S.O.S. for a Declining American Navy

S.O.S. for a Declining American Navy - WSJ
Late last week China confirmed that it is building its first aircraft carrier from scratch, adding to a fleet that includes a Russian-made carrier.
The news cast U.S. military policy in a particularly unsettling light:
While China’s naval power expands, America has deliberately reduced its presence on the seas. 
The Navy—after nearly $1 trillion of Defense Department cuts, in part mandated by the 2011 budget-sequestration deal between Congress and the Obama administration—is already down to 272 ships. That means the U.S. fleet is less than half its size at the close of the Reagan administration nearly 30 years ago (and down by 13 ships since 2009).
...Secretary Carter’s plan implies that the deterrent effect of a constant U.S. presence in the world is less important than the Navy’s ability to fight and win wars with the advanced weapons he favors.
That assumption is mistaken.
We need both the ability to be present, which demands more ships than we have, and the related power to win a war if deterrence doesn’t work.
Even the Navy’s now-endangered plan for 308 new ships was far below the approximately 350 combat ships needed to achieve this aim.
With danger rising around the world, from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, the increasing military and economic threats cannot be ignored.
Here is what an expansion of the Navy to the 350 ships needed to safeguard national security would look like:
• Aircraft carriers. Applying power requires the anti-submarine, anti-surface warfare, surveillance and strike ability of aircraft carriers.
It requires an increase from the congressionally legislated level of 11 aircraft carriers to 16, enough so that we could maintain at least one carrier strike group in the West Pacific, the Persian Gulf, and return powerful U.S. naval forces to the Mediterranean.
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