Network Combat

Offensive cyber attacks.  This is what several recent posts have been dealing with and now the Air Force is providing proof that it’s all realistic and relevant.  A Breaking Defense website article discusses the Air Force’s use of a modified EC-130 Compass Call aircraft to conduct remote, wireless hacking (“manipulate” is the word used in the article) of enemy networks (1).  If true, this kind of ability to get inside an enemy’s network is immensely valuable.  Think about our own [over]dependence on networks and what successful attacks on them would do to our warfighting capability.

Let’s consider this capability from both an offensive and defensive perspective.

Offensively, the ability to remotely and wirelessly manipulate an enemy’s data and networks offers the opportunity to not only remove a great deal of command and control oversight but also to disrupt defensive AAW networks, radar and sensing networks, and general data transfer capabilities.  This could, theoretically, push combat back to the local, manual level where any given weapon has only its own immediate sensor awareness, if even that. 

Consider a hypothetical A2/AD zone.  The zone is effective due in part to the number of enemy assets physically contained in the zone but also, perhaps more so, due to the networking of sensors and weapons such that the entire zone functions as a single defensive entity.  If we can break that single entity functionality we can isolate and overwhelm select assets and areas to achieve specific objectives.  The zone becomes transformed from a single entity to a collection of individual sensors and weapons operating on their own, largely unsupported in any coordinated way.

While the article was about the Air Force’s efforts to mount such a capability from an aircraft, it’s not hard to imagine the same capability being deployed from a submarine.  A slow, defenseless aircraft is going to be limited as to how closely it can approach an enemy but a submarine is unlimited. 

Of course, the size and weight of the required equipment is unknown.  Does it require an entire large aircraft to house it or is it just an IPad hooked into a transmitter and could be mounted on any aircraft or individual soldier?  How many people are required to operate the equipment or is the process totally automated?  Could a small aerial or subsurface drone house and operate the equipment?  Those are important questions and I doubt we’ll have any public information about this for quite some time.  The fact that the Air Force chose to modify an EC-130 suggests that the required equipment, power, and manning is somewhat substantial.

Defensively, we need to recognize that what we can do, so too can our enemies do to us.  We’ve touched on this in recent posts.  We discussed EMCON concerns (see, “Combat in the Information Age”).  We need to realize that EMCON is a two way street.  Not only do we need to avoid electronic emissions as a means of avoiding detection but we need to shield our equipment from incoming signals to avoid the very remote, wireless cyber attacks that we’re talking about now.  Currently, most of our equipment is not well shielded to prevent outgoing emissions but it is woefully unshielded against incoming signals.  Every electronic device on a ship must be considered a potential portal through which an enemy can attack.

We also discussed the concept of networks as a critical center of gravity for the Navy and also as a critical vulnerability (see, "Center of Gravity").  Again, the remote, wireless attacks that we’re discussing are exactly why I specified the Navy’s networks as both a center of gravity and a vulnerability.  We need to develop far more robust protections for our networks and consider the prospect of having to fight with significantly degraded networks. 

Currently, our network capabilities and security are assumed to be a given.  We train with fully operational networks.  Just like we should be training in electromagnetically challenged environments, so too should we be training in degraded network environments.  Has any training exercise started by shutting down all the networks and then saying, “fight”?  Undoubtedly, the response would be, “How?”.  We need to train to fight without absolute dependence on networks.  In fact, we should be training to fight un-networked, if necessary.

Network vulnerability also suggests that we should be designing networks that can be segregated and isolated the moment cyber attacks are detected.  In other words, we should be designing networks that can fail in an ordered and predictable manner rather than catastrophically. 

This also suggests that we need to build redundancy into our networks.  Just as we have (or used to have) redundant systems to mitigate battle damage, so too should we have redundant networks.  While we have a degree of redundancy in our current networks (backup servers and so forth) the redundancy is aimed at mitigating physical damage not cyber damage.  In order for a network to be redundant in the face of cyber attacks it must be completely isolated physically and electrically from its redundant self.  Any cross connection (power, uninterruptible power supplies, surge protection, user terminals, etc.) offers a pathway for a cyber-damaged network to infect its redundant self.

