U.S. Naval Readiness and the South China Sea
As a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a WWII history buff, my husband Mitch has been an avid follower of the changing fortunes of the U.S. Naval fleet. Mitch’s knowledge helped us when we wrote the screenplay LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, which was a 2005 Nicholls Fellowship quarterfinalist. (This screenplay featured in part the hotly contested South China Sea.)
Then at the beginning of 2007 Mitch and I attended a conference in San Diego sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. One of the major concerns at that time was the necessity of the U.S. to expend more resources on Pacific Rim security concerns.
Now in 2016 security concerns over the South China Sea, with China encroaching on the islands there to the detriment of the claims of other nations, feature regularly in the news.
In this current internationally tense atmosphere, Mitch wrote a letter to Proceedings — the monthly magazine of the U.S. Naval Institute — about the U.S. Naval fleet.
Mitch’s opinion piece appears in the Comment & Discussion section of the May 2016 issue of Proceedings with the headline “Ahoy from the Zumwalt! The F-35’s New OODA Loop” and begins:
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s aphorism, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” has a corollary: You go to the war you have, not the war you might wish to have.
Captain Kirk’s and Colonel Kelly’s articles illustrate the point. While a few Zumwalt-class destroyers and F-35-equipped big-deck carriers may have a deterrent effect on potential adversaries, they will likely see no more combat than did General George S. Patton’s fictitious First U.S. Army Group (a D-Day deception) in World War II.
We are in a revivified Cold War. The potential aggressor states — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — will probe the United States frequently, seeking and obtaining any territorial or other gains they can. But those conflicts will be contests of will, not of technology, for which Patton’s inflated rubber planes, tanks, and trucks would do almost as well as real DDG-1000s and F-35s.
FYI — Mitch and I adapted our screenplay LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS and a prequel screenplay (NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK) into the thriller novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Amazon. If you have a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription, you can read the Kindle ebook format for free. Click here now to see the book on Amazon.
And just released bundled as one Kindle ebook for a low price is BRAINS BEFORE BEAUTY — a trio of female protagonist thrillers by Mitch and me that includes LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. Check out BRAINS BEFORE BEAUTY now on Amazon.
© 2016 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Phyllis is available by skype for book group discussions and may be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com
Her Kindle fiction ebooks may be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller — and her Kindle nonfiction ebooks may also be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszmiller