600-ship Navy
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The 600 Ship Navy was a plan put forth as a campaign plank by Ronald Reagan in 1980 to rebuild the United States Navy to its former size after post-Vietnam cutbacks. It was one of the ideas to rebuild the whole armed forces.
The programme included:
- Recommisioning the Iowa-class battleships.
- Keeping older ships in service longer.
- A large new construction program.
The idea was supported by John F. Lehman who became Reagan's Secretary of the Navy
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Vietnam
Main article: Vietnam War
The idea behind the 600-ship navy can be traced back to the Vietnam War. As is so often the case during times of war the four main branches of the armed service—Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Forces—rapidly expanded to meet the demands placed on them. In 1975, North Vietnamese troops seized control of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City), and as a result thousands of political refugees and Americans were evacuated. Shortly thereafter South Vietnam became a communist nation.
1975–1980
With the fall of Saigon and the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam came a loss of prestige in America's armed forces. Morale was at an all time low, especially since the United States is not a nation accustomed to losing wars. Adding insult to injury, the Soviet Union, which had been quietly supporting North Vietnam, began staging their naval vessels from former U.S. ports in South Vietnam. Building on this gain, Soviet vessels began to sail in all seven seas with increased vigor, and even ventured into the Gulf of Mexico. Soviet forces also stepped up infantry, armour and air force deployments in Eastern Europe. By 1978 Admiral James L. Holloway III concluded that the United States Navy had a very slim margin over its Soviet counterpart.
The Reagan Administration
It was against this backdrop in 1980 that the United States began an election year. Ronald Reagan, a Republican, ran the presidential race on the platform of improving the armed service, which appealed to the American spirit. Under the programs put forth by the President Reagan, the overseas strategic retaliation arm was strengthened, the development of new and exotic weaponry like the B-1B bomber, the Bradley fighting vehicle, and the Abrams tank were all completed and rolled out.
But it was the Navy that would see the largest benefit of the rebuilding. Under the Reagan Administration, the first of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines was completed. Construction on the Nimitz class of supercarriers and Los Angeles-class attack submarines were dramatically stepped up. The revolutionary, new Aegis combat system was installed on the up-and-coming Ticonderoga-class ships, production of which was also stepped up. And the old but venerable Iowa-class battleships were all recommissioned and refitted with AGM-84 Harpoon, BGM-109 Tomahawk, and Phalanx CIWS system capabilities. The first Harpoons, the first Tomahawks, and the AGM-88 HARM missiles all debuted on the navy's ships. Naval aviation was stepped up with the introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet, along with improved versions of the EA-6 Prowler electronic countermeasure aircraft, the A-6 Intruder and the F-14 Tomcat.
These weapons and technologies helped put the United States Navy back on top during the Cold War, and they also helped inspire a change of strategy. Up till now, the U.S. fleet's primary job was to passively defend America's coast and protect its Sea Lines Of Communication (SLOC) to and from Europe. Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, and later Admiral James D. Watkins, argued that the Navy should take an active role in the world by being able to mount offensives around Europe and in the Far East, which would force the Soviet Union to wage any "hot" war on two fronts, a strategically distasteful situation.
Watkins and Lehman, who were good at public relations, sold the nation and Congress on the necessity of having a "600-Ship Navy". While much of the increases did not reach the full deployment, by 1990 the United States Navy was by far the largest in the world, with over 100 submarines and 15 carrier battle groups.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the lack of a perceived threat against the United States, several of the Reagan Administration's policies and plans were scaled back or abandoned, such as the "600-Ship Navy". U.S. bases across Europe and the United States were slowly decommissioned and closed; others were mothballed. In the Navy, this resulted in the retirement of several older carriers, the decommissioning of all four of the Iowa-class battleships (two of them permanently) and the cancellation of the remaining Seawolf-class submarines.
The post-9/11 era has seen an increase in the defense budget for the American armed services, and has helped enable the United States Navy to commission some of its next-generation Virginia-class submarines though support in the government is mixed for the new ships.
