DAVE MAJUMDAR: The U.S. Navy’s Greatest Enemy Might Be Exhaustion.

“The U.S. combat fleet is already over-stretched,” Seth Cropsey, director of the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute told The National Interest.

“Being short of two Aegis-equipped DDGs that provide ballistic missile defense while North Korea is threatening to launch ballistic missiles at local U.S. targets or allies is deeply unhelpful and regrettably timed. The overall impact on the Navy should be measured not only in the loss of sailors’ lives and unavailability of the ships as they are repaired but in the possibility that requirements have exceeded capabilities so far that the training needed to avoid such accidents has been impaired.”

Bryan McGrath, managing director of the naval consultancy FerryBridge Group, agreed with Cropsey’s assessment.

“Two fewer DDGs—I believe both of which are BMD equipped—leaves a sizable hole in a fleet that is already too small for what is being asked of it in the Western Pacific,” McGrath told The National Interest.

“I imagine that the Navy will have to move ships out of their regular cycles from Hawaii and CONUS [continental United States] to cover down on Pacific requirements.”

It will not be easy to cover for the loss of the two destroyers, explains Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“With two FDNF (Forward Deployed Naval Forces) DDGs out, the Navy would either need to forego some operations, work the remaining 10 cruisers and destroyers harder, or bring ships from Hawaii or CONUS to cover for them,” Clark told The National Interest.

Indeed, the fact that the Navy is forcing its fleet to do more with fewer ships to perform its global mission might have contributed to both collisions.

The value of our seaborne trade increases every year, but the oceans remain the same size and our Navy has shrunk considerably.