What a repair backlog says about sea power

What lesson follows when a navy closes shipyards while ships wait for repair?

Fleet infrastructure must be sized for adverse cases; a paper inventory cannot create sea control when ships cannot be repaired and returned to service.

Fleet plans require enough supporting infrastructure to keep ships available under adverse conditions. A viewer's example of American shipyard closures and repair queues raises the problem of reducing repair capacity while retaining a large fleet. The same infrastructure requirement applied to eighteenth-century Britain: capacity had to meet adverse conditions. Ships awaiting repair cannot provide the sea control implied by their presence in a fleet inventory.