Top 10 Letters

The Navy describes LRLAP rounds raining down on a hapless enemy with great precision and volume, at a rate of ten per minute per gun. But there is the matter of cost. A conservative estimate of the cost of this round is about $100,000. Thus, each gun will be blowing away $1 million every ten minutes. The high cost of the LRLAP explains why two senior Marine Corps generals testified on April 8, 2005 that each DD(X) will have only 70 of these rounds. (A Navy 2003 study indicated that these guided rounds would be too expensive for volume fire.) Presumably the rest of the total loadout of 900 rounds will be conventional 155 mm rounds, now under development. The problem here is that these rounds are to have a range of only 27.6 miles (24 nm), whereas, like all of our present active vulnerable ships, the DD(X) cannot risk getting closer than 29.7 miles (25nm) to the shore. There’s a disconnect here.

Goldfarb is right about the need for guns, but here is a real solution. Navy’s estimated $3.3 billion for the first DD(X) could, within two years, reactivate, thoroughly modernize (adding, to each, 96 vertical missile cells), and support both battleships. For NSFS, this buys us eighteen 16-inch guns with projectiles (all accurized with GPS or Guidance Integrated Fuzes) from 2,700 lb AP deep penetrators, which can take out most hardened targets in North Korea, down to successfully tested 530 lb 115 mile range guided 11-inch sabot rounds, plus 24 five-inch guns firing extended range BETM rounds impacting at 69 lbs.

Before the first DD(X) is fielded, we probably could field a 16-inch guided scramjet projectile that would go 460 miles in nine minutes, a performance that Pratt & Whitney experts, in 2003, declared “feasible.” This would revolutionize naval warfare. The Navy’s estimate of rail guns by 2020 is optimistic. In any case, this will still be a relatively small round, hardly a rival of the scramjet round in either size, range or availability.

Goldfarb accepts the Navy’s cost estimate of $3.3 billion for the first ship (hardly a bargain); however, on July 20, 2005 a Congressional Budget Office rep testified that the first DD(X), due to be fielded in 2015 (not two in 2012), will cost $4.7 billion. Other estimates go as high as $7 billion each (Defense News May 2, 2005). Commenting on DD(X), on August 9, 2005, Chairman of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) stated: “We’re now down to a little more than a technology demonstration platform.”

It is ironical that Goldfarb began his piece with the Russian fleet’s defeat by the Japanese in 1905. One of the causes of this defeat was that the Russian ships had notoriously unstable tumblehome hulls, just as the DD(X) will. Test Director for the DD(X), Barry I. Fox, described its hull as “very tricky” and “it’s the most difficult ship I’ve ever worked on” (Washington Post, February 8, 2004). This is a high price to pay for being stealthy, since there are many ways any ship operating in the littorals can be seen. This ship will also be vulnerable to ubiquitous anti-ship missiles, especially its highly inflammable superstructure. Its crew is now down to 110 for a ship the size of a World War II German pocket battleship. The Navy claims it will be protected by “automated damage control,” an untested and unproven solution to what is normally a very highly manpower-intensive task.

–William L. Stearman, PhD
Executive Director, United States Naval Fire Support Association

Michael Goldfarb responds: Mr. Stearman and his organization have admirable goals, but unfortunately I cannot agree with their policy prescription, such as it is–to recommission Iowa class battleships instead of investing in the 21st-century technology of the DD(X). True, the Iowa class is the best available platform for naval fire support, but it represents an unacceptable risk to American lives, requiring thousands of sailors to operate and with almost no defense against sea-skimming missiles. Stearman’s concerns about cost and effectiveness are legitimate, but DD(X) is, at its core, a forward-looking attempt to solve a current problem. Recommissioning battleships is a backward-looking strategy that may seem both cost-effective and sufficient in the near-term, but may turn out to be catastrophic in the longer-term.

*2*
Michael Goldfarb did a great job of laying out how truly revolutionary the DD(X) is as a piece of naval architecture.

However, the notion that the ships would operate independently or as surface squadrons is off-base. You would not use a platform with a dual-band radar for inserting Special Forces. This is what submarines and possibly the future Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are for. The whole point of having a dual-band (X-band for missile illumination and fire control and S-band arrays for long-range search) is to provide area low-to-high altitude air defense. The stealthiness is to reduce its radar horizon to enemy aircraft and missile boats so that it can shoot first. First and foremost, the DD(X) is intended to protect carrier battle groups that will be the mainstays of U.S. naval strategy for well into this century. Its secondary mission is to support land forces ashore.

