Category: Shipbuilding News

In a conversation with CDR Salamander, I explore allied readiness, the Strait of Hormuz, burden-sharing and the Navy’s structural crisis.

America’s allies often say the right things about maritime security. The harder question is whether they can still do them.

That “say versus do” gap sits at the center of my conversation with CDR Salamander — a retired U.S. Navy officer, former NATO staff officer, and one of the most respected independent voices in naval commentary for nearly two decades.

We discussed Europe’s shrinking naval capacity, the Strait of Hormuz, burden-sharing, the industrial base, and the structural failures that have brought the U.S. Navy to a readiness crisis that many veterans recognize all too well.

I came to the conversation as a student. I left it convinced that Americans need a wider, more honest debate about sea power, allied obligations, and the real cost of keeping global trade moving. His explanation of the global economy is one of the most important parts of the interview.

Why I Asked These Questions

I started Americans for a Stronger Navy about two and a half years ago. Before that, I spent over three decades in telecommunications and web technologies — building and leading organizations at the intersection of global internet infrastructure, international business, and nonprofit professional management. I traveled to China and Russia during the early 2000s tech transfer era — and to other emerging markets in between — and watched, firsthand, how economic integration and strategic naivety can compound into serious long-term risk. That ground-level view of how these economies operate, and how they think about America, shapes everything I do at StrongerNavy.org.

I am not a think tank fellow. I am not a defense contractor. I am not a retired flag officer. I am a former blue water destroyer sailor who stood watches aboard USS Henry B. Wilson in the 1970s during the original hollow Navy era.

That outsider status used to feel like a liability. I’ve come to think it’s an asset. Fresh eyes — from someone who has managed global organizations, tracked technology transfer across borders, and spent thirty years watching how interconnected systems succeed and fail — can sometimes see patterns that are harder to spot from inside a specialized community. That’s not a criticism. It’s an argument for a bigger tent.

My goal has never been to be the loudest voice in the room. It has been to listen carefully, learn honestly, connect what we learn to concrete legislative action — and help build the coalition this moment requires.

Which is why I reached out to CDR Salamander. If you want to understand where the naval community’s thinking actually is, you start there.

What follows is that conversation. I hope you’ll read it the same way I tried to have it.

Europe’s Readiness Gap

Q: The Royal Navy was significantly larger in 1982 than it is today, and they barely scraped together a task force to retake the Falkland Islands. The RAF was making the case that carriers were obsolete and land-based air could handle everything — they were months away from not having that carrier in the South Atlantic at all. France, the Netherlands, Denmark — Europe had a real, robust military then. Fast forward to 2026. Is that capability still there?

We find ourselves in a situation where there’s a certain inertia to assumptions — we just assume our allies can do something. You see announcements like the French carrier getting underway with a European strike group to help defend Cyprus because the British can’t get a single destroyer underway. And that’s great. But the French have one carrier. Some of their allied units are genuinely impressive — the Spanish F-100 Aegis destroyer is a fine piece of kit — but there just aren’t that many of them. They can do this one deployment. They have no follow-on. They have no endurance.

Even they themselves still carry this inertia of a memory of a military that could do things. And it’s simply not there anymore.

CDR Salamander: You have to be very careful what you take from Europe at face value, because a lot of what they’re proposing isn’t what’s best — it’s what they’re capable of. We make fun of the “strongly worded letter,” but if that’s all you have, that’s what you lean on. If you need things to delay, to push to the right, to wait for a UN or EU meeting — that’s what you’re going to do, because you don’t have the military capability to do anything else.

And even as NATO allies approach that 2% GDP threshold — which is laudable — you have to ask: what can they actually do with that? A lot of our assumptions, everything from mine sweeping to escort ships to underway replenishment, don’t hold up when you look at the actual order of battle. Mike Mullen’s “Thousand-Ship Navy” concept still echoes, but do we really have allies who can fill those billets?

