The US Navy really can't do the job. They built two separate classes of Littoral Combat Ships that were supposed to be for exactly this sort of mission and both are functionally useless. The frigates that were supposed to replace them got cancelled a few months ago. It is extremely annoying how the state of the Royal Navy keeps getting misrepresented without our wonderful MSM correcting the mistakes. Firstly yes only two of six destroyers are available for deployment because that's it works, two on station, two working up, two in refit. That is why ideally ships are always built in multiples of three. Secondly if you want more ships
today you better get a time machine and go back to when Cameron was in office and tell him to start working on them, because yes it takes that long to design and build ships. We have the Type 26 and Type 31, which we are also selling to other countries but unless the USA wants to wait until 2030 they aren't going to be patrolling the Straits of Hormuz!
The U.S. Navy is retiring Littoral Combat Ships years early. High costs, reliability issues, and changing threats doomed the LCS in favor of new frigates.
nationalsecurityjournal.org
en.wikipedia.org