Consider the glowing claims made for using AESA radars to not only find targets but to communicate with other platforms, transfer data, and perform a degree of ECM.  Unfortunately, this also means that AESA radars are a potential portal for enemy cyber attack.  I’m certain that these radars have no cyber attack protections built in.  Think about the multitude of antennas on a modern aircraft.  Each one is a potential portal.  Think about what would happen if a cyber attack on aircraft radars could get each radar to strobe on.  That would provide the enemy with instant locations of all our aircraft.

How realistic is any of this?  I have no idea but the Air Force seems to think it can do something along these lines so I’m sure our enemy can, too.  To the best of our public knowledge, Chinese, North Korean, and Russian cyber attack capabilities are well ahead of our own.  Heck, they should be – they’ve been practicing them daily against our systems for years.

This remote, wireless cyber attack capability not only presents a powerful opportunity for offensive exploitation but it should serve as a frantic alarm concerning our new offset strategy which proposes, in part, to depend ever more heavily on information dominance, data, and networking in lieu of traditional explosive combat power.  If we find our networks compromised, our entire offset strategy would be invalidated.  Indeed, it seems as if that portion of the strategy is already seriously at risk.  We need to re-evaluate just how much emphasis and reliance we want to put on networks.  The Chinese and Russians are certainly putting a lot more emphasis and reliance on good old-fashioned explosives.  Perhaps their cyber experience has demonstrated to them something about the future of warfare that we have not yet grasped?

  

(1)Breaking Defense, “Wireless Hacking In Flight: Air Force Demos Cyber EC-130”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., September 15, 2015,

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/09/wireless-hacking-in-flight-air-force-demos-cyber-ec-130/

AFSB and MCM

The Navy’s first purpose designed Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) is the USNS Lewis B. Puller (T-ESB-3).  It was delivered to the Navy in Jun 2015 and is being readied for a Mid East deployment late next year.  As a reminder, the ship is a Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) with a flight deck added some 40 ft above the main deck (yes, that raises questions about stability).  The interesting thing about this ship is that it’s primary mission is mine countermeasures (MCM)(1).

“The baseline requirement, the threshold requirement, is MCM capability.”

Apparently, the ship will conduct MCM primarily through the use of helicopters, specifically the MH-53E.  The ship has space for two helo parking spots on the flight deck, two operating spots, and two in the hangar.  The article suggests that the Navy is looking at increasing the operational spots by converting the parking spots to operating.

The interesting aspect of this is the focus on helicopter MCM versus the LCS’ emphasis on remote unmanned underwater vehicles.  Previously, the Navy MCM focused on two main components:  helicopters and in-the-water operations from small MCM vessels like the Avenger class.  Now, the Navy seems to be attempting to use the LCS for the in-the-water ops and the AFSB for the helicopter operations.

Afloat Forward Staging Base

Of course, the AFSB could also operate in-the-water vehicles although this would, of necessity, place a very large ship very close to the minefield.  We’ll have to see how this develops.  Again, I get the feeling that the Navy is stumbling its way through mine countermeasures warfare rather than having a very clear plan developed from operational experience and wargaming analysis.  For instance, how will an AFSB conduct MCM against a peer in a contested environment?  I’d really like to see the Navy game out its MCM efforts, specifically in these scenarios:

• Contested amphibious landings
• Contested restricted passages
• Lightly contested, wide area mine clearance
• High speed movements (for example, a carrier group attempting a high speed transit through potentially mined areas)

Like so many Navy developments, this is a small piece of a much bigger picture and the piece is developed seemingly in an operational vacuum.  We’ll have to wait to see how the AFSB integrates into the overall MCM force and operations.

(1)USNI, “Expeditionary Mobile Base Chesty Puller May Receive SOF Upgrades Before 5th Fleet Deployment”, Megan Eckstein, November 2, 2015,

http://news.usni.org/2015/11/02/expeditionary-mobile-base-chesty-puller-may-receive-sof-upgrades-before-5th-fleet-deployment

Putin Into Port

Today we have a guest post from a reader and frequent comment contributor.  Benjamin W. Oliver, B.Eng., is a British engineer with a slant on defense.  He currently works in Research and Development.

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So….. I’m sure we have all now seen this:

The new Status-6 , "devastating" torpedo system. According to the document it will create "wide areas of radioactive contamination".

This apparent leak went out on Russian television, but the West didn’t notice. So the withdrawal went out again a few days later, and this time it managed to make the news! (1)

So why are the Russians doing this and what does it mean to NATO?

