{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2023/10/icymi-george-will-in-the-washington-post-complacency-and-neglect-weaken-the-navy-amid-growing-threats", "ICYMI: George Will in the Washington Post: \u201cComplacency and neglect weaken the Navy amid growing threats\u201d", "2023-10-27", "2023", "2023-10", "Republican", "Senate", "MS", "Roger F. Wicker", "W000437", "www.wicker.senate.gov", "wicker", "https://www.wicker.senate.gov/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Conservative columnist George Will today penned a column for the Washington Post discussing U.S. Senator Roger F. Wicker, R-Miss., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his efforts to improve the United States\u2019 naval deterrent against China.\n\nIn his column, Will highlights Wicker\u2019s work on growing and maintaining the United States Navy\u2019s fleet of surface ships and submarines.\n\n\u201cSen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, wants you to be as alarmed as he is about this: If deterrence, which failed regarding Ukraine, fails regarding Taiwan, this might be because adversaries understand that U.S. leaders have allowed the nation\u2019s defense industrial base to become shockingly short of capacities commensurate with the world\u2019s multiplying threats,\u201d Will wrote. \u201cThe U.S. Navy \u2014 the nation\u2019s principal means of power projection; the answer to the \u201ctyranny of distance\u201d in the Indo-Pacific \u2014 is Wicker\u2019s foremost concern. Production of stealthy, lethal attack submarines, which Wicker calls \u201cthe crown jewels of U.S. military power,\u201d should, he says, be doubled. The Navy has only 49, and Wicker says nearly 40 percent cannot be deployed because of maintenance delays.\u201d\n\nWill also cites Wicker\u2019s assessment of the strategic situation. The Mississippi senator has said frequently in speeches, columns, and opening statements this year that \u201cwe are in our most dangerous security moment since World War II.\u201d\n\n\u201cPresident Xi Jinping has reportedly directed China\u2019s military to be able to attack, blockade or otherwise subdue Taiwan by 2027. Unless the defense industrial base is urgently enlarged, America\u2019s military will be, as some policy experts have observed, like a great football team that can play only through the first quarter,\u201d Will wrote. \u201cHence, Wicker\u2019s conclusion: \u2018We are in our most dangerous security moment since World War II.\u2019\u201d\n\nRead George Will\u2019s column on Senator Wicker\u2019s efforts here or below. Read more about Senator Wicker\u2019s recent work on navy issues here, here, and here.\n\nComplacency and neglect weaken the Navy amid growing threats\n\nOctober 27, 2023\n\nBy: George Will\n\n\u201cThis stadium reminds us of the great battles in which those who came before you fought to defend democracy. Belleau Wood. Guadalcanal. Iwo Jima. Inchon. But what you don\u2019t see here is all the battles that never occurred, all the wars that never erupted \u2014 because American Sailors and Marines showed up. They deterred conflict. They kept the watch.\u201d \u2014 Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, U.S. Naval Academy commencement, 2023\n\nSen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, wants you to be as alarmed as he is about this: If deterrence, which failed regarding Ukraine, fails regarding Taiwan, this might be because adversaries understand that U.S. leaders have allowed the nation\u2019s defense industrial base to become shockingly short of capacities commensurate with the world\u2019s multiplying threats.\n\nThe U.S. Navy \u2014 the nation\u2019s principal means of power projection; the answer to the \u201ctyranny of distance\u201d in the Indo-Pacific \u2014 is Wicker\u2019s foremost concern. Production of stealthy, lethal attack submarines, which Wicker calls \u201cthe crown jewels of U.S. military power,\u201d should, he says, be doubled. The Navy has only 49, and Wicker says nearly 40 percent cannot be deployed because of maintenance delays. So, crews endure grueling operation tempos. Retention falls.\n\nJust to fulfill the 2021 AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) commitment without reducing the U.S. supply of attack submarines, U.S. production would have to be 2.3 to 2.5 submarines a year. Since before the AUKUS agreement, Congress has been providing funds for two a year, but only 1.2 are being built.\n\nToday\u2019s total U.S. fleet is not quite 300 ships. The fleet has generally been under that number for 20 years. A 355-ship fleet, is the fleet size at the end of the Obama administration, is a statutory aspiration, but would be 100 too few. A just-published study by Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain now with the Sagamore Institute, notes that although a Biden administration document endorses 381 ships, the Navy\u2019s shipbuilding budget is consistently much too low to meet proclaimed goals.\n\nA ship\u2019s life is about 30 years. More than half the Navy\u2019s battle force has been in the water for more than 20 years. This, Hendrix writes, \u201cdrives dramatically increased costs to maintain the fleet in good repair. Thus, despite increased budgets, maintenance has crowded out money for new construction.\u201d\n\nShipbuilding facilities sufficient to fulfill the aspirations do not exist and cannot be quickly created. China, Wicker says, has more productive capacity in one shipyard than exists in all U.S. shipyards combined. Such is the U.S. maintenance backlog, one attack submarine was idled for five years. Another, after a 2021 accident in the South China Sea, probably will not be operational until 2026.\n\nWriting in the Wall Street Journal, Wicker and former senator Phil Gramm (Tex.) note: \u201cLike David\u2019s smooth stone that slew Goliath, two Ukrainian Neptune missiles sank the flagship of the Russian navy in the Black Sea. With 400 U.S. Harpoon missiles, costing only 0.3 percent of its GDP, Taiwan could imperil any Chinese warship in the Taiwan Strait.\u201d But munitions inventories are radically inadequate to sustain high-intensity warfighting.\n\nThe U.S. military is experiencing the worst recruiting shortfall in 50 years. Wicker thinks this is related to \u201cthe injection of hyperpolitical culture into our fighting forces.\u201d Imagine what the Chinese military thinks when a Navy secretary says climate change is as important a challenge as recruiting. (The Navy missed this year\u2019s recruiting goal by 7,000 sailors.) The word \u201cclimate\u201d appeared 63 times in the Biden administration\u2019s 48-page 2022 National Security Strategy. The military\u2019s alarming material deficits are perhaps matched by intellectual ones.\n\nPresident Xi Jinping has reportedly directed China\u2019s military to be able to attack, blockade or otherwise subdue Taiwan by 2027. Unless the defense industrial base is urgently enlarged, America\u2019s military will be, as some policy experts have observed, like a great football team that can play only through the first quarter. Hence, Wicker\u2019s conclusion: \u201cWe are in our most dangerous security moment since World War II.\u201d\n\nWinston Churchill wrote that early in 1942, \u201cthe foundation of all our hopes and schemes was the immense shipbuilding programme of the United States.\u201d \u201cImmense\u201d is no longer applicable. The ubiquity of wars throughout history, and the menacing nature of this moment, strongly suggest that we are living in what historians will describe as yet another span of \u201cinterwar years.\u201d History will not kindly judge national leaders who, while complacently producing $2 trillion annual budget deficits, were parsimonious regarding the preparations for war that are necessary, if not always sufficient, for preventing war.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T00:49:26Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2023/10/icymi-george-will-in-the-washington-post-complacency-and-neglect-weaken-the-navy-amid-growing-threats"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8164771609008312, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}