Left Flank

Yes, that's right! Pirates. The US Navy can do a job and entertain.

Lost Nomad's Gar recounts the thrilling tale of how the USS James E. Williams helped North Koreans to retake their ship. But, the dastardly pirates are winning, it seems.

The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday coalition naval forces belonging to Combined Task Force 150 had pursued the pirates into Somali waters and opened fire, destroying speedboats the seized vessel had in tow that were used in the raid.

«CTF-150 responded to a distress call from the tanker Golden Nory, warning shots were fired and the skiffs in tow were engaged and sunk,» a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said by telephone from Bahrain.

There were no reports of any casualties. He said coalition forces had opened fire in the Gulf of Aden.

«The operation is ongoing (to recover the ship) and there are indications a number of pirates are still on board,» the spokesman said, adding that a number of battleships were in the area.

Mwangura said the Golden Nory was carrying the inflammable and toxic chemical, benzene, and was being held off the northern Somali province of Puntland.

Still, for my tax money, in a debate about how the US should spend its defense dollars, I'd take Robert D. Kaplan's argument.

A great navy is like oxygen: You notice it only when it is gone. But the strength of a nation’s sea presence, more than any other indicator, has throughout history often been the best barometer of that nation’s power and prospects. â€ūThose far-distant storm-beaten ships upon which [Napoleon’s] Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world,â€? Mahan wrote, describing how the British Royal Navy had checked Napoleon’s ambitions. In our day, carrier strike groups, floating in international waters only a few miles off enemy territory, require no visas or exit strategies. Despite the quagmire of Iraq, we remain the greatest outside power in the Middle East because of our ability to project destructive fire from warships in the Indian Ocean and its tributary waters such as the Persian Gulf. Our sea power allows us to lose a limited war on land without catastrophic consequences. The Navy, together with the Air Force, constitutes our insurance policy. The Navy also plays a crucial role as the bus driver for most of the Army’s equipment, whenever the Army deploys overseas.

Army units can’t forward-deploy anywhere in significant numbers without a national debate. Not so the Navy. Forget the cliché about the essence of the Navy being tradition; I’ve spent enough time with junior officers and enlisted sailors on Pacific deployments to know that the essence of our Navy is operations: disaster relief, tracking Chinese subs, guarding sea-lanes, and so forth. American sailors don’t care what the mission is, as long as there is one, and the farther forward the better. The seminal event for the U.S. Navy was John Paul Jones’s interdiction of the British during the Revolutionary War—which occurred off Yorkshire, on the other side of the Atlantic. During the quasi-war that President John Adams waged against France from 1798 to 1800, U.S. warships protected American merchant vessels off what is today Indonesia. American warships operated off North Africa in the First Barbary War of 1801 to 1805. The War of 1812 found the Navy as far down the globe as the coast of Brazil and as far up as the North Cape of Scandinavia. Peter Swartz, an expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, observes that because operating thousands of miles from home ports is so ingrained in U.S. naval tradition, no one thinks it odd that even the Coast Guard has ships in service from Greenland to South America.

Great navies help preserve international stability. When the British navy began to decline, the vacuum it left behind helped engender the competition among major powers that led to World War I. After the U.S. Navy was forced to depart Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1992, piracy quintupled in the Southeast Asian archipelago—which includes one of the world’s busiest waterways, the Strait of Malacca. In an age when 90 percent of global commerce travels by sea, and 95 percent of our imports and exports from outside North America do the same (even as that trade volume is set to double by 2020), and when 75 percent of the world’s population is clustered within 200 miles of the sea, the relative decline of our Navy is a big, dangerous fact to which our elites appear blind.

Norman Polmar points out an alternative to producing 12 of the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

While aircraft carriers have proved to be invaluable for U.S. military operations, from the Korean War through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, today many of their traditional missions can be carried out as effectively and possibly more so in some scenarios by other «systems.» These mission areas include strike, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare.

At the same time that the cost of carriers is increasing and the carrier force is below the authorized level of 12 ships, Navy shipbuilding programs are coming under increased congressional and executive branch scrutiny as the littoral combat ship (LCS), new amphibious ships (LPD), and some other ships are suffering massive cost overruns. It is unlikely that - with an average shipbuilding budget of $11 billion planned for the foreseeable future - the Navy will be able to afford building to the current goal of 313 ships. The Navy now operates about 279 ships.

The world situation for the foreseeable future will see a need for additional «carriers» to support U.S. political-military interests.

An alternative to constructing «the next» large CVN-type ship is to procure additional LHA/LHD-type amphibious ships. These VSTOL/helicopter carriers, which can operate the new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter, could carry out some mission that traditionally required a large-deck ship. The LHA/LHD-type ships, of some 40,000 tons full-load displacement, can carry some 1,700 troops for sustained periods as well as operating about 40 VSTOLs and helicopters. These «amphibs» - currently in production - cost about $2.5 billion per ship.

Large-deck carriers are important, but it is unlikely that the U.S. Navy will be able to afford the planned 12 ships or even maintain the current 11 carriers. Alternatives must be considered.

The Navy should get the money. At least it knows how to entertain Americans, assist diplomacy, and not pour dollars and blood into the sand.

As three Talibs brag about how much evil South Korean ransom buys (via Lost Nomad), South Korean hostages not fortunate enough to be kidnapped in Afghanistan or to be recruited from a rich congregation in Seoul, have languished in limbo since May, 2007.

Of course unlike the 23 Christian missionaries and Kim-Sun-il for that matter, the 4 Koreans in Somalia aren?t getting that much media attention, and as a result the Korean government may have decided to ?forget? about the hostages and hope that the problem will go away.

Rather than a matter of public support for dumb evangelicals, perhaps it's cost-benefit analysis. It's a matter of how to use taxpayer won most wisely. Four sailors just can't give Seoul the sort of anti-American bang for the won - that keeps on killing - blundering into a Muslim battlefront can.