Even in the Red Sea the operational experience has been revealing. CDR Salamander noted that one allied navy’s top-line unit deployed and discovered its hardware couldn’t communicate with a partner nation’s radar systems. And on the British Type 45 destroyers — everybody loves those ships — CDR Salamander observed that at least one was unable to use its main gun against air targets in the Red Sea because of a software capability that had not been purchased, a cost-saving decision that reflected years of accumulated underinvestment.

That’s the “say versus do” problem. A lot of what Europeans are saying cannot be backed up because they have so under-resourced their militaries. They can posture, protest, and stand at sight. That’s it.

Politics and NATO

Q: Is this primarily a capability problem, or is politics a bigger factor in why allies haven’t stepped up?

CDR Salamander: It depends on the nation. I say this as a former NATO staff officer who genuinely loves the alliance. I loved who I served with. In Afghanistan, I spent more time with NATO partner nations than with Americans. But out of respect — because they speak clearly to us — we should speak clearly back.

There are a couple of powerful undercurrents in Europe. One is a latent anti-Americanism that’s part of the political landscape. The other — especially in France and to a lesser degree Germany — is a desire for EU primacy over NATO. They resent American influence in the alliance. Any opportunity to position the EU as an alternative to NATO is taken, because if they can detach European security from the American relationship, the EU becomes more powerful.

You also have national habits. Some allies are simply accustomed to the US carrying the load — and then commenting from the sidelines in ways that play well domestically. And the Israel dimension cannot be discounted. The fact that the US is operating alongside Israel has triggered large portions of the European electorate in ways that make allied political leaders unwilling to be seen as part of this operation — even when it’s clearly in their own economic interest.

This was true under Carter, Clinton, and Obama as much as under Reagan, Bush, and Trump. The Europeans just don’t map their political spectrum onto ours, and right now that disconnect is making things worse.

Why Hormuz Still Matters

A note before this next section: whether you follow naval policy closely or you’re coming to this conversation for the first time, what follows is the most important part of this interview. CDR Salamander explains, in plain language, why the Strait of Hormuz matters to Americans who don’t buy a drop of Gulf oil — and why the global economy is far more fragile than most people understand. It deserves close attention.

Q: What’s the one thing Americans aren’t getting from traditional news coverage about the Strait of Hormuz?

CDR Salamander: The hardest thing to explain — but the most important — is that the US hasn’t relied on Hormuz hydrocarbons for a long time. We’re energy self-sufficient. So when people ask why this matters to Americans, the answer isn’t about our gas prices. It’s about the entire architecture of the global economy.

After the Cold War, decisions were made across North America and Europe to de-industrialize. That doesn’t mean you stop needing manufactured goods — it means you offshore the manufacturing to Asia, and you don’t have to see any of it. That works until it doesn’t. And it doesn’t work when the energy supply chain feeding Asian manufacturing gets disrupted.

The vast majority of hydrocarbons moving through the Strait of Hormuz are going to China, Japan, India, Thailand, Australia. If that energy supply is disrupted, the cost of hard industrial manufacturing in Asia rises to the point where supply chains feeding Western industries start to collapse. The whole system wavers.

And it’s not just oil. It’s fertilizer derived from natural gas — the feedstock that made the Green Revolution possible and held back mass starvation. It’s helium, a byproduct of natural gas production, essential for semiconductor manufacturing and fuel cell development. People don’t see those connections.

What they really don’t understand is that if you want to stop economic migration, you need strong economies in Southeast Asia. If you want a buffer against an expansionist China — and a Russia probing NATO’s eastern flank and an Iran that has spent forty years treating the Gulf as its own private lake — you need viable economies in Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia. That can’t happen if those nations can’t access hydrocarbons at market prices.

Burden-Sharing Without Mercenaries

Q: Asian economies receive the overwhelming share of crude moving through the Strait of Hormuz — China, India, Japan and South Korea among the largest exposed markets. We’re backstopping maritime insurance, deploying carrier strike groups, burning through hardware and personnel. What’s the value proposition for the American taxpayer?

CDR Salamander: Too many people in positions of political power don’t know how money works. They don’t understand interconnected economic systems. And they’re operating in a political environment where maintaining their coalition comes before strategic clarity.

