I have only two critiques; one pedantic, the other one serious.
Pedantic - we are well past overusing “warfighter” and all its variations.
It, at least for me, has too much of a connotation with the errors and spin of the last two decades; a misused and abused word used as a cudgel and a deflector.
In any event, we are Sailors and Marines. That should be enough.
Serious - we may be the “most powerful navy in the world” - but we are no longer the largest. With each passing year, the PRC grows in strength.
Numbers matter and we need to have a more open conversation and understanding about the implications of this simply fact over the course of the three to five decades the ships we are commissioning in 2024 will face on the high seas.
Strip away all that “warfighter” word play and the start-hype, and this is a good tone and focus from the CNO. I especially like that she “names names.” Though it is a bit breathless in places for my taste, I’ll take it.
BZ.
Growing the US Navy becomes a problem when it can’t maintain its current enlisted end strength. The Navy missed its enlisted sailor first term recruitment goal by 7,464 In 2023.
Thats a entire aircraft carriers worth and more.
I believe it was ill-advised for her to name names.
It only draws those names closer together.
The worst thing this administration did was undoing Richard Nixon's greatest accomplishment of separating Russia from China.
The neocon chicken hawks in their think tanks do not seem to understand that we cannot fight the entire Eurasian land mass.