A war between the United States and China is far more likely in the next 10 years than is commonly understood. But if China defeats the U.S. in that war, Congress will share much of the blame.
On Wednesday, Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Elaine Luria (D-VA) succeeded in their effort to amend the 2023 defense policy bill in the House Armed Service Committee. Their amendment wastes precious dollars by maintaining five of the Navy’s littoral combat ships. As USNI News notes, the House amendment follows similar Senate action. Top line: Congress is failing in its responsibility to prioritize the nation’s defense.
Golden is a Marine veteran who served combat tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Luria is a 20-year Navy veteran who served multiple sea tours.
Both should know better than to force the Navy to spend billions of dollars to maintain ships that have no utility at all against China.
Their amendment also throws more than $1 billion to fund helicopters, transport, and radar planes that the Marine Corps and Navy do not need. The additional helicopters, for example, fly in the face of the Marine Corps’ new strategy against China.
But as for the littoral combat ships, they lack the means to survive against Chinese missiles, aircraft, and submarines. They are expensive, under-armed, and beset by malfunctions. Keeping these ships in service means the Navy can’t divert funds to capabilities that might actually help win a war with China, such as submarines and stockpiles of longer-range anti-ship missiles.
It would be unfair to lay the blame solely at the feet of Democrats. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), for example, offered USNI the ludicrous idea that the ships should be saved so that they can be used to “move Marines back and forth, to do tactical support, this ship has some ability to do tactical support for Marines ashore.” Wittman does not explain how he expects these relatively small ships to perform such a mission while necessarily operating close to a wide range of Chinese weapons platforms. His proposal would only create new graveyards for Marines at sea.
Wittman’s other brilliant suggestion was to sell the ships to foreign allies. He failed to explain why allies would want to spend such sums on junk. Similarly pathetic is fellow Rep. John Rutherford’s (R-FL) rationale for retaining the ships. This seems to begin and end with the fact that the vessels are home-ported in his district.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) nailed it when he said to USNI News: “However one feels about the LCS, there have been some arguments that have been made that I just find deeply troubling. One is, ‘well, we already bought them, so why would we decommission them?’ Good money after bad is about as cliche as it gets. But it is really important at this point. … They consistently break down, and they consistently have incredibly high maintenance costs. So we’re paying money and we’re not getting much in the way of capability. We can save that money, spend it on other things that actually are capable.”
Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the procurement iceberg. As China contemplates war with America, Beijing is throwing money at capabilities that will maximize its means of defeating the U.S. military. Washington, in contrast, keeps throwing money at capabilities at the intersection of inefficiency and irrelevance.
We had better get a grip quickly before service members pay the ultimate price for House members’ military pork.
