see it. Nobody made any weird moves under Trump that I’m aware of. As soon as they got in—Russia went after Ukraine, tensions with Taiwan getting stronger, the border, Israel—everybody that wanted to make a chess move on the board did it as soon as Trump was out of office.”
“If I was them, I would make my move the first day that Trump is in office because that would be the weakest point before we start to see an incline. And if Kamala gets in there, I would wait another four years, just let it keep declining, and that would just let this place get as weak as it possibly can, and then I would pull the trigger.”
Think about that logic:
China runs the scenarios through their war game simulations
They update the probability matrices with current data
Every year we decline, their probability of victory increases
They wait until the optimal moment
The clock is ticking. And we’re not on it.
What This Means for the Navy
Everything Hegseth discusses in the Army context applies with even greater urgency to naval forces:
Recruitment Crisis: The Navy can’t crew the ships we have, let alone the fleet we need. If patriotic families from military traditions are second-guessing service, where do future sailors come from?
Retention Problems: Experienced petty officers and junior officers are leaving. Institutional knowledge walks out the door with them.
Technical Expertise Gap: Modern naval warfare requires STEM-educated personnel. Our education system is producing activists, not engineers.
Readiness vs. Rhetoric: Hegseth mentions sailors in the DMZ in Korea reporting they have “basically enough artillery for 3 days—the rest of it’s in Ukraine.” How many naval munitions have been drawn down? How many maintenance dollars diverted?
Close Quarters Reality: Destroyers, cruisers, submarines—these platforms require maximum unit cohesion in confined spaces over extended deployments. Any policy that complicates that dynamic affects operational capability.
Industrial Base Collapse: We can’t build ships fast enough. China launches a new carrier while we’re still arguing about shipyard contracts.
Why the Navy? Why Not Just “Military” Generally?
Americans for a Stronger Navy focuses specifically on naval power for a fundamental reason: The China challenge is inherently a maritime problem.
Consider the geography:
70% of Earth’s surface is water. The Indo-Pacific theater is defined by vast ocean expanses, island chains, and sea lanes. This isn’t the deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan—it’s a maritime domain where naval power is decisive.
Taiwan is an island 100 miles from mainland China. Any conflict over Taiwan is fundamentally an amphibious assault/defense scenario. China must cross water. We must defend across water. The Air Force matters, the Army matters, but the Navy is the primary deterrent.
The First Island Chain is maritime. Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia—the strategic barrier that contains Chinese power projection is a series of islands. Controlling this chain means controlling maritime access. Losing it means Chinese naval dominance from the South China Sea to the Pacific.
Global trade flows through water. Over 90% of global trade moves by ship. The South China Sea handles $3.4 trillion annually through the Taiwan Strait alone. If China controls these sea lanes, they control global commerce. You can’t secure maritime trade with land forces.
Distance matters. The nearest U.S. territory to China is Guam—3,000 miles from California. You can’t project power across the Pacific with the Army. The Navy is how America reaches the theater. The Navy is how we sustain operations. The Navy is how we defend allies. Without naval dominance, we’re not even in the game.
China understands this. That’s why they’re building the world’s largest navy. Not the world’s largest army (they already had that). They’re specifically building carriers, destroyers, submarines, amphibious assault ships—naval power to challenge American naval power.
They’ve studied American carrier strike groups and designed hypersonic missiles to sink them. They’ve built artificial islands in the South China Sea to extend their naval reach. They’re developing a blue-water navy capable of operating globally.
The Indo-Pacific challenge is a naval challenge. China’s threat is a naval threat. Our response must be naval.
That’s why Americans for a Stronger Navy exists. We’re not generically “pro-military.” We’re specifically focused on the domain where the 21st century’s decisive competition will be won or lost: the sea.
The Resource Allocation Question
Here’s where Americans for a Stronger Navy takes a clear position:
Military resources must be allocated to maximize readiness and deterrence. Period.
That means:
This isn’t about culture. It’s about math.
If we’re losing every war game against China, if our carriers are vulnerable to hypersonic missiles, if our grid can be darkened remotely, if Taiwan is the strategic prize of the century—then every resource decision matters.
The Education Pipeline: Tomorrow’s Sailors
Hegseth spends significant time in both the book and interview discussing education, and this directly impacts naval readiness.
The Navy needs:
Nuclear-trained operators for submarines and carriers
The pipeline is broken. Even if we solve every other problem, we can’t crew a technically complex fleet with graduates who can’t do algebra.
This is where Hegseth’s education critique directly intersects with naval readiness. China is graduating millions of STEM students. We’re graduating activists who think America is irredeemably evil. Who’s going to win that competition?
What We Learned From a Destroyer Sailor
I served on a U.S. Navy destroyer in the 1970s. Several shipmates reached out over the past few years expressing concerns about changes in today’s Navy. I’ll admit I was initially skeptical—were they exaggerating? Were they just resistant to change?
After reading Hegseth’s book and listening to the three-hour Ryan interview, I realize I should have listened more carefully to the warnings. But I also realize something else:
We’re spending so much energy fighting each other that we’re not focusing on the actual threat.