The pictured document conveniently shot over the shoulder of a military official gives intimate details of the weapon system with colour pictures. 10,000 km range, 1000 metre depth and 100 knots maximum speed. The device is designed to avoid any conventional countermeasure and have a warhead bigger than any we have seen yet.

WOW.

General opinion is of course that this is disinformation. And that’s probably putting it politely. Whether aimed intentionally at the Russian public to assure them Russia is still winning the arms race that ended with the collapse of the USSR, or for the consumption of the West, it is hard to say.

However given that it had to be “leaked” twice just so that Western media would actually pick it up, it tends to indicate that to some extent it is for our eyes.

Now with the advancements in anti-ballistic missile defences and the treaties on the proliferation of nuclear armed cruise missiles, Russia may be feeling on the back foot. MAD. after all relies on all parties being assured of everyone’s mutual destruction. Since we have been developing all kinds of defences, have we thrown out the balance of power in Russia’s eyes?

Putin may have been left thinking how CAN I create a sense of believable capable nuclear Armageddon?

We need a totally unstoppable weapon!

As we know any ICBM launch can and will be instantly tracked, cruise missiles, more difficult when sub launched, but they make a good radar track once within range of your air defence umbrella, and are not what you would call the “unstoppable delivery system” fabled in years gone by.

But what if …

An underwater ICBM?

So what does this mean? I think we can all ponder the obvious “Pearl Harbour” scenario. But you’re bored of that by now, right? Endlessly quoted, re-lived, reinvented, argued over ad nauseam. Yawn!

Welcome to Faslane;

The UK’s main submarine base, and home to the Vanguard class of SSBN. Just outside we find Coulport the trident weapons storage facility and the arming facility for the Vanguard class ballistic missile subs.

What if our Status-6 were to go off there, just as a Vanguard was arming, or indeed disarming, who is going to know what happened?

What capability do we have to track the weapon at all, or at any distance? So who do we retaliate against? The investigation is going to be somewhat hampered due to the glassy nature of the surrounding countryside.

Now nuclear torpedoes aren’t new I hear you cry! Famously back in the Cuban missile crisis the USSR deployed subs with relatively short range nuke torpedoes. I hear you shout down the IP pipeline.

Our policy on all subsurface launched torpedoes has always been to concentrate on the launching platform rather than the weapons.

And this is very sensible, until the platform can be at significant distance. Given the squared relationship of a radius to a circular area of sea, every mile we go out from a potential target we are having to patrol 1000’s of square miles of ocean, or at the very least 100’s of miles of perimeter.

We simply don’t have the ASW assets to secure a 1000 km radius, never mind 10,000 (which is ridiculous I know). Even a SOSUS type detection ring at that radius is asking a lot. Particularly given the many installations we are talking about.

Point defence then? A 100kts torpedo should be easy to hear right? Well this would be theoretically fine apart from the fact that the only current modern Anti-Torpedo Torpedo is Russian. So even assuming detection we have virtually nothing we can do about an incoming.

Sub nets?  Well yes, bit World War 2, but it looks like a large fish yer ? So it should work ? How about complex Harbour entrances, Sea Gates even?

Just the radius problem, its stated detonation yield is phenomenal.

Target sets are limited, but given the likely blast radius, and human’s propensity for liking sea front properties, it still encompasses a huge amount of what we might call the tactically significant infrastructure of many countries.

Obviously we are supposed to drop our ABM or split the budget and start on Anti-Torpedo Weapons.

Work is underway (2).

But do we really want to invest billions in countering a weapon system that may not even exist? Particularly when this will undoubtedly detract from other programs.

Given the MAD policy SHOULD we even counter this threat? We have ICBM after all?

Maybe we should just skip over the article and get back to the juicy bits of the defence pages? How is that F35 doing?

Only problem is, once these Ideas are out there …

(1)http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34797252

(2)http://defensetech.org/2013/10/28/navy-deploying-new-anti-torpedo-technology/

T-AGOS

One of the vital but relatively unknown vessels of the Navy is the T-AGOS ocean surveillance ships.  The Navy operates a small fleet of these vessels under the Military Sealift Command.  This post offers a brief look at these vessels and their function.

