Roughead Finally Gives an Interview

Finally, almost a year after apparently beginning the process to cancel the DDG-1000, Admiral Roughead has actually discussed the issue himself instead of through a proxy. We take the quotes one at a time.

"I started looking at the DDG-1000. It has a lot of technology, but it cannot perform broader, integrated air and missile defense," Roughead said in his first interview since the controversial move to cancel the destroyer program.

I have mixed feelings on this, because the last sentence is a very troubling fact. On one side I commend Admiral Roughead for working within his means to cancel the DDG-1000. On the other hand though, if the environment in the Navy today is such that the Chief of Naval Operations can't be out front and champion a message of shipbuilding, the most important issue facing the Navy today... something is clearly broken. If your thinking "ya, but, this is a political reality..." then it isn't just the Navy that is broken.

Roughead also noted that design compromises resulted in the removal of some of its torpedoes, making it more vulnerable to submarines.

"Submarines can get very close, and it does not have the ability to take on that threat," Roughead said.

If we are worried about how close submarines can get to the DDG-1000, then we just invalidated the entire argument for a technology demonstrator for stealth ships. Stealth isn't just low observability, it is also about the evading detection from submarines. If stealth cannot do both, then what are we really demonstrating here with the hull form, the part of the ship that makes it so expensive?

This is such a silly argument though. If the Navy is facing a major submarine threat and is looking to build a ship to counter that threat in blue water, then what are we building the Littoral Combat Ship for? In no time in maritime history has any Navy ever built battleships to fight submarines. I will be picking up this topic later this week if time permits, because to be blunt and honest, the CNO should never be quoted by a major newspaper with such generic nonsense, that is what his underlings are for.

"If you go back, from the end of Vietnam to our present time, we have only shot about a thousand bullets," he said. "And I look at the world and I see proliferation of missiles, I see proliferation of submarines. And that is what we have to deal with."

In other words, the Navy has decided Naval Ship Gunfire Support is no longer a requirement. We sure have spent a lot of time debating otherwise, not to mention money in pursuit of the option, to just dismiss it based on its relative absence during a six decade time period where a US Navy ship never shot down a single missile. Comparing 1000 "bullets" to 0 anti-ship missile kills doesn't favor his argument.

Roughead is not taking a bad position, he is just making a terrible argument. Again, if the CNO is going to only do a single public interview a year on shipbuilding, make it count.

But he was less enthusiastic about building a third ship. The Navy agreed to the additional vessel because money was already in the current budget proposal, he said.

"It will be another ship with which to demonstrate the technologies," he said. "But it still will lack the capabilities that I think will be in increased demand in the future."

Finally, something said with meaning and purpose. The necessity of a third DDG-1000 is industrial, thus political, not strategic. Someone in Congress should reconcile why Raytheon and the Navy say two different things about the capabilities of the DDG-1000. Here is what I want to know... will the Navy be funding the Standard missile support for the DBR anyway? I assume this is being cut from the Navy budget right? And both Congress and the Senate has approved this?

Why does it matter? The decision is huge, it determines whether the Navy will always be AEGIS, or if we introduce competition into our systems. If shipbuilding wasn't so broken already, this type of thing would have the look, feel, and smell of corruption. That might offend the Navy or Lockheed Martin, but competition was one reason for open architecture in the first place.

"I am doing everything I can to increase the capability and capacity of the fleet," Roughead said. "Shipbuilding dominates my thinking."

Then answer a few easy questions. Why do you refuse to criticize the 313? Why do you refuse to make the cost efficient argument against the DDG-1000 when it is the most credible argument to be made. Where is the link between the Navy's ends and ways strategic concept and the means of shipbuilding in the context of strategy? Why all the bashing of the DDG-1000 out of context? If shipbuilding dominates your thinking, and is the most important discussion for the Navy today, why do you avoid talking to the press about it except for this one time?

And one last question... Why are we building the entire surface combatant fleet around a single operational requirement, namely ballistic missile defense? My read of maritime strategy when taking a historic view suggests that emphasis on a single capability has long been proven time and time again as a flawed approach.