Do you ever stop to think about navies? Mostly just guys on boats, right? That’s what I used to think, until I began to notice some things about the U.S. Navy.
Worrying facts about the U.S. Navy
Consider these points:
- The most well-known U.S. precision flight demonstration team is called the “Blue Angels”; they’re not a part of the Air Force, but rather, of the Navy.
- (Quick: What’s the name of the Air Force’s demonstration team?)
- Despite the whole “boats” thing, the Marine Corps falls under the Dept. of the Navy. The USMC is a land force larger than the entire armies of many nations, and equal to about 25% of the size of the U.S. Army.
- Not content with (effectively) its own army, the Navy also has it’s own 2500-man special-operations unit (on top of the USMC’s 2600-man unit).
- (Quick: What’s the name of the Air Force’s special operations unit?)
- The Navy hold about half of U.S. strategic warheads aboard its 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.
- The Navy is developing it’s own anti-ballistic missle defense system.
- Tha Navy has its own intelligence service (“the oldest continuously operating intelligence service in the United States”).
In Summary
If you’re anything like me, you probably started this post with the vague idea that navies had something to do with boats. Upon closer inspection, however, we find that the U.S. Navy (at least) has it’s own army-like capabilities, its own special ops capabilities, its own aviation, it’s own nuclear ballistic missiles, it’s own ABM systems, and its own intelligence service.
Kinda creepy, actually. Clearly, while the U.S. Navy has won many victories abroad, that’s nothing as compared to its triumphs in the arenas of bureaucratic in-fighting, turf-building, and self-promotion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! (And, it’s not just the U.S.: During WWII, the Japanese Imperial Navy conducted independent research into an atomic bomb.)
Clearly, the U.S. Navy’s unofficial slogan should be:
Hey, what are you guys doing? Oh, cool, cool. You know – we can totally do that too – but on a boat!
Addendum: F-22
Since I began thinking about the preceeding facts, I’ve never looked at military news in quite the same way. For instance, the F-22 program was recently killed. Guess who wasn’t getting a piece of the F-22 pie (but who will get the upcoming, and preferred, F-35)? If you guessed the U.S. Navy, give yourself a cookie.
