Since the end of the Cold War, for 30 years the U.S. Navy has sustained a third of its fleet deployed on the backs of sailors and sometimes taking shortcuts at the shipyard—this approach is breaking down according to Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office. But with what is being called a New Cold War with China potentially heating up, the luxuries of the past are now urgent necessities—needed are more sailors, warships, and shipyards.  Each week, the U.S. Naval Institute Fleet Tracker has for years been reporting roughly 100 U.S. Navy warships deployed overseas. This total of warships deployed has remained remarkably consistent from the 1980s through today. But the fleet supporting that presence has been halved. In the late Cold War, the Navy peaked at 594 battle?force ships in 1987. Today’s fleet hovers around 293 ships, which is well below what is assessed as necessary by The Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Index of U.S. Military Strength. Sustaining 100 deployed warships with a smaller fleet has doubled the operational wear on ship and crew. The result today is that deployed operational tempo (time a ship is at sea or deployed versus time in home port) averages 33%, meaning one?third of the entire fleet is forward at any given moment. During the 1980s, by contrast, the Navy’s deployed Op-Tempo averaged 17%. Sustaining a 33% Deployed Op-Tempo is placing unsustainable stress on sailors, ships, and shipyards. The Government Accountability Office has reported on this readiness problem repeatedly, noting the consequences of extended deployments, elevated crew fatigue due to shortages of sailors at sea, and the concomitant expanding maintenance backlog. A consequence is that sailors are spending more time in shipyards as well as more time deployed on mission, taking away from precious commanding officers’ discretionary time to address the specific training needs of the crew. This has resulted in declining underway time for all the Navy’s warships as maintenance backlogs build up and national mission tasking on deployed ships remains unrelenting. There are no simple or cheap solutions to reducing deployed operational tempo without increasing risks to the nation given ongoing combat operations in the Middle East and Caribbean and rising tensions in Asia. Prudence would dictate sustaining a persistent forward deployed fleet of 100 warships and avoiding any major changes in deployed force levels for now. As such, lowering deployment demands on the fleet to a more healthy 20% in line with Cold War levels. To sustain 100 deployed ships at a fleet wide 20% operational tempo, the Navy would need roughly 500 ships, nearly the size of the Navy during the Cold War. For a Navy struggling to sustain its too modest 293 warships today, it is likely a generational endeavor to deliver the fleet needed—this is unacceptable and late to task. As such new approaches are needed to get an economy of naval power where it can best deter foes—top of the list is China. When the Navy has attempted to reduce deployments without growing the fleet, it has abandoned regions where its presence had long been felt. Case in point, in 2022 the Indian Ocean had virtually no U.S. carrier strike group presence nor large amphibious warship formations (expeditionary strike groups or amphibious ready groups). Chaos loves a void, and it was therefore no surprise that absence coincided with a return of piracy and preceded the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which saw an expansion of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The lesson was clear: rapid changes in naval presence to insufficient levels invites instability. The ensuing maritime insecurity has directly affected global trade and the ability of the U.S. to deter opportunistic aggression. Without a persistent naval presence in the right places, i.e., decisive theaters, America’s security and prosperity that is reliant on a secure maritime, becomes too vulnerable to revisionist powers like China. Simply brining the Navy’s warships home would invite more Oct.-7?style shocks or worse. An option to address this present problem is forward based and rotational forces that keep warships and their crews nearer where they are needed—such as Seventh Fleet in Japan, Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, Submarine Squadron 15 in Guam, and from 2027 a soon to be established submarine rotational force in Sterling, Australia. However, such forward basing options are rare given the inherent political costs here at home and for any host nation.  