You sunk my battleship

The USS Zumwalt takes the Navy in the wrong direction. This is why.

In what is just another stack of billions of dollar wasted on poorly thought out ideas (like the Littoral Combat Ship and F-35 to name a few), the Navy has lost sight of what is needed to keep our security.

In sinking this money into a couple of gold-plated ships that will get killed in combat, the Navy could have better spent this money on Burkes and Virginias. The "killed in combat" statement may have legs because as time goes on, DOD/Navy is trying to find more and more ways not to use carriers in operations in an effort to pay the bills and keep the light on. Operation:USELESS DIRT 4 (Libya) didn't use a carrier. How far are the alleged big-brains in DC ready to risk operational surprise with bad results?

No surface ship can be expected to survive a high end war.

At least with an aircraft carrier you have a mobile airfield. It is open-source combat in a way, tailored to whatever you can fly off of it.

Cruise missile strikes? In high-end wars submarines and aircraft do this better with more survivability.

Fire support for ground troops? Any number of other existing methods exist including firing precision rocket artillery from a ship.

Battleship admirals live. The Zumwalt and its sister are too expensive to lose in combat; which will happen. They take money away from other communities which could use it better.

Think about that the next time the U.S. Navy cries that it doesn't have enough money or that it doesn't have enough ships.

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