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At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I place the blame for the Navy’s recent lethal collisions between their state-of-the-art destroyers and huge lumbering cargo ships on the top brass. |
The excuse percolating out of the fog is that the Navy is over-extended and does not have enough resources. According to Wikipedia we have 66 destroyers – not enough? Maybe not for the war industry that President Eisenhower warned us against? Apparently, the destroyers from Navy’s Seventh Fleet are cruising around with zombie-like sleep deprived crews. These are 9,000 ton ships loaded with armaments! Now several former ship commanders are complaining about maintenance and training gaps and Congress is going to conduct hearings in September. Of course, the end-product will be a request for more ships and crews.
I have a suggestion: let’s cut back on the cruising around, allow the crews to get their sleep and spend the money saved on making friends rather than trying to scare everybody?