"Newps" wrote

Bob Noel wrote:

iirc, during his administration the Navy buildup was started.

Not hardly. Reagan and John Lehman built the Navy back up.

When Carter took office, the Navy had about 182 surface warships.
When he left office, the Navy had 196. When Reagan left office,
that number had grown to 212. That's a 7.7% growth under
Carter and a 8.1% growth under Reagan. That's rather insignificant,
IMO, especially since the *overall* strength (including non-surface
warships) only changed by *eight* from the time Carter left office to
when Reagan left office. Carrier forces increased by one.
Carter added 10 subs; Reagan 12.

One thing Reagan did do was postpone the retirement of some
ships and bring others out of mothballs to increase the strength
during his Presidency. Obviously there's been a major force
reduction since then with the end of the Cold War and the
Navy has the fewest number of surface warships now since
1921, IIRC.

At any rate, Carter was President when the Navy started to
grow again after the post-Vietnam force reduction.