The correct warning should be that conventional surface combatants are obsolete. The sea lanes will be protected and dominated by swarms of pilot less drones directed by satellite, redundant GPS guidance. Those drones will torment and sink surface combatants. They will be directed by nerds sitting in fortified bunkers behind a console as if they were playing a video game. The future has already arrived. Witness how useless our pricey frigates, destroyers and guided missile cruisers are when keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. The Iranians are able to defacto close it using relatively rudimentary drones. Those drones in the future will be more accurate, more stealthy and more lethal. Whoever has the best drones, best engineers and guidance systems will control the sea. DEI won’t save us.
It’s the big ships versus the little ships debate. It’s been ongoing since the days of Adams and Jefferson.
Well, I won’t disagree with that last, but, it is looking more and more as if, in the not too distant future, the defensive drones, ie., drone hunters, may cancel out the offensive drones.
Second, the real threat to well armed ships in the Strait and adjacent areas has been missiles, not drones. Drone swarms could change that, but so far the Iranians have been unable to mount such attacks on our ships, whether through inability (less likely?) or our ability to to disrupt them (more likely, but I have no firm evidence) I do not know for sure.
For redundant (and / or jam resistant) GPS guidance you have to have the “extra” satellites, and satellites can easily be taken out by the US, China, Russia, and at this point or very soon, some of the 2nd tier powers (Japan, France, likely South Korea, etc.)
What will really come to the fore with drones, IMO, is autonomous guidance with AI. We have had forms of autonomous guidance in missiles for over 40 years — my best man used to work on the DSP in those, back then. AI is one of the latest improvements.
Moreover, our Arleigh-Burke destroyers and whatever they have been close to have been impregnable, and defenses will continue to improve too. The problem is that the area to be protected is quite large, and we have not nearly enough defensive ships in the area to properly cover it. Our ships still have excellent uses, but they are, when it gets down to it, the wrong tool for the specific job of protecting civilian ships over such a large area.