Some of them genuinely believe that contributing to an escort operation in the Strait of Hormuz means being part of the conflict. We saw that when Italy and Spain withdrew base access for operations involving Israel. They’re making decisions out of spite and domestic political calculation — even though the disruption will hurt their own economies far more than it hurts ours.

The argument that the beneficiaries of American naval protection should contribute more is legitimate. But how you structure that contribution matters enormously.

Q: We’ve had financial models before where countries paid for protection. Kuwait in 1987. Japan in 1991. Is there a precedent for a more formal burden-sharing arrangement?

CDR Salamander: I guess in theory it could work, but I’m not a fan of the concept as it’s usually framed. America has a voluntary military. These are the sons and daughters of American citizens who chose to serve their country. If we do anything that even smacks of being somebody else’s mercenary force, I don’t want to be the one explaining to a mother why her kid came home in a box because someone was cutting us a check to do their job for them.

Now — contributing nations don’t have to contribute forces. If Iceland doesn’t have a military but will buy diesel fuel for the operation, that counts. Resources and services in lieu of forces — that’s legitimate burden sharing. That’s the Daughters of the American Revolution model: you don’t need an ancestor who fought at Yorktown. Someone who drove a supply wagon qualifies too.

But pure payment for services rendered? That leaves a bad taste. Why is Bangladesh so active in UN peacekeeping? Because they like the money. I don’t want the United States Navy in that equation.

What the Navy Commission Must Confront

Q: The National Commission on the Future of the Navy has begun its work. If you were advising the commission — not on ship counts, but on structural questions — what are the two or three things they absolutely cannot afford to skip?

CDR Salamander: First, back up and ask why this commission exists at all. It exists because the institutions given stewardship over American sea power have done a poor enough job over the last three decades that Congress felt compelled to create external oversight. So the question isn’t “what ships do we need” — it’s “what structural dysfunctions produced this situation?”

My answers are unsexy. But the foundations of a house are unsexy. Plumbing is unsexy. You can’t have a functioning structure without them.

The first thing is industrial base. The only reason we won World War II is our industrial capacity — including our maritime industrial capacity. Right now we have submarines waiting over a year for repairs. We have dry dock capacity so constrained that ships are receiving depot-level maintenance in 2026 at a rate that would have gotten people fired in 1986. We need incentives and disincentives that grow, support, and sustain a geographically and institutionally diverse shipbuilding and maintenance industry. That will take a decade to fix. Start now.

Second: officer corps incentives. How we promote people and why. The current system is not fit for purpose. If it were, we wouldn’t be where we are.

Third: geographic presence. The Navy has disappeared from the view of too many Americans. San Francisco Bay is geographically ideal for naval facilities and sits at the center of American technology and influence — and we BRAC’d our way out of it. The “Master Base” concept — concentrating everything in San Diego, Jacksonville, and Norfolk — only makes sense to an accountant. It certainly doesn’t make sense in an era of drone swarms that can take out entire airfields. We need a distributed presence.

And underneath all of this: we need a national understanding of maritime power, not just a maritime strategy document. By geography and economy, we are a maritime and aerospace nation. Our budgetary priorities don’t reflect that. Changing them will require taking resources from what is not our comparative advantage as a non-continental land power. We have to be willing to make that fight. We need more Vice Admiral Tom Connollys and fewer officers who can’t get through a sentence without the word “joint.”

The Case for Sea and Air Power

Q: Final question. What’s the key takeaway — for Navy professionals and for civilians who might be listening?

CDR Salamander: There’s an opportunity here, and it’s being missed.

Every carrier deployed for nine, ten, eleven months is proof we don’t have a large enough navy. Every static airfield attacked ashore is an argument for sea-based power projection. Every Houthi missile fired at a merchant ship is a demonstration that the only answer is at sea. Every Chinese fishing fleet strip-mining the territorial waters of a South American coastal nation is a mission for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. Every Russian submarine probing undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic is a reminder of who owns the depths. Every Iranian fast boat swarming a merchant vessel in the Gulf is a test of resolve we cannot afford to fail.

