“The mismatch of supply vs. demand in the Seventh Fleet and the fleet at large” is one issue the Navy should be looking at, Bryan Clark, a retired naval officer and now senior fellow at Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said in an e-mail to Seapower. “Keeping 100 ships deployed overseas for the last 20 years as the fleet shrank by more than 20 percent is stressing ships and crews. Seventh Fleet may be the ‘canary in the coalmine’ because of its location and higher [operations tempo].”
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