MORGAN MURPHY: Time To Make The US Navy The Fighting Force It Should Be

There’s an old saying in the U.S. Navy: “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn’t, paint it grey.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, announced this week, will get plenty of salutes. As he assumes the helm of the world’s second-largest navy, the savvy investor and businessman will also likely be ordering up a lot of haze grey paint.

Phelan is going to have one of the hardest jobs, if not the hardest, in Trump’s second term.

America’s navy is in rough shape.

First off, the United States has long since ceded the title of largest navy to China. We are still the heavyweight champ, with greater tonnage (read: bigger ships), but the Chinese are far outproducing the United States in both commercial and military ship production. America’s battle fleet of 285 ships is dispersed around the world from Djibouti to Guam and all ports in between. China’s ships primarily cruise in home waters.

Secondly, many of the ships America does have are old, leaking, and rusting. Longtime naval officers know that ships rust and often look rough after long deployments. But the current shoddy state of America’s fleet is a direct result of the Biden administration’s dumb policy of declaring war on climate change.

Sailors can’t use toxic (but effective) paint. Shipyards, by merit of being on America’s woke coasts in states such as California, Washington, Rhode Island and Hawaii, are hamstrung by regulations that prioritize climate change and workplace safety rules over national security.