I MEAN, WHY WOULDN’T YOU, THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE WARSHIPS: CDR Salamander: Arm the Auxiliaries: Just Make it Happen.

Due to program management that progresses at the speed of smell and creates more board seats for recently retired four-stars than actual assets that displace water, we’ve run out of time for theoretical ‘offsets’ or the latest flavor of magic beans.

Nope. Time to walk away from the intellectual habits that painted us in this corner and look at what we can do to take action NOW to enhance the combat utility of what we have, with what we have.

We don’t have to look far. One of the first steps we must take is to arm the auxiliaries. In the generations after the Vietnam War, we were lulled into accepting the ‘green-eyeshade’ logic of saving money by converting former USS ships to USNS, leaving them unarmed. What pennies we may save in peace from that mindset will cost of bricks of gold at war.

The seas are no longer ours, if they ever really were. Our few replenishment ships have always been High Value Unit, it is time to start treating them like one. We cannot afford to lose any of the few that we have—but we seem to be inviting that exact event.

There’s been a lot of criminal negligence regarding our naval posture. We need to fix it as much as we can, as fast as we can.