U.S. Navy Wants Trump to Start Building Ships

The U.S. Navy is proposing a lofty shipbuilding goal for the incoming Trump administration, boosting their requested budget in the wake of the president-elect’s vow to increase the size and strength of our seagoing fleet. The Navy is looking to build the fleet up to 355 total ships, a steep increase from the 274 deployable ships currently ready for battle. Whether they get what they’re looking for will depend on how tight Congress is with the purse strings.

From Fox News:

The Navy’s 355-ship proposal released last month is even larger than what the Republican Trump had promoted on the campaign trail, providing a potential boost to shipyards that have struggled because of budget caps that have limited money funding for ships.

While shipbuilding companies are seeing stocks rise in the wake of Trump’s election, some in the industry aren’t sure Congress is ready to come off the kind of money the Navy’s proposal would require.

“Boosting shipbuilding to meet the Navy’s 355-ship goal could require an additional $5 billion to $5.5 billion in annual spending in the Navy’s 30-year projection, according to an estimate by naval analyst Ronald O’Rourke at the Congressional Research Service,” reports Fox News.

That’s a sizable chunk of change, no doubt about it.

At the same time, though, our military has been carelessly pruned by the Obama administration for eight long years, and Trump has made it clear that he intends to turn that around. Some of the most worrisome countries in the world, including China, are building up their military capabilities – it would not do for the United States to fall behind, especially when it comes to marine dominance.

A recent poll showed that more than half of enlisted troops disapprove of President Obama’s tenure as commander-in-chief, and their biggest complaint was his refusal to properly fund the military. They are desperate for a president who will stand proudly for our armed forces instead of treating them as an afterthought. Or worse, guinea pigs for social theory experiments.

Whether or not the Navy gets all of their requested ships, they’ll have a commander-in-chief they can respect…and who respects them.