Chicom naval ambitions outstrip those of US

 Washington Times:

China and Russia have dramatically accelerated their naval shipbuilding and modernization programs in recent years, while the U.S. has struggled to improve its own capacity for warfighting missions and been tagged with a poor readiness rating from national security analysts.

The Chinese have made particularly notable strides, engaging in a maritime buildup that made global headlines a year ago when Pentagon officials sounded the alarm that Beijing’s total fleet roughly 350 warships had surpassed the roughly 300 maintained by Washington.

The U.S. force still vastly outstrips China‘s in terms of real power projection. America, for instance, has 11 active aircraft carriers compared with just two that Beijing has brought online since 2012.

However, the Chinese Communist Party makes no secret of its goal to build a “world-class” military by 2050, and U.S. analysts are increasingly wary that Washington may struggle to keep pace with China‘s rapidly expanding shipbuilding operations.

“They’ve got a lot of shipyards and a lot of capacity,” says Brent Sadler, a retired U.S. naval officer and analyst with the Heritage Foundation. “They’re building lots of ships.”

Mr. Sadler authored the U.S. Navy section of the Heritage Foundation‘s 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength — an analysis that gets updated annually by the conservative Washington-based think tank.

For the second year in a row, the index gave America’s sea service overall scores of “marginal” and “trending toward weak,” with a specific naval capacity score of “weak” for 2022.

“A battle force consisting of 400 manned ships is required for the U.S. Navy to do what is expected of it today,” the index concluded. “The Navy’s current battle force fleet of 297 ships and intensified operational tempo combine to reveal a Navy that is much too small relative to its tasks.”

With regard to capability, the index asserted that the Navy’s “technological edge” is “narrow[ing] against peer competitors China and Russia.”

“The combination of a fleet that is aging faster than old ships are being replaced and the rapid growth of competitor navies with modern technologies does not bode well for U.S. naval power,” it warned.
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The Biden administration is wasting trillions on vote-buying schemes while ignoring national security and the needs of the military.