Function

As you might imagine, getting detailed information on the functionality of these ships is difficult.  The vessels are broadly tasked with surveillance of submarines.  Presumably this includes both tracking of submarines and development of detailed acoustic profiles of submarine classes and specific submarines.  Their primary “weapon” is the SURTASS surveillance towed array sensor system which is intended to monitor submarines at very long ranges. 

Additional functions include oceanographic and hydrographic data collection.

SURTASS

SURTASS is the mobile version of the well known SOSUS system.  In its baseline configuration, the array was passive only but now includes a vertical array active low frequency (LFA) source.  This allows operation in a bistatic mode.  USS Impeccable began operating the LFA in 2004.  Smaller versions of the LFA have been developed for the Victorious class vessels. Other versions of SURTASS are being developed for enhanced shallow water submarine detection.

The horizontal array is 4900 ft long and is towed at a depth of 500-1500 ft.

Ships and Characteristics

The Navy currently operates four T-AGOS ships of two classes.  The three-ship Victorious class was begun in 1986 and the one-ship Impeccable class was started in 1993.  Additional ships were planned in the Impeccable class but were cancelled for budget reasons.

The ships are built with SWATH (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) hulls for stability at low speed and in heavy weather.

The current list of active T-AGOS vessels is:

Victorious T-AGOS-19

Able T-AGOS-20

Effective T-AGOS-21

Loyal T-AGOS-22

Impeccable T-AGOS-23

Here are a few physical characteristics for the Victorious class.  The Impeccable class is similar, though larger.

Length:                       234 – 281 ft

Displacement:           3400 – 5400 tons

Speed:                       10 – 13 kts;  3 kts when towing

Crew:                          20 mariners, 5 techs, and up to 15 Navy crew

USS Impeccable

Impeccable Incident

There is a demonstrable and common sense need to provide protection for these ships when they operate near unfriendly countries.  Impeccable was invoved in a famous incident of harassment by Chinese vessels in 2009 that illustrates the need for protection.  From a Naval War College report comes this summary of the incident (1).

“[Impeccable] … was engaged in lawful military activities in China’s claimed EEZ. On 8 March 2009, five PRC vessels—a navy intelligence ship, a government fisheries-patrol vessel, a state oceanographic patrol vessel, and two small fishing trawlers—surrounded and harassed Impeccable approximately seventy-five miles south of Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The fishing trawlers maneuvered within twenty-five feet of Impeccable and then intentionally stopped in front of it, forcing Impeccable to take emergency action to avoid a collision. The U.S. government protested the PRC’s actions as reckless, unprofessional, and unlawful. China responded that Impeccable’s presence in China’s claimed EEZ had been in violation of Chinese domestic law and international law. Impeccable returned to the area the next day under escort of a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93).”

Note that Impeccable did not have effective protection during the incident.  Failure to provide protection is a recipe for disaster.  You’ll recall the Chinese forcedown and subsequent seizure and looting of the EP-3 aircraft some years back.  Without ready protection, we run the risk of losing a valuable and highly secret vessel.

LCS

The Navy continues to search for a mission the LCS can be effective at.  Adapting a LCS to the T-AGOS mission would be a possibility.  With at least a minimal level of self-protection as well as some useful speed, the LCS-AGOS could operate with a degree of defensive capability that the T-AGOS does not possess.  Of course, the LCS is inherently endurance-challenged but modifications ought to be possible to greatly increase the range and endurance.  This is not a perfect option but might be a way to get more use out of an otherwise fairly useless platform.

In summary, the T-AGOS vessels provide a very valuable function in the Navy’s subsurface warfare effort and, though less glamorous, deserve increased attention, upgrades, and protection.  All in all, an interesting class of ship!

(1)https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/d11a2362-fa30-4742-8ec4-c8bed2025114/Close-Encounters-at-Sea--The-USNS-Impeccable-Incid.aspx

Harpoon Block II+ - What Changed In Three Minutes?

The Navy is in the process of testing the Harpoon Block II+ missile.  The main feature of the II+ is the ability to accept in-flight guidance.

Is that really a big deal?  Or even a moderately worthwhile capability?

Harpoon has a range of 60 miles and a speed of 540 mph.  Doing the math, that translates to 9 miles per minute.  Thus, at max range, the Harpoon will cover the distance to the target in 6.6 minutes.  Is there really going to be a need to update the targeting in 6.6 minutes?  A ship target moving at 30 kts, for example, will move 3.3 nm in 6.6 minutes – presumably still well within the Harpoon seeker range – and that’s the worst case of max range and max target speed. 