As for the Advanced Gun System, it is a land attack weapon. Period. There is little or no prospect of using it in a surface naval engagement, over the horizon or otherwise. The GPS-aided, inertial-navigation-system-guided 155mm shells are not intended to attack moving targets. A maneuvering ship simply cannot be engaged at over the horizon ranges with ballistic projectiles, unless the projectiles have a terminal active seeker or semi-active guidance with a spotter in the vicinity of the target. It moves too far while the shell is in the air. The gun is intended to provide forces ashore with artillery fire support, where spotters and sensors will be able to send the GPS coordinates of the fixed target back to the ship.

The DD(X) will participate in surface naval engagements the “old fashioned” way: with Harpoon missiles from its vertical launchers and Penguin missiles from its embarked helicopters. Of course, if you find yourself in a surface engagement with a $3 billion ship, then you haven’t done your job properly. Modern antiship missiles are terrifying. You don’t want to get anywhere near them. Airplanes, not guns, remain the future of naval warfare as practiced by the United States. If you have planes, proceed with caution. If you don’t, stay away from the enemy. In recognition of this, potential enemies will employ advanced diesel electric submarines armed with “carrier-killer” supersonic antiship missiles, such as the Russian P-500 Bazalt and P-700 Granit. To make matters worse, antiship missile makers are turning to imaging infrared seekers to counter radar stealth.

The future of naval warfare is air, surface, and submarine combatants fencing with ever more lethal missiles. The DD(X) is intended to be an integrated weapon system to enable US naval forces to survive and prevail in such an environment. It is not a harbinger of a retro era of broadsides and it certainly isn’t a lone gunman.

–Michael Puttré
Editor-in-Chief, edefenseonline.com

*3*
I enjoyed Michael Goldfarb’s article on the DD(X). One reason the DD(X) will be quieter than other ships is its use of a state-of-the-art electric drive, which eliminates the need for driveshaft/reduction gears. This system will provide approximately 10 times more power for ship systems than currently available on conventional warships. All that power will ultimately be used by a variety of energy weapons being considered for the DDX, including free electron lasers, microwave weapons, and electromagnetic rail guns.

–Jonathan Schlein

*4*
Much has been written about Harriet Miers’s nomination, including writings on these pages last Monday by William Kristol that themselves made news. Lost amidst the punditry, though, has been a straightforward look at the reasons why this otherwise honorable lady should not be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.

First and foremost, because of her current position formulating policy, she will be recusing herself on these very issues walking through the lower courts and up the Supreme Court steps over the next three years, such as Executive powers in the war on terror. Former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez had to answer questions about conducting the war, such as interrogation techniques, during his confirmation hearings–and these questions posed to Gonzalez directly translate into recusals for Miers if she indeed is confirmed.

Second is the question of relevant experience. Unlike John Roberts, who argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, and Robert Bork, who was solicitor general, Miss Miers has never even argued a case before the high Court. President Bush had the right idea with Roberts, who was an Appeals Court judge for two years before his elevation. If the President wanted to put Miers on the Court, he would have done well to first send her out west for a couple years to clean up the mess in the 9th Circuit; then triumphantly return to Washington with all cylinders in the right bank firing smoothly.

Tangential to the issues of experience and cronyism is the President’s choice of another “Myers,” namely the nomination of Julie, 36 year old lawyer and wife of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s chief of staff, and niece of the good general, to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Both Miers and Myers are, I assume, decent ladies, and in the future after pertinent experience, would make fine appointees for their respective positions . . . just not yet.

I’m puzzled as to the age of Harriet Miers: When President Bush started interviewing a few months ago, he essentially ruled out everyone over the age of 50, in order to lock in the changes to the Court for at least two decades. For the “under 50” reason, the famous “Bush loyalty” couldn’t help Ted Olson, even though there would be no Bush 43 Presidency if it weren’t for the former solicitor general. Although there would be squawking of cronyism, it sure wouldn’t be from us Conservatives.

All this being said, I’m disappointed by the pomposity of several of the pundits, such as George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and yes, The Weekly Standard’s own William Kristol. These Beltway pundits comprise an “Axis of Ivy” bent on disparaging Miers’s Southern Methodist education, as if she isn’t even good enough to be an ambulance chaser, simply because she wasn’t taught by Alan Dershowitz and Larry Tribe. In fact, contrary to the pundits, many consider Miers’s SMU training superior to a Harvard pedigree.

