The Navy's ongoing Identity Crisis

The Navy has suffered from a general lack of direction in recent years. It can't decide what to pursue in terms of a coherent procurement plan:

“If you stop building DDG 1000s and you have a DDG 51 that really doesn’t have that X-band and isn’t intended to operate close to the shoreline and in that cluttered environment, it’s not clear how you provide air protection for the littoral combat ship (LCS).

“So there, you’ve got to ask yourself what the strategy is that has us wanting to buy 55 LCSs, which don’t have any air self-defense capability, and I don’t really have a ship that helps provide the air cover for that ship. Because when [the LCS] was envisioned by [former Chief of Naval Operations] Adm. [Vern] Clark and others, that was the strategy, the way it would hang together.”

That's John Young speaking in his capacity as "Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics." He's in the difficult position of having to explain the high dollar amount attached to the Navy's version of the F-22 or FCS, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt Destroyer. All are, in some way or another, gold-plated poster children of a completely dysfunctional procurement process.

The Navy also can't decide how to pursue its new missions:

The same day, McKnight transferred his staff to the cruiser Vella Gulf and San Antonio turned back to the United States [and away from its role as flagship of CTF-151]. The Navy said the rotation was routine, but it’s worth pointing out that San Antonio has suffered severe mechanical problems as a result of shoddy construction.

Just a week earlier, McKnight had praised San Antonio as the perfect pirate-fighting warship.

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Trading San Antonio ship for a cruiser will have some knock-on effects. The cruiser has less aviation deck space and fewer helicopters, potentially fewer small boats and definitely less space for staff, extra boarding teams and captured pirates. A deal-breaker for the Navy’s first dedicated counter-pirate force? Certainly not. But it’s not good news.

My guess is, the Navy simply realized that it was never going to go amphibious on the pirates.

Finally, the Navy's having trouble doing some basic things right:

The USS Port Royal (CG 73), the youngest cruiser in the fleet, went aground just outside Pearl Harbor Thursday night

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Galrahn has more:

Normally I wouldn't bother posting about a grounding here, but PORT ROYAL is one of just three BMD cruisers in the fleet and she looks to be well in the shoal water on Runway Reef and parallel to the beach, to boot.

Luckily, no one was hurt, and it is apparently not leaking anything.