Presumably, the mid-course guidance (it’s called “mid-course” because it happens part way through the flight, not at the last second) would take place at around the 3 or 4 minute mark of the flight.  Seriously?  Is there really a need for mid-course flight path changes after 3 or 4 minutes?  Even a very fast ship would only have moved a mile or two and most targets less than that.  Presumably, we had a pretty good target fix when we launched.  It won’t have changed that much!  Yes, we can launch on bearing only but if that’s all we had at launch, we’re not going to have any better data 3 or 4 minutes later.

For any case of less than max range or less than max target speed, the need for mid-course guidance just goes from not realistically needed to utterly not needed.  There just seems to be little need for mid-course guidance updates.  This seems like a capability that sounds nice when you say it but is not worth the cost and added complexity.  Remember, not only does the Harpoon have to carry additional equipment (cost and complexity as well as weight) but whatever guiding platform there is has to have a transmitter capable of sending signals in whatever format is required (cost and complexity).

By the way, what platform is going to provide the mid-course guidance data?  Any platform that has a good enough fix on the target at the moment of mid-course correction almost certainly had the same good fix at launch with exact knowledge of location, course, and speed thus rendering the need for mid-course guidance moot.

Honestly, I get the feeling that this is just a hyped capability designed to get more developmental funding for the manufacturer.  This is a solution looking for problem.  There’s a lot of things I’d rather spend the developmental money on than this.

UAV Tanker Killer

War on the Rocks (WOTR) website has a fascinating article on the vulnerability of our aerial tanking capability which inspired this particular post (1).  WOTR points out that aerial tanking is a fundamental capability that is crucial to all our combat operations.  Further, the availability of tanking is taken for granted.  WOTR posits the question, what if our tanking is threatened?  The article goes on to describe threats and solutions.  It’s a very worthwhile read.

The particular aspect that I’d like to focus on is the potential use of enemy long range, stealthy UAVs as anti-tanker weapons.  We don’t hesitate to envision and design all manner of long range, stealthy UAVs that will triumphantly penetrate deep into enemy airspace and carry out devastating attacks with near total impunity.  Being slightly more realistic, we don’t hesitate to envision and design long range, stealthy UAVs intended for persistent surveillance deep in enemy airspace, again with assumed impunity.

Well, fair is fair.  If we can design such magnificent machines so can the enemy.  Let’s face it, on a relative scale, designing and building UAVs is not all that difficult and a bit of cyber spying and hacking would provide any design specs the enemy couldn’t figure out on their own.

Now imagine a long range, stealthy UAV whose design purpose is to be a tanker-killer.  It would probably have a degree of autonomy to identify tankers on its own and decide where, when, and how to kill them.  The UAV could even be designed as a suicide craft to be expended against the tanker.

Tanker locations, at least generally, can be fairly well predicted.  They have to be somewhere along the path to a worthwhile target and placed in the flight paths of the combat aircraft who need the fuel.  Knowing where our bases are, where the targets of interest are, and having observed our general flight paths, it wouldn’t take much of a thought exercise to predict tanker locations. 

Long endurance, stealthy UAVs can fly to the predicted areas and simply wait while conducting search profiles.  A little bit of artificial intelligence software can aid in backtracking observed aircraft flight paths to further refine predicted locations.

For relatively little effort and cost, the enemy could paralyze our air operations by seriously affecting our tanking capability and capacity.  I know many of you are having a knee jerk reaction and saying that no enemy UAV can fly thousands of miles into our airspace, undetected, and destroy our tankers.  We’d see them and easily shoot them down.  To go back to the previous thought, we think our UAVs will penetrate thousands of miles of enemy airspace and carry out all manner of destruction and surveillance, undetected.  We can’t have it both ways.  If UAVs are that good then they’ll be that good for the enemy, too.  If UAVs aren’t that good then you have to ask about the wisdom of our current UAV path.

Tanker - UAV Target?

