I see your point. The challenge is that the US establishment firmly believes that American supremacy is both good for the world, and good for America and Ameri

I see your point. The challenge is that the US establishment firmly believes that American supremacy is both good for the world, and good for America and Americans. No president (including Trump the first time) has yet been able to bring in enough true outsiders who were willing to gamble on this proposition to force through this type of change. Consider if you really wanted to cut down on DoD spending, but you also believed that on a whole, American force projection was a good thing, but you just wished we could do so more cost effectively. If you're the big guy at the top pushing down these types of "30% budget cut, go figure it out", you're going to get push back from every corner saying that it's not possible without conceding on some critical capability. As a single person, you could run down some of these claims and figure out which ones are bullshit, and ram your changes through. But you can't manage them all. So now you need more and more helpers to help you sort through the bullshit. As long as you are hamstrung by the belief that maybe, just maybe, it's useful (or worse, vital) to have 11 carriers available (btw, that's a law, not just DoD policy) so that you can have 2-3 at sea at any point, you're going to run into problems trying to ram through straight budget cuts.