As the left is happy to say to their base, President Bush campaigned on the promise that he “would appoint Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.” He also pledged that a “promise made is a promise kept.” Besides Olson, there are also many very fine candidates toiling in the Circuits, such as Janice Rogers Brown, J. Michael Luttig, Samuel Alito, Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza, and Edith Jones–all of whom easily pass the “Souter smell test,” and each of whom would allow the President to keep his campaign promise.

President Bush has gotten into a lot of trouble lately with his choosing of lawyers instead of more experienced people to fill important vacancies, i.e. Chertoff, Miers, and “Brownie.” For the Supreme Court, being a lawyer is a job requirement, and thus a necessary evil; however, the combination of being both an unknown as well as an attorney is too much of a leap of faith for many of us.

–Dan Schwartz
Fox News Critic

*5*
William Kristol may be disappointed, depressed, and demoralized, but I’m eager, enthusiastic, and energized by the selection of Harriet Miers.

I’m eager about Harriet Miers’s chances of having a quick and relatively painless confirmation. Unlike Priscilla Owen, Miers will all but coast to her seat on the bench. She doesn’t have any constitutional credentials, and this may be problematic; however, it is her “lack of credentials” that makes this such a shrewd nomination.

I’m enthusiastic about Bush’s record of choosing justices. While Roberts was unequivocally hailed as a wise selection, the same can be said for nearly all of Bush’s nominees, throughout his entire political career. In terms of political consistency, Bush’s record of choosing conservative nominees is unparalleled. Why should we assume that Miers would be any different?

I’m energized by the fact that Miers, like Bush, is a conservative with a capital “C”. You claim Bush has shown weakness by shying away from a debate over constitutional philosophy, and yes, that is exactly what Bush has done. This was not a debate that Republicans wanted going into the ’06 election season. All polls have indicated that the use of the “nuclear option” would we wildly un-popular, and would hurt Republicans with swing voters. What Bush has done, therefore, has actually helped Republicans in the mid-term elections, by avoiding a fight that wasn’t worth picking.

–McLean W. Donnelly

*6*
I thank Noemie Emery for writing A Two-City Tale. Here in London the full picture of the Katrina story is not coming out. BBC’s reporting is superficial, anti-Bush, and demonstrates no knowledge of, or even interest for, how government works in the United States–that is, with clear local, state, and federal responsibilities. The corrupt and incompetent local management of New Orleans, in combination with a clearly incompetent governor, has received no attention in my perusal of European press and media.

–Lars Olesen

*7*
I’ve lived in New Orleans for over 10 years, and of all I have read about the aftermath of Katrina, Noemie Emery’s article has been, by far, the most accurate in describing why the city fell into chaos. Many politicians and op-ed writers, out of ignorance or political motivation, are speaking like fools, embarrassing themselves to those who know New Orleans. New Orleans has experienced a tragedy, but many of the ramifications of this tragedy were brought on by the city’s own poor behavior.

–Hamp Overton

*8*
I enjoyed Vic Matus’s informative updates from Deutschland. Just a note: Koelsch beer originated in Cologne (Koeln in German, not Bonn, though I’m sure it’s popular there too, being nearby. Check the German Beer Guide.
Prosit!

–Karl Hren

*9*
What a touching piece by Larry Miller. I can relate, because I also found myself in the days prior to 9/11 making mental notes: “remember to watch that new documentary on Flight 93 this Sunday.” “Sunday is the 11th.” It was almost as if I was trying to remember something as simple as a hair appointment. I did try my hardest to remember, but as I got into my car to go to work that Sunday morning, I still found myself unprepared for the moment of silence on the local NY radio station (WABC) that marked the moment the first tower was struck. Although I had initially found the date hard to remember, it also brought tears to my eyes, a flood of sorrowful memories, an arrow through the heart, and a resolve that we Americans will not only win this war against terror, but never forget those who perished on 9/11, or since, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq.

–K. Meichsner

*10*
To answer the question Larry Miller posed at the end of his article regarding where I was on Sunday, September 11, 2005: I was in Bend, Oregon, acting as the referee in charge of the Cascade Classic Rugby Tournament. That day I proudly wore the FDNY Memorial Rugby Jersey as a part of my kit. However, Miller’s point is well taken, as only one person knew what the jersey was all about, and no one else made a comment, good or bad, regarding it.

Nonetheless, all the flags I saw in Oregon on September 11, 2005, were flown at half mast–or, in the case of Madras, Oregon, lined both sides of the two main thoroughfares.

Larry Miller once again delivers a poignant, well thought out, and humorous column. I will admit to bias, though, regarding Miller, as I am in possession of a parody of his classic 5 Levels of Drinking as applied to myself and certain other friends.

–Ron Myers