I somewhat get the impression with these stories is that most of our defense mustering strategy is based on costly innovations that have to go through lengthy testing and practical shakedowns before we even see working units or platforms.
Shouldn’t we base the bulk of our force on more “off the shelf” technology options for these missions?
I know stealth technology, rail-guns, lasers pew pew, spaceships and robot donkeys are neato, but these tech ideas are extremely cutting edge.
Shouldn’t we simply focus on the military as an effective force that can meet the missions we are reasonably fielding. I don’t mean stop innovating, but we’ve been developing all these “new type” weapons. Are we able to meet current and near future threats effectively?
Some of the Navy is already working on this, as the LCS turned out to be an expensive boondoggle that with mission creep didn’t work out. The LCS was supposed to replace the Navy’s frigates and the Navy has finally admitted it can’t. The FFG[X] program is a crash program to buy an off the shelf, already in use frigate design from another country. This is because LCS precluded a new frigate design so we don’t have any designs under development and we don’t have the 5-10 years needed to design and start to build a new frigate. We need new frigates yesterday, so we’re going to buy an off the shelf design, adapt it to American weapons, computer and propulsion and build them here. That’s the fastest way for us to get the surface combatants we need.