The purpose of this post is to anticipate a possible enemy course of action and, thus, be prepared to counter it.  If we believe this is a realistic possibility then we need to be prepared to provide UAV detection around our tankers and provide the means to destroy the UAVs.  I don’t know what level of detection capability is needed.  Is an F-15’s radar sufficient to detect UAVs for many miles around a tanker or do we need to pair AWACS and tankers?  Does a UAV have enough of a radar and IR signature for an AMRAAM or Sidewinder to successfully engage it?  Hopefully, the military is looking closely at these kinds of questions.

On a broader scale, hopefully the military is looking at our forces from the enemy’s perspective and trying to anticipate their actions just as we’re doing here.  Unfortunately, I see far more emphasis on acquiring things then on developing tactics and conducting realistic wargames against an “enemy force” that is free to engage in any manner they wish.

Anyway, take this as a simple thought exercise in the realm of tactics.  The military needs to do a lot more of this.

(1)War on the Rocks, “Short Legs Can’t Win Arms Races: Range Issues And New Threats To Aerial Refueling Put U.S. Strategy At Risk”, Greg Knepper And Peter W. Singer, May 20, 2015,

http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/short-legs-cant-win-arms-races-range-issues-new-threats-aerial-refueling/

LCS and Netfires NLOS

I’ve stated repeatedly that the LCS’ major failing was the absence of a well developed Concept of Operations (CONOPS) prior to committing to the program.  This lead to pointless capabilities like excessive speed which had no tactical purpose, unfeasible concepts like module swapping in a tactical timeframe, missing capabilities like the lack of air defense, and cost overruns due to attempts to include all manner of capabilities because there was no CONOPS to evaluate usefulness against.

That said, what is the single biggest complaint voiced about the LCS?  It would probably have to be the lack of armament.  That brings us to the Netfires NLOS (Non Line Of Sight) weapon system.  The failure of that system lead directly to the lack of armament complaint.

Let’s take a moment to briefly review what NLOS was intended to be.  NLOS was a family of vertically launched missiles including a Precision Attack Missile (PAM) and a Loitering Attack Missile (LAM).  The 117 lb missile had a range of around 20-25 miles.  Missiles were to be equipped with IR, GPS/Inertial, and semi-active laser homing.  The system was to have networked the missiles, in flight, to provide autonomous target recognition and allocation, real time targeting updates, and damage assessment imaging.  The missiles were to be launched, arrive over the target area, autonomously identify and allocate targets, and attack.  Supposedly, the missile had a multi-target warhead with both shaped-charge capability and blast fragmentation.

For the LCS, the system was envisioned to provide both a land attack capability and anti-surface capability (the anti-swarm mission).

If the LCS had actually achieved this capability, we’d be having a somewhat different discussion about the LCS.  Yes, the LCS would still have the same inherent flaws but at least the armament complaint would have been largely alleviated for the ship’s intended role.  The LCS would still not be a frigate with long range anti-ship missiles but, to be fair, that was never envisioned as the LCS’ role.  And, yes, the modular concept would still be a weakness in that a LCS that was not equipped with the ASuW module would be helpless against a swarm.

The NLOS was certainly the key to the ASuW module and, arguably, key to the LCS’ success overall.

So, aside from historical enlightenment and amusement, what do we learn from this?

Among other lessons, we learn the folly of committing to a production run of a warship whose main weapon is experimental at the time of commitment.  Most experimental weapons never pan out and, in this particular case, the Army had already declared the NLOS a failure and cancelled the program.  I wonder why the Navy thought this would succeed?

The point of this post is two-fold:  to provide some historical perspective on the LCS’ armament issue and to try to recognize and understand the Navy’s failure.

It’s not just that the NLOS failed.  As I said, weapon programs fail all the time.  The real issue is the Navy mindset that chose to ignore the history of failure of weapons development, in general, and the Army’s pronouncement of failure for this system, in particular, and, instead, chose to believe that this would be the program that would defy the odds.  Any reasonable person would have opted to stop the LCS acquisition program at the point that the NLOS was cancelled and wait until a suitable alternative could have been procured or developed.  Of course, the truly reasonable person wouldn’t have even begun an acquisition program where the main weapon didn’t actually exist – but, I digress.

The Navy’s ability to ignore reality is legend but at some point you’d like to see some recognition of reality especially as the Navy pursues lasers, railguns, BMD, Fords, LX(R)’s, UCLASS/UCAV, etc.  If the Navy doesn’t start to do a better job of recognizing reality, I’ll be writing for the next 30 years!