As noted, I read some tantalizing ideas, but there is no concrete information quickly found at this (early) stage. The best article I found was ruined by a decision to quote the gratuitous political statement of an administration official. One sentence basically made it all unpostable here. No one would see the rest of the content. All anyone would take away would be that one stupid statement.

What is apparent though from that article, and a couple other items, is that the desire is to "make real" the current distributed force structure/distributed lethality ideas, and make unmanned vessels a large component of this envisioned force structure. This thinking requires lots of small, affordable, quickly produced manned platforms to control a force of small, affordable, quickly produced unmanned ones.

This will not sit well with anyone, I fully realize, but the LCS has been cited as an example of the small, affordable manned platform. It has been used in tests with Ghost Fleet Overlord, and found to be very suitable to the role. It's got lots of "tailorable available space" adaptable to many different missions. All sorts of different equipment fits can be loaded, including unmanned platform control equipment. It was able to be put into production by two new--previously civilian--yards, and is actually comparatively inexpensive if one removes all the "teeth-cutting" costs. I don't think anyone is thinking of the actual hull and propulsion systems of either design. But, "this concept" seems to be the line of thinking. And if you look at ships like Japan's Mogami, you find a better execution of the same fundamental idea. Indeed, input from the Asian shipbuilding industry--particularly South Korea--is both desired, and even expected.

We have prototyped both LCS and various unmanned platforms. "Lack of prototyping" is cited as a major reason for our past failures. We then do not seem to be repeating this error. We seem to be "refining what we've already learned at cost." So, counterintuitive as it might seem, I am not overly stressed reading that the LCS looks to be a component idea in what is being envisioned.

I will "freak folks out even more"...

There also was mention of a "hi-low mix." It is acknowledged that we need some sort of new large surface combatant as well. The one article I read on this states that what is envisioned will look a lot more like the Zumwalt program than anything else. Not the Zumwalt ship itself, but large size and very high cost. "15 to 20 thousand tons," and "4 to 5 billion dollars per ship." Bigger than the current 13 thousand ton DDGX currently under consideration. Nothing else will accommodate the hypersonic missles, directed energy weapons and "numerous defensive weapons" the Navy requires of the design. Undertaking such a ship will require an unwavering financial commitment from all parties. There may not be the political will for this from government. This will be even riskier than the smaller combatant force envisioned above. And it is acknowledged that we only have two (potentially a third) ship yards which could produce this, but as it is the "high end," it will not be needed in the kinds of quantities expected from the lower end. There is a new South Korean run yard being set up here in the US. The article mentioned strong desire that they would get heavily involved in this new large combatant program.