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What a strange take. SSBNs remain the ultimate weapon and most naval warfare is geared toward either neutralizing enemy SSBNs or missile attack (a Burke can car
by ak217 6y ago
What a strange take. SSBNs remain the ultimate weapon and most naval warfare is geared toward either neutralizing enemy SSBNs or missile attack (a Burke can carry 5+ times more armament than a B-52 and stay on station for months). The Navy has a logistics arm and a spec ops arm, just like the other branches do, but their core capability revolves around SSBNs.
- derefr 6y agoSure, but that’s like saying the Secret Service’s main job is to protect the President against assassination. Sure, they do that — and if their budget were heavily constrained, that’s the one thing they wouldn’t be able to de-prioritize doing — but with their budget as large as it is, they don’t spend most of their time or resources doing that. And, just the same, the Navy doesn’t spend most of its time, budget, or manpower on “naval warfare”! What naval warfare the Navy does accomplish, can almost be seen as a secondary concern to the larger purpose the US government puts the Navy to: serving as a logistics and spec ops arm through which the non-military departments of the Executive can accomplish military goals. Who runs and mans the Hawaii Cryptologic Center? The Navy. Guantanamo Bay? Technically a Naval base. All our spy satellites? Naval. That kind of thing, when you add it all up, costs more money, and has more military members working on it, than all the actual direct war-fighting the Navy gets up to.