I’m not sure which will lead to greater disaster: the president of the U.S. being in debt to a foreign power, or that same president rattling the Navy’s saber over Taiwan without actually giving the Navy anything to fight with. The Chinese phrase for that is “paper tiger”, and has always thru history resulted in disaster for the weaker party.
The first is not a disaster unless we lose. The second is fixable by the decisions we make. As Sal has implored, seniors have to risk being sent home to get the point across. We have to have matching conventional force to contest aggression against Taiwan, and to thwart China we need unmanned vehicles. Notice I didn't say win.
In reply to your comment on senior personnel - I spent the majority of my career in ship acquisition, one way or another. One thing that never seemed to happen was program managers being held responsible for their professional decisions. The risk-upon-risk approach the Navy took in the LCS and DDG 1000 programs was highly irresponsible, and was compounded by DoD’s consistent incompetence in managing the finances of technical risk.
It's not quite the perfect analogy, but have you read Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Superiority"? It depicts a hot arms race, and shows how the side which is more technologically advanced is defeated because of its own organizational flaws and its willingness to discard old technology without having fully perfected the new. It's told from the point of view of a defeated commander, at his court-martial. It was written at 1951, so the tech is dated of course, but it really does sound like he got the spirit of the times right.
I'd always read that one as basically the Wehrmacht guys vs the Soviets and US - by the end of 1944 there were about twelve gazillion individual "neu viel besser!" German weapons programs, each yielding ten or so copies, where the Soviets just cranked out thousands and thousands of minorly-incrementally-improved T-34s and basically three anti-tank gun designs through the entire war.
The US was roughly on the same page with the Sherman, albeit with a few step improvements, but consciously avoiding jumping mid-stream to divert production resources to the Pershing so as to fit more tanks into the existing shipping volume crossing the Atlantic. But the "New much better!" perfect-being-the-enemy-of-good-enough lessons resulting from Korea were a real thing in 1951.
The current naval side of the Pentagon seems to be adopting the idea that the quality of the technological masterpieces they've assembled will somehow offset the sheer displaced volume of hulls lost to these economizing decisions.
Any hull equipped with all that awesomeness has to manage to be displacing seawater out where it can use its tech, and given attrition is a thing, in enough numbers so one does not become none.
And with each test of the SM3 in the ABM role, I have pondered that any of those remaining fewer and fewer DDG hulls so equipped that got tasked to steam around in circles mid ocean assigned as continental ballistic missile defense assets won't be available to contribute to the pointy end of fleet kinetics.
Obviously posting here is preaching to the choir, but it does seem like that pointy end just gets narrower and narrower.
Our Little Crappy Ships are building and decommissioning simultaneously! Or were you talking about viable warships?
Our POTUS, his crackhead son and a bi-partisan boatload of legislators are in Chyyna’s pocket.
I’m not sure which will lead to greater disaster: the president of the U.S. being in debt to a foreign power, or that same president rattling the Navy’s saber over Taiwan without actually giving the Navy anything to fight with. The Chinese phrase for that is “paper tiger”, and has always thru history resulted in disaster for the weaker party.
In light of the president’s poll number problems, I should also remind my fellow responders here of Clinton’s “Wag the Dog” incident.
The first is not a disaster unless we lose. The second is fixable by the decisions we make. As Sal has implored, seniors have to risk being sent home to get the point across. We have to have matching conventional force to contest aggression against Taiwan, and to thwart China we need unmanned vehicles. Notice I didn't say win.
In reply to your comment on senior personnel - I spent the majority of my career in ship acquisition, one way or another. One thing that never seemed to happen was program managers being held responsible for their professional decisions. The risk-upon-risk approach the Navy took in the LCS and DDG 1000 programs was highly irresponsible, and was compounded by DoD’s consistent incompetence in managing the finances of technical risk.
Concur with need for unmanned platforms.
It's not quite the perfect analogy, but have you read Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Superiority"? It depicts a hot arms race, and shows how the side which is more technologically advanced is defeated because of its own organizational flaws and its willingness to discard old technology without having fully perfected the new. It's told from the point of view of a defeated commander, at his court-martial. It was written at 1951, so the tech is dated of course, but it really does sound like he got the spirit of the times right.
https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/superiority-by-arthur-c-clarke-full-text/
I'd always read that one as basically the Wehrmacht guys vs the Soviets and US - by the end of 1944 there were about twelve gazillion individual "neu viel besser!" German weapons programs, each yielding ten or so copies, where the Soviets just cranked out thousands and thousands of minorly-incrementally-improved T-34s and basically three anti-tank gun designs through the entire war.
The US was roughly on the same page with the Sherman, albeit with a few step improvements, but consciously avoiding jumping mid-stream to divert production resources to the Pershing so as to fit more tanks into the existing shipping volume crossing the Atlantic. But the "New much better!" perfect-being-the-enemy-of-good-enough lessons resulting from Korea were a real thing in 1951.
The current naval side of the Pentagon seems to be adopting the idea that the quality of the technological masterpieces they've assembled will somehow offset the sheer displaced volume of hulls lost to these economizing decisions.
Any hull equipped with all that awesomeness has to manage to be displacing seawater out where it can use its tech, and given attrition is a thing, in enough numbers so one does not become none.
And with each test of the SM3 in the ABM role, I have pondered that any of those remaining fewer and fewer DDG hulls so equipped that got tasked to steam around in circles mid ocean assigned as continental ballistic missile defense assets won't be available to contribute to the pointy end of fleet kinetics.
Obviously posting here is preaching to the choir, but it does seem like that pointy end just gets narrower and narrower.