Barnett on the DDX

One of America's best strategists ( and one of my favorite bloggers) weighs in on the navy's newest battleship, the DDX destroyer: ...the idea of the DD(X) as a guerrilla fighter makes him fume. Ships a third smaller and 500 times cheaper can drop off SEALs. And those big guns? With a maximum artillery range of 100 miles, the DD(X) couldn�t target an insurgent stronghold in Baghdad. �There are other ways to do this,� Barnett says. �Why not just launch an airplane?� Barnett sees the destroyer as a Cold War throwback. Today�s enemies defend themselves with speed, not armor. There are no Warsaw Pact-style headquarters to flatten. �So what�s the point,� Barnett asks, �of packing everything into big, concentrated assets--assets that provide a single point of failure--in a world where warfare seems to be going in the exact opposite direction?� I agree with this so much! The idea of pounding sand with new and very expensive extended range shells would be laughable if not sad. http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/003070.html

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