Monthly Archives: April 2010

U.S. Navy Commander Jerry Hendrix really rocked the boat in April 2009, when he proposed a radical change in the kinds of ships the world’s largest sea service buys and how it organizes them. Hendrix’s article, “Buy Ford, Not Ferrari,” published the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine, advocated replacing a portion of the Navy’s high-end aircraft carriers and destroyers (“Ferraris”) with a much larger number of inexpensive vessels (“Fords”) organized into what Hendrix calls “Influence Squadrons.” The new squadrons would deploy across the globe, to the waters off developing countries whose governments struggle against increasingly bold and more numerous smugglers, pirates and insurgents. Continue reading →