Until the announcement of this thing, I had a nearly religious faith the we might yet "pull a rabbit from a hat," and fix up the Navy. Distributed Lethality is exactly the asymetric answer to China. It entails cheaper weapons, which we have the capacity to produce, and in quantity. And numbers win wars. It allows us to endure attrition and survive.

Since the carrier group structure is still also very useful and necessary, the new general purpose escort in the form of DDGX was also welcome news to me. It offered future growth which the Burke hull is no longer capable of. Between this upgrade to our carrier groups, and the investement into USVs and UUVs with suitable affordable manned accompanyment, it looked to me like we were on exactly the right track.

Now, there's this thing. If it gets going, it will be the ruin of the US Navy. We barely have enough budget to keep DDGX alive. This will replace it outright. There will be no "still keeping DDGX on the drawing board as a backup." This will tie up our resources on a wild goose chase that won't produce needed near-term results, and as the article noted is most likely to end up canceled, or severely truncated in numbers. Just a waste of time and resources. It kills the general purpose escort program we now need even more desperately to escort this thing on top of our carriers. It is ridiculous.

My former optimism is gone. If I see this thing actually ramp up and get going, then I will abandon what hopes I had. Distributed Lethality by itself is wonderful, but as noted, not enough. The existing carrier force is also necessary. This will destroy that. I may well live to see incompetence (at many levels) destroy the US Navy. It was certainly "fun while it lasted."

Chinese is not a fun language for most westerners to learn. Tonality is an extremely unfamiliar aspect. I suppose I could be dead before that really becomes an absolute necessity. A silver lining in everything.