| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
While important differences exist, the first decade of the twenty-first century paralleled the 1970s for the Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy. U.S. armed forces were embroiled in extended and expensive counterinsurgency wars. American military equipment was growing old, budgets were tight, and extended projections called for significant decreases in the nation's armed forces, just as the main prospective military adversary was both rapidly modernizing and expanding its forces, particularly its navy. "From 1962 to 1972, the navy had programmed the construction of 42 ships per year, but between 1968 and 1975 only 12 ships, or less than a third as many per year, were programmed. In 1975, given the age of ships already at sea, and the navy-expected service life for a warship of 25-30 years, the service anticipated retiring about 4 percent of the active fleet each year."1 The Soviets were extending their defensive perimeter from two to three thousand kilometers.2 Today, the Chinese suggest extending their defensive perimeter from the "first island chain," enclosing the East and South China Seas, to the second, bounded by the Marianas, three thousand kilometers from the Chinese coast.3 In the 1970s, the United States questioned its own ability to fight forward, defend allies, and achieve objectives -as many defense analysts and many in the Navy do now.
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