Forget 1916, Our Navy is Half the Size It was in 1990

I know that Obama really reslished his "bayonets and horses" line from last night's debate in answer to Romney's proposal to increase the size of the Navy but its pretty clear he doesn't either know anything about the military or might just not care.  First, bayonets are still standard issue to our military and would have been used if Obama had ever sent Marines to Benghazi to rescue our Ambassador.  Second, the Navy is now half the size (566 in 1990 and 282 today) of what it was in 1990, hardly the horse and buggy era.  Has the world become any smaller?  Are our ships faster?  They are still basically lumbering hulks who go around 30 mph across the vast oceans of this planet.  The bi-partisan 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review itself suggested that we need to have 346 ships in the Navy to better deal with threats out of Asia.  Obama rightly mentioned aircraft carriers as helping us to project power.  Guess what, we only have 11.  It seems pretty risky to depend on just 11 ships to project American power.  Romney was 100% correct when he said:

We've got to strengthen our military long-term. We don't know what the world is going to throw at us down the road. We — we make decisions today in the military that — that will confront challenges we can't imagine. In the 2000 debates, there was no mention of terrorism, for instance. And a year later, 9/11 happened. So, we have to make decisions based upon uncertainty, and that means a strong military. I will not cut our military budget.

That sounds a lot more responsible than simply making snide and juvenile comments doesn't it?