SNA: Sen Collins’ shipbuilding showdown [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

SNA: Sen Collins’ shipbuilding showdown
By Philip Ewing Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 10:45 am

~snip~
The Senate Armed Services Committee Republican told the Surface Navy Association that the strategic realities of the 21st century, reinforced by DoD’s brand-new strategic guidance, call not for a large number of fun-size warships, but medium numbers of full-size, full-spectrum combatants. Which, she didn’t need to add, should be built at her home-state Bath Iron Works shipyard.

“As many of the Navy’s uniformed and civilian leaders have said over and over again, ‘At some point, quantity has a quality all its own,’” Collins repeated, before making a wry aside about how that ubiquitous Big Navy talking point was originally coined by Stalin.

But she warned that North Korean instability, Chinese bullying in the South China Sea, and other strategic imperatives in the 21st century mean the Navy needs to think clearly about how best to respond. Collins never said the words “littoral combat ship,” but the message came through clearly:

“Building a large number of ships with limited combat capability at the expense of ships of higher capability could well be a Pyrrhic victory,” she said. Collins pointed out that the Navy’s own shipbuilding plan even admits that it will only meet its required number of surface combatants in seven of the next 30 years. “This concerns me greatly,” she said.

More:
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/01/11/sna-sen-collins-shipbuilding-showdown/