There is really nothing else to do here:
The fleet rapidly grew in 1917, the year Jackson cited. That April 6, the date the United States formally entered the war, the Navy had 342 active ships. The Navy offers no other figure for 1917.
Last year, the Navy had 289 active ships, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. That’s four more ships than Obama inherited when he became president in 2009.
So available statistics show it would be impossible for Obama to reduce the Navy to 1917 levels because the fleet, in raw numbers, was already below that level when Obama took office.
We also examined Jackson’s statement using the December 1916 data, when the Navy had 245 active ships. Is Obama taking the Navy down to that level? There’s two ways to read the numbers.
So let’s get this one straight. Jackson cites The Hill and the freakin’ Congressional Research Service.
Clearly Jackson is right. As in, totally spot on right. Unless, of course, you move the goalposts…
There’s a final matter to consider in Jackson’s claim. Even if the number of ships is cut to a pre-World War I quantity, would that mean, as Jackson wrote, that Navy fleet has been reduced to almost a 100-year low point in readiness and capability?
Full stop. So Jackson got the numbers right, but because hey — technology and stuff — the U.S. Navy is more powerful than ever before, Jackson is a liar?
Come the hell on.
(C)ounting the historic size of the fleet, analysts tell us, is a flawed way to assess Naval might.
Counting the dearth — nay, complete abandonment — of intellectual rigor at Politifact, analysts tell us, is a flawed way to assess claims made in the public square.
We rate Politifact as mostly absurd.
UPDATE: So why does size matter? Why is Politifact so utterly wrong and frankly obtuse in flatly discarding the size of our naval (and air) assets?
One word. Swarming.
The U.S. military is at a crisis point. We are staring down the barrel of a future where U.S. military technological superiority may no longer be a given wherethe military strength that has undergirded global security since World War II may be in question. The technologies that have given the U.S. military its edge stealth, long-range sensors, communications networks and precision-guided weapons are proliferating to other actors. As a result, so-called “anti-access” challenges threaten traditional modes of power projection. While individual U.S. ships, planes and tanks remain more capable one-on-one, the pernicious “death spiral” of rising costs and shrinking procurement quantities means that the United States has increasingly fewer and fewer assets to bring to the fight. The U.S. military will have to fight significantly outnumbered, and even the qualitative advantages U.S. assets have will not be sufficient. Quality matters, but numbers matter too. At a certain point, U.S. aircraft and ships will simply run out of missiles.
Now it goes without saying that any analyst worth their salt in the defense industry would have mentioned this. Hell, it would be journalistic malpractice if Politifact neglected this incredibly important piece of information.
Which should lead the reader to one of two conclusions: either Politifact simply didn’t do their research, or Politifact is going out of their way to hammer conservatives.
Read the National Interest piece. This is what Jackson (and by extension, Romney back in 2012 and the defense experts in Washington) is referring to when there is concern about the size and number of our naval and air assets.
In case an editor is wondering, this took precisely 10 minutes of Googling. Just ten.
Absolutely absurd… and Politifact probably owes Jackson a revision to “Mostly True” on this.
