This walking-dead talking point—that the navy that weighs the most wins—finds special favor among those averse to devoting more funding and resources to shipbuilding.
It’s a kind of rhetorical fudge factor, letting skeptics argue that because the U.S. Navy outweighs likely antagonists, it’s therefore predestined to triumph—even though Congress and presidential administrations have shortchanged shipbuilding accounts for decades. All is well.
Well, no. You don’t hear this undead talking point much anymore, thankfully, now that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has surpassed the U.S. Navy by ship count, a margin that will only widen in the coming years, while at the same time narrowing the gap in tonnage.
Numbers and tonnage could ultimately be on China’s side. Sobriety may have taken hold regarding the naval balance. Admitting you have a problem represents the first step toward finding a solution.
And we do have a problem. This old, sore subject comes to mind now because of a story over at The War Zone last week spotlighting the disparity between U.S. and Chinese shipbuilding capacity.
Joe Trevithick pores over a slide from an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) presentation about the future of transpacific strategic competition. The slide purports to show that China can manufacture over two hundred times the shipping the United States can, measured by tonnage.
Source: 19FortyFive - YouTube