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I see your point and agree. To me it’s not unlike the Air Force and their devotion to supersonic air superiority fighters and using them for air-mud. The A-10 is probably the most devastating ground attack aircraft ever devised and is totally unloved by the Air Force. There is no sense of proportion or seemingly any recognition that different platforms are needed in different environments.

I’m not going to sweep the skies with A-10s and I’m not going to force open the sea lanes with frigates, but when the Marines hit a beach they need fire support from a ship that give it and take it close in. And blue water ships are vulnerable to small boat threats when they are in skinny water. That’s why you see mighty ships like the USS George H.W. Bush being escorted down Thimble Shoal channel by a little 87 foot WPB. Trouble is, a WPB doesn’t have the range and endurance to run with the big boys across oceans. A frigate does.

In reality, the Navy needs replacements for the FFG-7 class frigates that are going away. There are plenty of good replacements being built by foreign navies (and some of our shipyards are building some for FMS), but the USN mindset can be summed up as “not invented here.” As parochial as that thinking is, it pretty well sums up things.

For Green Waters, the USN could use the equivalent of a Corvette. Again, there are numerous good foreign designs, but the NIH mindset applies.

The LCS was sold as a glorified, do everything — ASW, mine countermeasures, anti-surface warfare — that was convertible through the use of modules. The LCS was designed for speed at the cost of everything else. [Note to USN: Even at 45 knots, an LCS cannot run from a Mach 0.8 anti-ship missile, nor can it mount an adequate defense against multiples of them.]

Short form: The USN and DoD are screwing the pooch and they cannot see it at all.