Speaking solely in my capacity as a private citizen, I endorse President Phillip McCahill's bid for a second term.
An excerpt from Vice Admiral Christopher Sullivan's letter to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs regarding the composition of the Fleet:
Though it may seem at first glance that Allied naval might is unchallenged in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, it is my considered belief that the fight is not over and that we have instead entered an entirely new phase, both in the current conflict and in all naval combat to follow. Rather than remain complacent with our seeming invulnerability, I believe we should allocate resources away from our heavy surface fleet elements, such as battleships, and instead focus on expanding our force of aircraft carriers, submarines, and destroyers.
The virtues of the aircraft carrier have been amply proven by the war in the Pacific and I shall not waste the committee's time expounding on them further. However, I believe that our continued investment in direct-combat vessels, exemplified by the battleship, is vastly out of proportion to their efficacy in modern naval conflict. Though our navy is the largest and most advanced in the world, it remains mired in tradition regarding its construction priorities and too easily impressed by the size of a capital ship's guns. The United States Navy would be best served not just by scaling back on battleships but completely terminating the construction of future vessels of that class and gradually phasing out all heavy direct-combat vessels currently in service, with the last model to be decommissioned by 1945 at the latest.
Though we remain one of the most progressive naval services on Earth with our early adoption and extensive use of the aircraft carrier, I believe the United States Navy remains woefully behind in the areas of submarine warfare and anti-submarine operations. Submarines serve a crucial role in both targeting enemy naval assets and in disrupting supply lines and it is my belief that we must expand our investment in this area of the fleet to assure American naval supremacy in the second half of the century. With a larger, better-trained force of submariners, I believe we can sever the supply lines connecting Brazil with the European Axis, as well as terminate the supplies and reinforcements flowing to the Imperial Japanese Army in the South Pacific. A subsurface blockade around Japan will also cut the flow of vital resources, including oil, from their colonies to the home islands, and would likely speed the end of the war.
An expanded investment in our destroyers, both as escorts for our aircraft carriers and as submarine hunters, is the final aspect of my proposal. Both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial German Navy have invested heavily in submarine warfare and I believe we must counter their focus accordingly with light, swift escorts mounting modern sonar systems to root them out before they can attack our carriers. With rapid advances in torpedoes and aircraft-delivered ordinance vastly outpacing our own ability to defend against these projectiles, we must abandon the old school of massive cannons and thick plating; instead, we should shift our efforts toward methods of active detection and pre-emptive countermeasures.
While my proposal may seem radical and costly, I believe these measures are essential to naval modernization and I encourage the Congress to act as soon as possible. It is true that there will be a large initial cost in shifting our production away from a heavy surface fleet to a lighter, more adaptable force, but I believe these priorities will actually save tax dollars in the long run and ensure that the United States Navy remains the most powerful naval armada on the planet.