MY LATEST FOR OUR PJ MEDIA/TOWNHALL VIP MEMBERS: The Burning of USS Bonhomme Richard and Our Shockingly Brittle Navy.

Small budgets, loss of shipbuilding capacity, and some terrible procurement decisions have forced the Navy to eat its seed corn, and now we must pay the price.

I’m not exaggerating.

In the same article linked above, Robert Farley details the “nightmare that will continue to torture the U.S. Navy for a good long while.”

He writes:

As Jeff Schogol relates, the United States has very few areas in which it could repair the Bonhomme Richard, and no room on the construction schedule to replace it. This has sparked broader concerns about the ability of the U.S. Navy to repair battle damage on existing ships, as well as to replace any wartime losses.

So we probably don’t have the resources to repair Bonhomme Richard, and even if the Navy could scrape everything together, we couldn’t repair her without delaying scheduled maintenance, repairs, and upgrades to other ships in the fleet.

Much more at the link — this one is a deep dive.

So if you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, you can do so here — and don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.