Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

This has more to do with the fact that the DDG1000s do NOT perform as the Navy had proclaimed. They were totally puffed up and when it came down to it, the DDG1000 was a total fugazi. The Navy Times (print edition, online doesn't have the article) had a great article about the cancellation a couple of weeks ago.

In the Sys-Admin world we will really need ships that impress and show the flag. The current cruisers and destroyers do that well. The newer amphibs like the LPD17's and the LCS along with the DDG51 class ships are most effective for a navy that has to be both blue water and littoral water capable.

Ah yes, that DOES seem like an explanation unique to this program of record!

First off, any measure of the performance of these ships is hypothetical, since they haven't even been built yet. Second, we don't realistically need any more than two of these ships. Speaking as a potential crew member (something to talk to the detailer about next time I'm up for orders; Zumwalt with a GSA tour to Afghanistan en route), the best thing we can do is to do first-of-class trials with Zumwalt as 1001 is being built, then work them up and forward deploy both ships with Blue/Gold crews and steam the hell out of them. These ships are floating firebases, and should be seen as such. Is there a place for them? I think so - but they'll be theatre assets and thereby totally unlike the Burkes. They won't be multi-purpose tin cans - they're more cruiser than destroyer. So, get the most out of the two. My choice for a name for 1001 is Mansoor, in honor of a SEAL awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for service in Iraq. Maybe restart the line for the Burkes, but better yet refine the LCS design so it's not all jacked up and build just ONE design.

Blah. They call it a revolution because you find yourself going in circles. In this case, its about 100 years later...

Our present condition is that of abandoning all attempt at a guiding conception of types, or standards, except the crude one that each ship must be bigger than the last. The ultimate tendency of this, of course, will be to make ships after too short a time unequal to a place in the line. The moral effect is still worse, for it is inducing, in the navy as in the public, a simple trust in bigness, and, what is worse, an absence of trust in anything but bigness. Undoubtedly, if all other things -- skill, courage, numbers, combinations, fortitude--are the same on both sides, bigness, barring accidents, will carry the day; but when have all other things been the same? We are putting in the foremost place of consideration that which military history shows to be the least of several factors. We have, indeed, the proverb, that "Providence is on the side of big battalions;" but we know it is not true. Napier is nearer the truth, in saying that the presence of Napoleon on the battle-field was equal to a reinforcement of 30,000 men. Providence is most often on the side of men who best know how to manage their battalions, or their ships; the smaller have more often triumphed by their conduct, than the bigger by their weight...

Mahan, A. T. Reflections, Historic and Other, Suggested by the Battle of the Japan Sea. U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings 32:447-471 June 1906