My shipmates on both sides of these cultural debates all agree on one thing: China is the threat. They disagree on solutions to internal problems, but they all recognize the external danger.
That’s where Americans for a Stronger Navy needs to focus.
Let the cultural debates happen. Let good people like Senator Kelly and Pete Hegseth have their disagreements. Our job is to relentlessly advocate for:
Sufficient naval hulls to match China’s growing fleet
Advanced weapon systems that counter hypersonic threats
Industrial base that can actually build ships at competitive speed
Recruitment and retention of qualified personnel
Training and readiness focused on war-fighting
Supply chain independence from Chinese manufacturing
Electrical grid hardening so our bases can operate
Cybersecurity that prevents Chinese infrastructure penetration
Educational reform that produces STEM-capable recruits
Budget prioritization toward capabilities over social experiments
The Three-Hour Wake-Up CalIf the warnings from Ryan and Hegseth about the CCP don’t shake you to the core, I don’t know what will.
Here’s what should terrify every American:
Pentagon loses every war game against China
China’s Navy now exceeds ours in numbers
Hypersonic missiles can sink our carriers in minutes
Chinese malware already embedded in our grid
Taiwan’s semiconductor monopoly is China’s target
Economic warfare extracting American wealth daily
Our sailors report ammunition shortages
Recruiting and retention in crisis
Industrial base can’t build ships competitively
Education system failing to produce technical talent
And while all this is happening, Americans are fighting each other instead of the actual enemy.
Our Call to Action
Americans for a Stronger Navy has a clear mission: advocating for the naval power necessary to defend America and deter aggression.
After reviewing Hegseth’s book and the extended Ryan interview, here’s what we’re calling for:
Immediate Priorities:
1. China Threat Education We will dedicate equal or greater time to educating Americans about the CCP threat as we spend on internal debates. The Ryan-Hegseth interview should be required viewing for anyone concerned about national security.
2. Resource Allocation Focus Every dollar matters when you’re losing war games. We support policies that maximize readiness and deterrence, including ending taxpayer funding for elective medical procedures that render service members non-deployable.
3. Industrial Base Revival We cannot have a strong Navy without shipyards that can build ships. This requires industrial policy, workforce development, and political will.
4. Grid Hardening Naval bases can’t operate without power. American families can’t support deployed sailors if they’re in crisis at home. Chinese control of our infrastructure must end.
5. Supply Chain Independence We must stop buying critical military components from our primary adversary. Yes, it will be expensive. No, we don’t have a choice.
6. Education Pipeline Repair Supporting classical education, STEM focus, and programs that produce technically capable recruits is a national security imperative.
7. Bipartisan Unity on China This is the one thing that should unite Americans across political divides. China is not Republican or Democrat. They’re our adversary, and they’re winning.
What You Can Do:
1. Watch the Full Interview The three-hour Shawn Ryan Show interview with Pete Hegseth contains more strategic analysis than most national security briefings. Share it widely.
2. Contact Your Representatives Demand they prioritize naval shipbuilding, infrastructure hardening, and China competition over internal political warfare.
3. Support STEM Education Whether through donations, volunteering, or advocacy—we need the next generation capable of operating advanced naval systems.
4. Spread Awareness Most Americans have no idea how vulnerable we are or how aggressively China is positioning for dominance. Change that.
5. Stay Focused on the Mission Don’t let internal debates distract from external threats. We can disagree on culture while agreeing on China.
Conclusion: The Enemy Gets a Vote—But So Do We
There’s a military axiom: “The enemy gets a vote.”
While America argues about pronouns, DEI, and cultural issues, China is voting with carrier launches, hypersonic missile tests, infrastructure infiltration, and economic positioning.
While good Americans like Senator Kelly and Pete Hegseth have their necessary debates about military culture, China is running war game simulations and updating their probability matrices for success.
While we fight over what makes someone qualified for military service, China is building the fleet that will challenge our ability to defend Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.
The clock is ticking.
But here’s what the alarm shouldn’t become: despair.
What started as a book review to understand Pete Hegseth’s perspective became a stark reminder of what actually matters: our children’s future. And that future is not predetermined. China’s rise is not inevitable. American decline is a choice, not a destiny.
We Have Advantages China Can’t Match
American Innovation: When we freed American energy production, we became energy independent within years. When COVID hit, we developed multiple vaccines in record time. When we commit to solving problems, we still lead the world in innovation.
Emerging Technologies: Directed energy weapons, autonomous systems, AI-enabled targeting, hypersonic defense systems—American companies are developing technologies that can offset Chinese numerical advantages. The Epirus directed EMP system Ryan and Hegseth discussed is just one example.
Alliance Structure: China stands largely alone. We have Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and emerging partnerships with India and others. China has no equivalent alliance structure. Authoritarian systems inspire fear, not loyalty.
Economic Strength: Despite our challenges, the U.S. economy remains the most dynamic, innovative, and resilient in the world. Our capital markets, universities (when focused on STEM), and entrepreneurial culture are unmatched.
