^----- I really don't know that much about the submarine forces of our foes (potential and actual), but the bit about keeping the submarine force in production just to avoid closing the 'yards seems rather short sighted.
Without going into specifics, aren't there quite a bit of 'unfriendly' submarines patrolling around out there? I mean I know even Iran has submarines...
No, they're mosty spot on about this. The fact is, though, you can't halt production and then one day say "ok, let's make more subs now" if it ever becomes needed.
The role of the submarine in the post-Cold War era has been scrutinized a lot, particularly once we found out that the ruskies could only match our technology on paper and we continue to achieve air-dominance.
There are subs out there that can take on even our Seawolves (the type 212 U-boat, for one). The caveat is they have limited range and time at sea, and that's why we hold onto nuclear propulsion.
Nevertheless, the average optempo of fast attack submarines is something like 70%, so clearly we're putting them to use.
As far as trimming the Navy/Air Force and expanding ground forces: the AF has the largest budget of all four branches (topping the Navy by about 1%, and the Navy's budget includes the USMC budget). Our Navy is larger than the next 13 countries combined. This is clearly excessive, especially when we are engaged in small-scale operations that cannot be won with jets and cruise missiles. Well, they can, at the expense of annihilating the civilian population with the bad guys. It would be great to maintain such an overwhelming advantage, but we don't have an infinite budget to do so.
The thing that gets me is that our budget is in the TRILLIONS. I think that, adding everything up, we are talking about saving $50-100 billion. That amounts to something between 2-8% of the budget. Significant, but not really going to fix the problem.
