WELL, GOOD: U.S. Navy Boosts Submarine Plans As Tensions With Russia And China Worsen.

The Navy needs more attack subs. They are literally the only warships that can perform many of the missions they are assigned. During the Obama years, the rock-bottom number the Navy considered acceptable was 48, a number it will dip below midway through the next decade. But that goal was driven by a national security strategy that drastically under-estimated the threat likely to be posed by Russia and China — not to mention Iran and North Korea — in the years ahead. The strategy resulted in naval shipbuilding budgets being under-funded.

Today, things have changed. The Trump national defense strategy frankly acknowledges that Russia, China, and several lesser nations are “revisionist” powers bent on challenging U.S. interests. It also acknowledges that while America has been distracted fighting terrorists in Southwest Asia, those countries have made big strides in improving their military capabilities and fielding new warfighting technologies. President Trump’s big increase in defense spending last year was a recognition that threat levels demand more resources.

The Navy now has a new goal for its attack sub fleet. It wants 66 boats, a 38% increase over the plan inherited from the Obama years.

The brilliant strategic thinkers of the previous Administration seemed to have based their plans on the assumption that China and Russia were getting nicer, and that the oceans were getting smaller.