What's Wrong with the U.S. Navy?

This seems to illustrate my previous post's point perfectly. Chuck Spinney blogs at Defense and the National Interest about how America spends billions on its Navy and its top officers say it would still be a major undertaking for it to deal with Somali pirates.

Spinney writes:

In January, it is my understanding that the Pentagon will request a budget of about $581 billion for its core budget, i.e., not including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of the Navy’s share of this budget should be something on the order of $150-160 billion a year, yet Admiral Gortney is telling us that securing the Horn of Africa from a gang of rag tag Somali pirates will take every cruiser and destroyer in the Navy plus 3 or [four of] its Frigates. This means the Navy would not [have] enough surface warships left over to configure the normal defense screen for even one carrier battle group. Since the United States is spending about as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, Gortney’s confession raises a basic question about about the Pentagon’s competence to do its job.