The Florida Republican governor, an Iraq War Navy veteran, promised to reboot America’s national security posture with a rebuilt Navy at the heart of the country’s hard power, during his Oct. 27 address at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” speaking speakers series.

“As Winston Churchill noted, it's important to keep open and active the saltwater highways that make our world tick,” said Ron DeSantis, who served as a legal advisor to Navy SEAL operators in Iraq during his 2007 deployment there. 

“To that end, I'm proposing a four oceans Navy, 355 ships by the end of the first term, 385 by the end of the second term, and a pathway for 600 ships within the next 20 years,” he said.

The governor, who left the Navy as a lieutenant commander, gave the speech to a packed-out Lehrman Auditorium at the forum co-hosted by Epoch Times, leaned into his military experience and his admiration for President Ronald W. Reagan. 

DeSantis’ pledge for a 600-ship Navy was not a coincidence. There is no institution in Washington more committed to the national security legacy of Reagan, and the 600-ship Navy was one of Reagan’s great goals. It was formalized in the 1980 Republican Platform:

Republicans pledge to reverse Mr. Carter's dismantling of U.S. naval and Marine forces. We will restore our fleet to 600 ships at a rate equal to or exceeding that planned by President Ford. We will build more aircraft carriers, submarines, and amphibious ships. We will restore naval and Marine aircraft procurement to economical rates enabling rapid modernization of the current forces, and expansion to meet the requirements of additional aircraft carriers.

When Reagan took office, the Soviet Union had a 443-to-196 advantage in surface warfare ships and a 204-to-119 advantage in submarines.

The governor’s call for a four-ocean Navy is another nod to Reagan’s Navy build-up. President Jimmy Carter’s Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Thomas B. Hayward told an interviewer his Navy was stretched out in the late 1970s, "trying to meet a three-ocean requirement with a one-and-a-half-ocean Navy.”

In 1969, the Navy had 950 ships, but by Reagan’s inauguration, the service had slid to 479. Reagan’s Navy reached 594 ships in 1987, but in the last year of his term, the pressure from the Washington establishment was too intense for Reagan to ring the bell. 

DeSantis has made a point of associating himself with Reagan. His rhetoric shares the rhythms and flourishes of the president and two months before his May 24 campaign launch, the governor spoke to a sold-out audience at the Reagan Presidential Library, hosted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.

As a Navy man, DeSantis knows more than most that during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy, along with -- to a lesser extent, the Air Force -- was largely sidelined.

It was difficult to argue for more ships when the joes did not have up-armored Humvees.

Out of frustration, the Navy sent thousands of sailors to Iraq and Afghanistan to take on non-maritime missions, such as guarding detainees, just to get into the fight.

Today’s Navy stands at 299 ships, well short of the 381 ships called for by the Pentagon’s strategic planning.

DeSantis: Taiwan is the hotspot

On Friday, DeSantis said his bulked-up Navy is vital to countering the ambitions of Red China, especially as the ChiComs look to end Taiwan’s de facto independence.

“That will be hard power, that will make a difference; that will be hard power, that will preserve the peace with respect to Taiwan,” he said. 

In addition to our own posture, the governor said he would flow advanced weapons and war materiel to that island democracy. “This is the hotspot, and we need to be there and help defend.”

The Floridian said he was ready to take on the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, which he is convinced is not up to the job ahead.

“We also have to reform and slash the bloated defense bureaucracy,” he said. “We want agile innovation, quick integration of commercial technologies. We want to be able to rapidly address the pressing needs of this Nation's national security policy.”

The former JAG officer, who also deployed to the Theater Internment Facility at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said as president, he would reform how the private sector responds to the needs of the nation's defense.

“It is lagging, and it is causing huge vulnerabilities for this country.”

DeSantis: I remember lessons from Iraq deployment

“I came to Congress on the heels of having served in uniform in Iraq during the post-Saddam period of conflict, a time when US troops faced attacks from both Sunni Jihadists like Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” he said.

Yet, even then, he was aware of the Iranians' program to kill American servicemen, he said. "Also, Shia militias that were funded and directed by the mullahs and Iran," he said. "Those Iranian militias were responsible for killing hundreds, if not over a thousand, of American troops."

The governor said that he came to Capitol Hill believing that the Global War on Terror was failing because President Barack Obama rejected Reagan's national security maxims.

“The suboptimal outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan represented a failure of US national security policy,” he said.

“Neither post-9-11 neoconservatism, which represented a departure from traditional Reagan's peace through strength policies, nor the fecklessness of the Obama administration, which merely invited hostility from America's adversaries were desirable vessels for a successful national security strategy.”