Which returns the Navy to an unavoidable point: The only sustainable way to lower deployed operational tempo and maintain a global presence is to grow the fleet. Only with more ships at sea can the Navy give sailors and shipyards needed time for maintenance planning and quality of life predictability, while providing Commanding Officers discretionary time at sea to train their crews. In the meantime, until the Navy grows its fleet, the priority is deterring aggressors and preventing crises before they erupt by deploying and sustaining naval presence augmented increasingly by America’s air and ground forces and backstopped by friendly militaries and navies – far from an ideal option as many of our allies have more limited militaries. The Navy is not being asked to do more than it did during the Cold War (though arguably it will need to, given the scale of the China threat). Rather, it is being asked to do the same amount but with half the fleet. America’s foes will not allow a “training timeout” to pull the fleet back and reset, Congress and the Pentagon must embark on a tangible naval fleet revival. The post A Shrinking Fleet and Slower Shipyards are Forcing Unsustainable Deployments for the U.S. Navy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson. We’re concluding the third week of the Israeli-United States effort to emasculate Iran, and we’re, sort of, in a standoff period. I think people have compared Iran to the black knight in the old Monty Python movie. The more that he loses a leg and arm, the more he thinks that it’s just a scratch. By all traditional methodology and criteria, Iran is now inert. This is what President Donald Trump keeps saying. The navy is nonexistent. There is no air force. There are no missile defenses that can interrupt allied planes going over the country. The army is useless because nobody is fighting on the ground. We keep hearing that, and I think accurately, that missiles and drones have been attrited, either by bombing or by being intercepted or being expended, to about 10%. So, what is the remaining obstacle? Target-wise, it’s just two or three. There seems to be caches or secret locations where you have three or four ballistic missiles or three or four drone sites with maybe 20 or 30 drones, and those are very hard to find. So, you’re going to be able to stop almost all of the incoming, but not all of them. And because they’re aimed at residential areas. Remember, the United States and Israel are trying to hit military targets and command and control, and any civilian damage is collateral. But in the case of Iran, it’s deliberately targeting hotels in Dubai or hotels and airports in Qatar or cluster bomb attacks on civilian high-rises in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. That’s what they want to do. So, what’s going to happen? The thing to remember, I think, historically, is that tactical success is not necessarily equivalent to strategic victory or resolution. By that, I mean, you can argue that when Napoleon invaded Russia, he won almost every battle and he captured Moscow. But he did not have a plan to force the czar out, Alexander. He had no plan to force him out. He had no ability to go beyond Moscow to get the fleeing imperial forces of Russia. Same thing with the Germans. They won every battle up until they were within the first subway station of Moscow around Dec. 10, 1941. But they did not have a plan to, or they were not able to take Leningrad, St. Petersburg, take Moscow, and drive all of the Russians out of European and industrialized Russia. Or, barring that, to bomb the factories that were on the other side of the Ural Mountains. They did not have a plan. So, they didn’t have a strategic victory. They had impressive tactical victories. We had impressive tactical victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s hard to think we lost a single battle in Iraq, but we did not have a plan of strategic resolution. So, where we are now in this war is Iran’s strategy is the following: that it can withstand repeated attacks on all of its military assets because it believes the United States cannot afford either politically, economically, socially, culturally to put ground troops after the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, it doesn’t have to worry about an invasion to displace the regime. It also believes that the more that we hit any civilian targets out of frustration, the more it will hurt the Iranian people and the more the theocracy will say, “You may not like us, but the fact that you don’t have water or power or fuel is because they hate you and us.” And that’s another strategy they are taking. In other words, they’re saying as long as we have oil, Kharg Island, and as long as we have these huge oil fields, when you get tired of pounding us into rubble, you’re going go back to the United States. Israel’s going to go back and be quiet, and we’re going to get all of our oil revenues and we’re going have them. And we are going to buy from Russia, North Korea, and China missiles, drones, recreate our own drone industry, and we probably have enough fissile material that you didn’t get, and nobody could get. It’s hidden deep in the mountains, that we will make bombs. And this time we’re going to use them because we understand what you will do next time. And more importantly, we are planning practically that Donald Trump is an aberration. The last seven presidents didn’t attack us, even though we blew up your American Embassy in Beirut, your barracks and