You only have to look at the sad rump-ZUMWALT Class DDG to see what can happen when you believe too much in the promise at the expense of experience. The NLOS void in LCS is another datapoint.
While it is very true that if you don’t evolve, you die, it is also true that if you mortgage too much of what you have now for the promise that your easy solution will emerge from a mass of unformed clay, you are setting yourself up to lose.
Unmanned deep strike aircraft. Hypersonics. Directed energy. Rail guns. We all hear what is coming … but what if the future-imperfect does not deliver? (NB: it usually doesn’t – just watch 2001: A Space Odyssey or Blade Runner)
While it is comfortable for some to assume capability risk today for a war-winning promised capability almost ready for IOC tomorrow, what if that IOC keeps sliding to the right or never comes? Assuming risk is just that – risk.
Are you mitigating your risk correctly?
While we might not be interested in fighting a war in the near-term, a war might be interested in fighting us. What will we fight with in the summer of 2020? 2025? Are we investing enough – as a hedge – of improving what we have that does work now, as compared to pouring all our money in what sounds so good, but has yet to emerge?
What is that balance? Get it right, and you have a smooth transition from NTU to Aegis … do it wrong, you have a seabed full of sunk SPRUANCES traded for three ZUMWALTS; you sell your OHP for the forever-about-to LCS.
This isn’t just an American problem. New technology often develops on its own timeline, as our Russian friends are seeing.
The Russian Navy’s top officer has admitted the country’s hypersonic Zircon cruise missile is suffering ‘childhood diseases.’
Admiral Nikolai Evmenov said these issues – which he did not elaborate on – would take at least a few years to resolve before the 3M22 Zircon becomes operational.
Of course, this could just be a head fake, but I don’t think so. From both an engineering and weaponeering POV, this is not easy to do. At least this buys us time to continue to develop our countermeasures for the tough math problem hypersonics will give us, and gives us time to work on ours.
In the meantime – are we sure we have all we need to counter the batteries of legacy ASCM that are nicely containerized and rolling down coastal roads worldwide? The Russians and her customers are not putting all their eggs in the Zircon basket.
We can’t control what others are doing, but we can control what we do. Have we fully hoisted aboard the lessons of INS HANIT? What about the lessons of USS MASON off Yemen?
Are our bridge and CIC systems we have now as ergonomic and effective when under the time crunch from the moment you detect a threat to when you have to counter it?
Look to the future always; but don’t forget to be just as interested in the present. The future may or may not arrive, but the present is right in our face.
