To grasp the Navy's gravely inadequate response to its ominously shrinking numbers, start with the DDG-1000 program. Born years ago as the DD-21 and then morphing into the DD(X), it has muddled through several incarnations, forecasting ever more optimistic capabilities, while shedding none of its earlier pretensions, with the Navy looking forward to eventual delivery of a handful of goldplated warships capable-per recent puffery-"of meeting all threats for decades to come."
The underlying genesis of such follies is a rooted reluctance to face up to the revolution in sea power: That dominance of the seas inheres in those weapon systems that fly swiftly through the air or can hide in the depths. The dilemma of the surface ship, at the interface of air and water, unable to go fast in the one medium or submerge in the other, is defining. It was clear 50 years ago when the submarine USS Albacore (AGSS-569), whose pioneering hull form nuclear plants would soon power, ran rings around the Navy's destroyers. In the Falklands War, the lone British nuclearpowered sub that sunk the cruiser General Belgrano and held the Argentine fleet in port foretold the day when, should our nation will it, the U.S. submarine fleet could sweep the seas.
The DDG-1000-class makes plain the lineaments of our Navy's skewed vision: Remnants of sentiment clinging to a bypassed romantic ideal of the destroyer; and faith of those in its thrall that technology can overcome the impermeability of sea water and assure surface ships' survival in the environment of the missile and the submarine. There is as well a late-blooming infatuation with that overhyped locale known as "the littoral," and the Navy's straining for larger roles that the immediate conflict denies. And, as always, addiction to the kinds of advocacy that sweeps aside damning truths, with our Navy foremost among the deceived.
A recent phenomenon is an exhortation to "think outside the box." Meaning what, I haven't the foggiest. But I suspect that the time is nigh to pop back inside it.
Inside the box, the sea air clears the head, and answers stand out sharp as hulls on a knife edge horizon. Vision refreshed, the Navy's altered goals should be the creation of classes of affordable warships scaled back to capabilities realistically attainable. Conveying the nature of such ships, it is easier to begin with what it will not be, what it cannot do.
It need not deliver ordnance far inland (leave that to carrier aviation and the Marines). It should not strain either for such chimeras as a low-signature hull form that ducks the question of those mountains of blue water it must shed in transit before snuggling comfortably in the shelter of the littoral. Nor will it carry another in that long-lived dynasty of high-power sonars, as ineffectual in submarine detection as they are counterproductive.
Such ships, though, will have a sturdy power plant, good sea keeping qualities, and endurance. A jack of all trades, good at many tasks, master fully of none. It will not be able "to meet all threats," defeat all submarines, waltz around mines buried in sand, nor claim to handle a supersonic surface-skimming missile zipping out of the littoral. It will be vulnerable. But, taking the long view, it will also assure the numbers to contend and prevail in challenges beyond today's tumult in the Middle East.
Calls for an "affordable" warship will bring cynical smiles, given the shambles that is U.S. shipbuilding. May it then not come to pass that numbers of modestly configured U.S. warships must be built in foreign yards, the mere broaching of which will bring howls from sea to shining sea? Yep, there's a law. But that law can be changed if the stark alternative is acquiescence in the relentless dwindling of our naval forces and fateful retreat from historic maritime responsibilities.
Weighing the prospect of the dollars to be poured into the DDG-1000, as yet an untried kluge of techno-babble, one listens in vain for worthier claimants. Where lions should roar, sheep are barely on the move. From the nuclear submariners, possessed of five decades experience observing the inability of surface ships to cope with the submarine's overwhelming superiority, nothing is audible. Even as that indispensable national treasure keeps being whittled away.
Captain Smith is a veteran destroyerman and commanded the USS Wilkinson (DL-5). He served nine years in the Operational Test and Evaluation Force, both ashore and afloat during his career. He was also chief of staff for analysis at Commander ASW Forces Pacific.