Marines in Beirut, Khobar Towers, behind the USS Cole, behind the embassy destruction in Africa. So, we believe that the norm is not Trump. He will be gone in two and a half years, and we will get either a left-wing Democrat or a neo-isolationist Republican or some Republican that’s feckless and not going to do anything. So, all we have to do is outlast Trump and have the oil, and we’ll come back. His opposition said he had no point, no agenda, no purpose. He did. He said it on March 1 and March 20. He said he had a multifaceted agenda. No. 1, he wanted to destroy the ability to launch missiles. He’s pretty close to that. Not completely. But get rid of their missiles, not just the missiles that they launch, but the ability to make them. No. 2, he said he wanted to destroy their air forces and air defenses so that they would have no air superiority, but the Americans and Israelis have the air supremacy. When you reach air supremacy, you can use tactical aircraft. That would mean Warthogs at low level, Apaches. You can do anything you want if you have air supremacy. And we do now. He wanted to destroy additionally the navy. He’s almost done that. No. 4, he wanted to preclude the ability of Iran not just to launch ballistic missiles, but to make another bomb. He’s bombed all of the nuclear sites that he hit before. He’s bombed the fabrication plants. He’s killed more of the scientists. He’s even attacked a university research area. So, pretty much, it’ll be very, very hard for them for eight, nine years unless they get a lot of Chinese help and North Korean help, and they come in en masse. The fifth agenda is a little bit less clear because he never said my reason is to go in there and—he might’ve thought that, he might’ve implied it, but if you look at his written statement and what he said formally, regime change. And yet we all know that the regime change, whether it be the Venezuela model or a true uprising of the dissatisfied Iranian public to take control of the government and have a constitutional system, whichever the replacement is, it’s preferable to the mullahs. But we are not going to be able to shepherd that in because we’re not going to go in on the ground. All we can do is emasculate the theocracy and then hope that there’s a popular uprising. And then we have to be very careful because if we’re going to drain the theocracy of their ability to recoup and have money, then you have to go into Kharg Island. If you go into Kharg Island and grab the oil or attack the oil fields, then you’re hurting the people that supposedly you want to help to take over the government. At some point, and I don’t know what it is, you don’t know what it is, I don’t think anybody knows where it is, Iran will have no more viable targets. The United States will be looking at its arsenals and wanting to make sure that we have enough if China does go into Taiwan because it’s angry that we have begun in Venezuela, kicked it out of Venezuela, kicked it out of Iran, kicked it out of everywhere we could. We have to be very careful. At some point, the Israelis, the Americans and the Iranians will think it’s not in their interest to continue, and we don’t know when that point is. For us in the United States, it’s when the economy and the price of gas gets to such a level that it becomes almost impossible, given the hostile media and the propaganda that’s coming from the Left that this is a disaster, that Donald Trump cannot win the midterms. And therefore, the entire MAGA agenda will be inert in the next two and a half years. If that starts to crystallize, then he will probably say we’ve done enough, and we now turn it over to the Iranian people. Then it’ll be a question, will the Iranians, when there’s not an active war going on and when there’s such damage to the theocracy, will they come out? Especially if we arm them, or we have people in there that can arm them. And will that regime fall in the next four or five months? If it should do that, that will be to the credit of Donald Trump. As far as the regime, again, it will do anything, lie, steal, murder, anything to stay in power because it knows it’s on the back of a lion or tiger. If it steps off, they’re all going to be jailed and probably executed for what they’ve done to the Iranian people. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post What Is the Remaining Obstacle in Iran? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a Vermont police officer is entitled to qualified immunity after a protester at the state Capitol sued him for an injury in a case that stretches back more than a decade. Qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers from litigation if they are acting in the line of duty, unless they violate a clearly established constitutional right. Recently, some Democrats in Congress have called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be stripped of the protection from litigation.  