“Our adversaries are not standing still,” Rear Admiral Richard Breckenridge testified Sept. 13 about U.S. submarine capabilities to the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee, “and so even though we have an advantage and we have a lead, we can’t sit on our lead.” But not only is President Obama sitting on the United States’ current lead in undersea power, he is allowing it to steadily slip away.

Under Obama’s current plans, Breckenridge told the subcommittee, the total number of U.S. submarines is scheduled to drop from 75 to just 52, a 30 percent decline. “We have to continue to move or we do have the potential, within 20 years, of losing this crown jewel, this advantage that we have in the undersea domain,” Breckenridge said.