Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. The long standing US policy has been to mainta

Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning. The long standing US policy has been to maintain enough force to fight a major conflict in both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. It's basically what the British Navy was designed to do, when Britannia ruled the waves and had a globe spanning empire. The Brits basically went broke doing this and mortgaged their position as world hegemon to the US to pay for WWI and WWII. So now, the US has to maintain enough force to patrol the world's navies. (Between WWI and WWII, there was serious talk about the US and British navy duking it out over the issue of the British war debt to the US. There were even naval war plans drafted.)