In an unsigned opinion, justices reversed a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Zorn v. Linton, which held that existing precedent did not clearly establish that Vermont State Police Sgt. Jacob Zorn’s specific conduct violated the Constitution, Fox News reported.  “The Second Circuit held that Zorn was not entitled to qualified immunity,” read the 6-3 majority ruling.  “We reverse.” “Because the Second Circuit failed to identify a case where an officer taking similar actions in similar circumstances was held to have violated the Constitution, Zorn was entitled to qualified immunity,” the majority said. The incident occurred at a 2015 sit-in by health care protesters at the Vermont Capitol during the inauguration of Gov. Peter Shumlin.  Police began arresting protesters, including Shela Linton, after the building closed. Linton remained seated and linked with other protesters, the opinion noted. Zorn told her he would have to use force unless she left the building. He took her arm and placed it behind her back, twisting her arm. When she complained of discomfort, he repeatedly asked her to stand. After her noncompliance, he pressed her wrist and lifted her to her feet, according to an account of the incident in the court’s opinion. Linton sued, claiming physical and psychological injuries.  The post Supreme Court Backs Police Immunity in Protest Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

There was plenty of outrage yesterday after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social and posted the following reaction to the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” Predictably, the response was swift and condemning. Critics called the statement inappropriate, unpresidential, and beneath the dignity of the office. Commentators insisted that, whatever one’s views of Mueller’s role in the Russia investigation, there is a long-standing norm in American public life: You don’t speak ill of the dead—at least not on the day they die. For many in Washington and the media, that rule isn’t just etiquette—it’s treated as a moral line that simply shouldn’t be crossed. That reaction may feel familiar to me, because I’ve seen this movie before—up close and in real time, sitting with Andrew Breitbart the evening Ted Kennedy died. For context, Mueller wasn’t just another Washington figure to Trump. As special counsel, he led a nearly two-year investigation into Trump, his campaign, and those around him that expanded beyond Russian interference to include obstruction and the conduct of his associates. The probe produced charges against multiple figures in Trump’s orbit and dominated his first presidency, fueling relentless media coverage and political pressure. Even though Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, the investigation left a lasting mark on how Trump views him. More than 15 years ago, on the evening Sen. Kennedy passed away, I was sitting with my friend Andrew Breitbart in the basement office of his West Los Angeles home, overlooking the peaceful Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood. The news broke, and Andrew immediately had a very different reaction from what you were seeing on television. He wasn’t thinking about tributes or carefully worded statements—he was thinking about what was about to happen next. He wasn’t celebrating Kennedy’s death, and that’s an important distinction that gets lost in moments like this. There was no sense of joy, no “good riddance,” no satisfaction that a political opponent was gone. What there was, instead, was urgency—and a clear understanding of how quickly a public narrative can be locked in. Neither Andrew nor I were happy that a U.S. senator had died, just as I’m not sitting here celebrating the death of a former FBI director. But there’s another reality that’s hard to ignore—neither of us had ever had the full power of the federal government—and the FBI—trained on us the way Trump did. That doesn’t justify it. But it does explain it. Andrew believed—strongly—that Kennedy, a man he held in low esteem, was about to be canonized by the media and the political left. He believed Kennedy’s controversial record would be quickly smoothed over into a sanitized legacy. In his view, if you didn’t speak immediately, you were conceding the argument. He pointed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. He pointed to Kennedy’s iron grip on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the way conservative nominees were treated. And he talked about something more personal—something that had shaped his own path into politics. I remember him saying it plainly: “Jon, this jerk is the reason I got involved in politics in the first place.” He was talking about the environment Kennedy helped create around Clarence Thomas during the 1991 hearings before his appointment to the Supreme Court. This was an environment where last-minute, unproven allegations from Anita Hill were treated as gospel and used to try to derail a Supreme Court nomination. For Andrew, it wasn’t just politics—it was a turning point, a moment where he believed the system was being used not to vet a nominee, but to destroy one. Andrew’s view was