The Western Pacific threat is maritime and aerospace. What Australia, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand need most is help securing their maritime connections and their airspace. That is our lane.

All the argument points have been delivered to us on a plate. We have the receipts. And I’ve been frustrated for a while that the stars are aligned, the case is right there, but too much of our senior leadership would rather talk about “joint” — or worse, say nothing at all.

This isn’t parochial. It’s about the security of the Republic. We have secure land borders. Europe has the population and economy to handle most of its own land and air requirements. We don’t need to find ourselves in another land war in Asia. But we do have a unique, irreplaceable role at sea and in the air.

If conflict comes — something like what we’re watching off Iran right now — the best outcome for America is one where we limit our involvement to sea power and air power. That’s not isolationism. That’s strategy. It’s the argument we should be making every day, because it’s an easy argument to make — and right now, the world is making it for us.

Bill’s Takeaway

A few honest reflections after sitting with this conversation.

CDR Salamander is an exceptional teacher. His ability to move from a 1982 carrier nearly decommissioned by RAF budget politics to a 2026 British destroyer unable to use its main gun in the Red Sea — and have both illuminate the same structural failure — is a gift. I’d encourage every reader to go back through his answers on the global economy section slowly.

What he makes clear — and what most people never connect — is that we do not live in silos. The fertilizer derived from natural gas that feeds billions also underpins the modern technology supply chain. The strong economies in Southeast Asia that buffer against Chinese expansionism are the same economies that prevent mass migration crises from landing on our doorstep. Freedom of navigation isn’t an abstraction. It is the load-bearing wall of the modern world. Remove it and everything above it comes down.

That lesson applies closer to home too. The naval advocacy community has its own silo problem. Veterans organizations, individual advocates, civic groups, and policy voices are all making versions of the same argument — but separately, in parallel, without a unified message. A trade association of defense contractors speaks for an industry. A coalition of veterans, citizens, and civic advocates speaks for the Republic. Those are not the same thing, and the difference matters.

I don’t agree with everything he said. I want to be straightforward about that, because intellectual honesty is the only foundation worth building on.

His objection to burden-sharing — the mercenary framing — is one I take seriously. He made it with conviction and genuine feeling for the men and women who serve. I respect that completely.

But here’s my honest position: The United States is not operating from a position of unlimited fiscal strength. Debt-service costs are rising, readiness needs are growing, and the nations benefiting most from open sea lanes — China, India, Japan and South Korea among the largest — have an obligation to contribute to the cost of keeping them open. That isn’t mercenary. That’s arithmetic.

And here’s where I think CDR Salamander and I are actually closer than it might appear. His own instinct — Iceland buying diesel fuel, basing access, logistics support, the wagon driver — is a barter framework. Contributions in kind rather than cash. I’ll take it. That’s a step in the right direction. The principle that beneficiaries contribute is the thing that matters. The mechanism is a conversation worth having.

We will have more to say about the legislative path forward at StrongerNavy.org in the weeks ahead. Watch this space.

CDR Salamander and I share the core conviction: the United States is a maritime and aerospace power, the Navy is underfunded and structurally undermined, and the window to fix it is narrow. That is enough to work with.

Stronger together. Break the silos.

— Bill Cullifer
Americans for a Stronger Navy | StrongerNavy.org

About CDR Salamander

CDR Salamander is a retired U.S. Navy officer and former NATO staff officer. He has written at CDRSalamander.com for nearly two decades and publishes regularly on Substack. His post “Europe’s Say v. Do Problem” served as the starting point for this conversation.

About Americans for a Stronger Navy

I founded Americans for a Stronger Navy (StrongerNavy.org) after serving as a Quartermaster/helmsman aboard USS Henry B. Wilson (DDG-7) in the 1970s. Our mission is simple: advocate for a properly funded, capable U.S. Navy as a cornerstone of American security and economic prosperity. Full audio of this interview is available at StrongerNavy.org.