While American militaryprowess is often depicted as

the most powerful in theworld, the question of whylargely goes unexplained.Sure, we realize that our

capacity for technology andbudget for defense exceedsthat of other countries, butwhat, really, distinguishesthe United States military

from another Westernindustrialized country, like,

say, England? Well, whilethere’s certainly a variety ofanswers, the clearest is this:

our navy.

More specifically, it is truly our collection ofastounding aircraft carriers that gives us the ability toimpose our global presence. To give some context, oneof our aircraft carriers, literally a single carrier, “has a

more powerful air force than 70% of all countries.”

Additionally, just to operateour newest class (the

Gerald R. Ford Class) ofaircraft carriers, it costs$7,000,000 per day. These

aquatic portablemetropolises patrol the

open seas with seeminglyabsolute authority,

tremendously housingcrews of 5,000+ technicians.

The United States of America boasts afull fleet of aircraft carriers, 19 in total.Across the rest of the planet, there are

only 12 other aircraft carriers inexistence. So, America has 150% more

carriers than the rest of the worldcombined. However, all these

impressive statistics aside, we do seemto be having issues maintaining ships,

and I do not just mean aircraftcarriers.

As stated on Freebeacon.com,we are “suffering from an

inability to deploy ships to keyinternational conflict zonesdue to rising maintenance

issues on an aging fleet, thatis increasingly being sidelinedfor lengthy repairs, accordingto military experts and a newgovernment investigation.”

Now, while I think “suffering”may be strong language here, I

do think this poses aninteresting question, since it

does not seem like our backlogof maintenance is likely to

grow shorter in the nearfuture.

In fact, for surface combatant ships,maintenance was finished on schedule only28% of the time last year, meaning that the

fleet was forced to lose a notable 391deployment days. Essentially, the fleet lost

a year on the water simply because theyweren’t serviced in time. Clearly,

something needs to be done, especially soconsidering the current state of global

affairs (think Persian Gulf and Asia-Pacificregions). Yet, I do not, by any means,

intend to inspire fear mongering oranything of the sort. I am merely pointing

out an issue that should be rectified.

Of course, we are doingsomething about it. Actually,

the Navy has recentlyinstituted a series of reforms

that will ideally decreasethese deployment delays. Thatsaid, these same reforms willalso take years to reach their

full effect, indicating thatcurrent deployment delays are

likely here to stay, for themoment at least.