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Not surprising. This class is a pig that has no business existing, IMO. It has only one supposedly “useful” attribute that has no realistic advantage in any future combat situation, IMO.

It may be able to deflect radar at a distance, with dubious results versus the previous generation of destroyers, but at what cost? Would the previous generation be able to survive combat without such marginal improvements in “stealthiness” versus what we are now proposing to field at such a significant increase in appropriation?

I am all for upgrading our equipment when it makes good sense, but this “advancement” in technology seems to me to be marginal and waste of significant resources.

This is a very frustrating article to read. Without the benefits of having read your comments, I was left confused as to whether the system is working or the system is failing. Is the system working because we have open criticism of a ship design which means that the architects and the strategists are finding that their feet are kept to the fire or is the system failing because we have another hopeless boondoggle of runaway and top-heavy weapons systems designed not to make war but to make profits and jobs in countless congressional districts?

What is the mission that we are spending tens of billions of dollars to perform? What is the timeline, how long will we be confronted with this mission and how long will these ships expected to perform before obsolescence? Obviously, coastal defense is not the mission for the ships, it seems they that it must be something akin to the Royal Navy's gunboat missions of the 19th century. Antisubmarine warfare by stealth vessels hardly seems an economical way to approach that task.

It seems to me that very expensive weapons systems produced by an economy that's running an $18 trillion debt means that future wars will be fought by a bankrupt economy unable to field first rate weapons and therefore obliged to trade the blood of its sons for weapons superiority. If we are in fact mindlessly building expensive systems not for defense but as pork, we are to a moral certainty condemning many American soldiers and sailors to die. Likewise and even to a greater degree, if we do not control domestic spending, especially entitlements, we are certainly condemning ourselves to choosing between losing wars or sacrificing our youth.