Geographic Position: China must project power across oceans to threaten American territory. We’re protected by two vast moans and friendly neighbors. They have hostile or unreliable neighbors on every border.
The WWII Precedent: In 1940, America had the 17th largest military in the world. By 1945, we had built the arsenal of democracy and defeated two major powers simultaneously on opposite sides of the globe. When America gets serious, we can mobilize faster than any nation on Earth.
This is Winnable—If We Act Now
The Pentagon may lose every war game against China today, but war games assume current capabilities. We can change those capabilities.
We can build more ships. We built 175 ships in two years during WWII. We can revitalize our shipyards.
We can harden our infrastructure. We built the Interstate Highway System, the Hoover Dam, put men on the moon. We can protect our power grid.
We can secure our supply chains. We can reshore critical manufacturing. We can incentivize chip fabrication in America.
We can fix our education system. Classical education is growing. Homeschooling is expanding. STEM-focused alternatives exist.
We can restore deterrence. China only moves on Taiwan if they believe they’ll win. Make the cost prohibitive, and they won’t move.
This requires political will, not miracles. It requires Americans to stop fighting each other and focus on the actual adversary. It requires leaders who prioritize national security over political advantage. It requires citizens who demand action.
And it requires a Navy capable of controlling the seas.
Pete Hegseth’s The War on Warriors contains valuable warnings about institutional problems. The debates his book has sparked are important, and good people disagree on solutions. But the most critical warning in both the book and the Ryan interview isn’t about wokeness—it’s about China.
“They have a full-spectrum, long-term view of not just regional but global domination, and we have our heads up our asses.”
I understand the weariness from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Both Hegseth and Ryan express it—they’re “recovering neocons” who supported wars they now recognize as mistakes. But the Taiwan situation isn’t another optional nation-building adventure. It’s about the semiconductor supply that powers modern civilization, the alliance structure that maintains global stability, and the economic future our grandchildren will inherit.
This isn’t about the military-industrial complex wanting another war. This is about whether America remains a free, sovereign nation or becomes economically subordinated to Chinese Communist Party control.
Americans for a Stronger Navy exists because we understand that naval power is not optional in a maritime century against a maritime threat. We exist because someone needs to focus relentlessly on building the fleet, supporting the sailors, and educating Americans about what’s at stake.
We need a stronger Navy. We need it now. We need the tools, resources, training, personnel, and industrial base to match the threat.
Our veterans who already served deserve the care they earned—not to see their VA benefits delayed while billions go elsewhere.
Our sailors need ammunition, not just for three days, but for sustained operations.
Our children need semiconductor access that doesn’t depend on Chinese permission.
Our grandchildren deserve to grow up in a free America, not one bowing to Beijing because we couldn’t maintain our naval power when it mattered most.
But they also deserve to grow up knowing their parents and grandparents didn’t give up. That when faced with a determined adversary, America remembered who we are and what we’re capable of achieving.
Everything else is secondary to this mission.
Let’s stop fighting each other and start focusing on the actual enemy. Let’s stop despairing and start building. Let’s stop the internal warfare and restore the external deterrence.
The Salt Typhoon hackers are already inside our telecommunications systems. Chinese malware is pre-positioned in our electrical grid. China controls our transformer supply. They’re building carriers while we argue about culture. They’re war-gaming Taiwan scenarios while we debate pronouns.
But we can still win this. We have time—barely—to restore deterrence, rebuild capacity, and secure our position.
The question isn’t whether we can. It’s whether we will.
Americans for a Stronger Navy is committed to this fight. We’ll continue advocating for the naval power our nation needs. We’ll continue educating Americans about the China threat. We’ll continue supporting the sailors who keep us safe.
Join us. The future our grandchildren inherit depends on what we do right now.
Note: In future posts, we’ll address specific topics including:
Detailed naval force structure requirements and shipbuilding timelines
The shipyard and industrial base crisis—and how to solve it
Allied burden-sharing and the AUKUS partnership
Economic warfare beyond military competition (ports, Belt and Road, fentanyl, elite capture)
How to pay for naval expansion and why we can’t afford not to
Concrete legislative actions and how to engage your representatives effectively
Stay focused on the mission. The Navy we need is within reach if we have the will to build it.
About Americans for a Stronger Navy
Americans for a Stronger Navy is dedicated to promoting peace through strength by supporting a robust, modern, and capable United States Navy. We advocate for the resources, policies, and personnel necessary to ensure American naval dominance and the security of our maritime interests.
Our mission is focused, non-partisan, and urgent: Build the Navy we need to deter the China threat.
This review reflects the analysis of one destroyer sailor who served in the 1970s and believes Americans on all sides of cultural debates can unite around the China threat. We encourage readers to form their own opinions on internal military debates while maintaining absolute clarity on external threats.
The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free By Pete Hegseth Published 2024
Recommended for: Anyone concerned about national security, China competition, and America’s strategic position
Key Takeaway: Stop fighting each other. Start focusing on China.
