Not The News, Military Edition
Washington, D.C.
April 1, 2022
Navy Spokesperson Captain Crunch Jr. announced today that out-of-the-box thinking has resulted in dramatic cost savings in the Navy’s new budget. “For years, the Navy has struggled to understand why costs kept spiraling up” Crunch said. “It turns out, ships are expensive to fix. There’s so much stuff on them that breaks, and they’re literally sitting in water all the time, just rusting away. So, several years ago we awarded multi-million-dollar consulting contracts to conceptualize ways the Navy could save money moving forward.”
The Navy encouraged unconventional solutions using unorthodox methods. The researchers formed socialized small-group centers of excellence, locked themselves into hotel rooms, and consumed mass quantities of high-grade marijuana. After three weeks of intense study they achieved visions of bold new realities. The visions developed through this exhaustive research was translated into unintelligible white papers and became policy proposals.
Unworkable Options
The process was not without struggles and setbacks. Some of the initial proposals proved to be unworkable. One example was an early suggestion that, since immersion in water was a leading cause of rust, the Navy should take their ships out of the water. After funding several studies to explore this concept, the Navy determined it was not viable. “The costs of land needed to park our ships exceeded the cost savings resulting from taking them out of the water” Crunch explained.
First Budget Proposal Rejected by Congress
The next proposal looked extremely promising in early studies, but was shot down by Congress during budget hearings. “We proposed that the Navy simply scrap all their ships” Crunch said. “The Return on Investment (ROI) was simply astonishing. Nothing else we looked at had anywhere near the same returns.”
An unexpected side benefit of this proposal was the positive impact on Navy personnel. “Without ships,” Crunch noted “our sailors would spend their time on shore bases with nothing to do all day, like the Air Force. Except instead of the cookie snacks and nap times airmen get, our sailors would get beer and strippers.” Independent studies concluded that, under this proposal, Navy retention would increase to nearly one-hundred percent.
However, during hearings Congressional aids asked what the role of the Navy would be without any ships. “We didn’t have an answer for them,” said Crunch. “None of our study groups had considered that question would come up.”
New Consensus Approach – Back to Basics
So, the Navy explored another proposal that retained ships but still showed dramatic cost savings. Instead of making ships more complicated with the nuclear and more computers, the Navy identified they needed to take a step back and return to basics.
The Navy’s next fiscal year budget will propose a new concept of alternative-energy-powered warships. These ships will utilize large expanses of canvas strung across towering masts to harness the limitless free energy of the wind. As a direct benefit of using wind power, a large amount of machinery typically included in ships will no longer be needed. “Our ships will be simple and cheap, so we can build a lot of them” Crunch explained. “It’s a conceptually solid proposal that changes the the Navy paradigm for generations to come.”
When reached for comment, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Horatio Hornblower, observed that using wind-powered ships was in keeping with the Navy’s motto “two hundred years of tradition unmarked by progress.”
Not The News has learned that the Army has taken note of the Navy’s approach and is considering using a similar wind solution to power their tanks. A Marine Corp spokesperson explained that hot air has powered senior military leadership proposals for generations.
