The Navy Needs To Stop Buying Big Ships To Do All Its Small Jobs
By James Seddon
on August 1, 2017
As a Navy “blackshoe” surface warfare officer, I saw firsthand how our fleet’s leaders have more missions than they have ships to fill them. I watched flag staff in a command center wrestle with operational problems that would have been easier if they’d had more hulls, more ships, of just about any kind of surface combatant. The Navy’s go-to workhorse destroyers are too expensive to fill the gap, and its recent small-ship programs have been plagued with problems.
There is one possible solution: Steal a page from the Russian navy’s shipbuilding strategy and focus on raising a fleet of corvettes — the diminutive warships, not the sportscars that newly minted ensigns dream of sticking in their driveways. Alas, the U.S. Navy seems to be going in the opposite direction, turning small-ship plans into big, costly headaches.
http://taskandpurpose.com/navy-needs-stop-buying-big-ships-small-jobs/