simple: if you wait, the narrative is set. The day someone dies is the day their legacy is shaped, and if you believe that story is going to be incomplete or misleading, silence isn’t neutrality—it’s surrender. So he acted. Andrew took to Twitter (now X) and unleashed, and I did as well. He, of course, had a much larger platform, and his posts quickly drew national attention for their bluntness and their refusal to follow the expected script. In one widely cited reaction, he wrote that he was “more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” adding, “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.” Politico captured the moment in a piece titled “Not all Kennedy critics hold fire,” noting that while most conservatives exercised restraint, Breitbart was willing to say what others would not. By the end of the year, Politico included Breitbart’s tweets in its roundup of the top political tweets of 2009. One of those tweets read simply: “Rest in Chappaquiddick.” Andrew wasn’t celebrating Kennedy’s death. But it raises the same question: what is the propriety of criticizing someone at the moment of their death? The real question isn’t tone. When someone dies, are we expected to participate in a softened version of their legacy, or allowed to speak plainly about the record they leave behind? Is silence about respect—or about controlling the narrative when it matters most? Andrew Breitbart understood that dynamic. Public memory is shaped in the immediate aftermath, when attention is highest and scrutiny is lowest. If you had something to say, you said it then. I remember that night clearly. The reaction was immediate, the backlash came fast, and Andrew never flinched. Then, later—after things had settled down, after the initial storm had passed—he paused, took a breath, and looked over at me. “We did some good today. We said things that had to be said.” He leaned back for a second, then added: “I’m hungry. Should we order pizza?” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s Mueller Comments and What Andrew Breitbart Told Me When Ted Kennedy Died appeared first on The Daily Signal.

After a string of recent terror attacks, one congressional Republican believes the “silence” from Muslim leaders in America is deafening. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., is challenging these Muslim leaders to speak out against violence perpetrated at the hands of Islamic extremists. “Four Muslim terrorists have killed and injured Americans in four different cities in just three weeks,” Ogles told The Daily Signal. “Yet to this day, not a single American mosque has publicly condemned this pattern of Islamic bloodshed or disavowed the attackers.” The representative’s remarks come after a shooter reportedly wearing a hoodie that read “Property of Allah” and a shirt with the Iranian flag opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas, on March 1, which killed three and injured 14 others. The shooting occurred just one day after President Donald Trump announced Operation Epic Fury against Iran. That same week, two attackers allegedly inspired by ISIS threw improvised explosive devices at a crowd of protesters in New York City, and a shooter attempted to carry out an attack against a Jewish synagogue and K-12 school in Michigan. On March 13, a shooter who was a convicted terrorist for previous affiliations with ISIS opened fire at Virginia’s Old Dominion University, killing one before being subdued. “If a Christian justified violence by citing the Bible, every church in America would and SHOULD denounce it,” Ogles said. Ogles added that “Muslim leaders in America” could use “these horrific tragedies to prove that Islam is the ‘religion of peace’ by publicly condemning them.” “Instead, however, they have refused to acknowledge them,” the representative claimed. The alleged silence prompted Ogles to send a letter to over 3,000 Islamic leaders in the United States demanding that they “publicly and unequivocally condemn” terror attacks in the United States. In his letter, Ogles added that if the leaders were to break the silence, they could “isolate extremists, protect Americans, and preserve peace.” ??? “Ogles challenges American Mosques to disavow the recent terror attacks.” pic.twitter.com/OK5CFxb8SN— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) March 20, 2026 Ogles’ letter encouraged the leaders to “issue statements from your pulpits, post them online, and share them widely.” But the letter also included a threat. “If no peace is desired, I will not cease to further legislate and advocate that violent Islamists have no place in American culture, life, and civil government,” Ogles concluded. Earlier this month, Ogles pledged to propose legislation to overhaul a 1965 law that prevents the selection of legal immigrants from certain countries, which would end the legal immigration and chain migration that he believes is responsible for the recent terror attacks. The post GOP Rep Challenges Muslim Leaders to Condemn Islamic Terror appeared first on The Daily Signal.