reformer detected

Let's start with sensors, since that's probably the most important part of a modern warship: a radar 10m above the surface of the water can theoretically see a target at 10km altitude ~350km away. Bombers are the primary choice to launch missiles, as they're basically a reusable first stage. Surfaced launched missiles don't travel at low altitude because the lower atmosphere has lots of drag. And of course Chinese antiship ballistic missiles are not known for their sea-skimming capabilities. So there is a theoretical need for long-range radars.

Also, stealth: stealth isn't binary, it just makes things _harder_ to detect, not impossible. A 350km radar may only be able to detect a stealth fighter/missile at, say, 100km; a 150km radar could detect it at 50km or less. This obviously creates massive gaps, so if you want to fill those gaps, you need more ships, and whoops, now your fleet is more expensive.

Ships are multirole for two main reasons: first, larger ships are perfectly capable of carrying adequate loadouts for every role at once. A theoretical 9700 ton antisubmarine destroyer would not be significantly more effective at ASW than a 9700 ton Flight III Burke, because there's just not a lot to do with them. Slap on another helicopter or two, add a slightly larger sonar... what else? Possibly surprisingly, helicopters are the best ASW weapons out there once they've been detected (maritime patrol aircraft and other submarines are the best), and it only takes a couple to prosecute a contact. For antiair warfare, you can either have radar and missiles on the same ship or not. In the former case, as we'll talk about in a second, the marginal cost to add ASW capability is much lower than a whole 'nother ship. If you split radar and missiles, you have to worry about your kill chain being twice as vulnerable. If either is taken out then both are useless.

Second, fewer ships is cheaper basically always. There's certain amounts of fixed work on any ship, like engines and stuff, and you can't really get rid of them[0]. If you add more stuff onto a new ship, you add the crew of that new stuff, plus a few more sailors for the larger ship. If you have two ships, you have to add a whole new ship's base cost in sailors, and sailors are by far the biggest obstacle to the US Navy right now.

[0] You may be thinking that greater automation would enable lower crews, and you'd be right. Modern container ships have like 20 crew or less. It was so effective that the Navy tried it on the Zumwalt class destroyers. It turns out that Navy ships can't always expect to be in peaceful waters, and when you suddenly need 20 extra bodies to fight a fire or shore up a leaking compartment (or even just do more maintenance on higher-spec Navy engines) then automation isn't helpful.

Next, power. He proposes hybrid electric propulsion. He's correct in that regard and everyone's moving to that, called Integrated Electric Propulsion. However, he proposes eliminating gas turbines, and that's the wrong way to go. As mentioned above, sensors are the most important part of a ship, and bigger engines is always better for more power. Also though, next-generation ships are going to be using even more power, because everything's going to get lasers. Big gas turbine engines is important for speed yes, but it's getting to be even more important for power.

On to armor. An armor piercing Mark 8 16" shell fired from an Iowa class battleship has a bursting charge of... 18.55kg. (all data from navweaps) It has a muzzle velocity of 762 meters per second (~mach 2.2), with a striking velocity of 514m/s (~mach 1.5) at maximum range of 38.7km. The shell weighs 1225kg. Armor to defend against that is legendarily thick.

Compare that to, say, a Russian/Indian BrahMos antiship cruise missile. (figures taken from wikipedia so a little suspect) The BrahMos has a maximum speed of 2.8 mach, a range of 500km from a ship, weighs 3000kg (presumably when launched), and has a warhead of 300kg. Other than mass, the missile is better in every way than the battleship shell. Not to mention higher accuracy and the like. If you wanted to armor ships to withstand more power than battleship shells, then good luck.

How about armament? Oh wait I just showed why missiles are so much better than artillery. If you need sustained firepower, then yeah artillery is great. That basically never comes up on the water.

(Not related to warships, but I really don't think the author knows anything about gravity bombs. Do you know how many gravity bombs it took to destroy the Thanh Hóa bridge? Answer: the gravity bombs couldn't hit the target with enough accuracy to destroy it. Do you know how many laser guided bombs it took? About 30. Oh, well, maybe we can make it up with better planes and keep the cheaper gravity bombs you say? A JDAM kit turns an unguided bomb into a guided one for $27k in 2011 dollars. A bomb at the time cost $3000. You can either get a hit on the first shot with a single $30k JDAM or take 10 bombs, possibly mounted on multiple aircraft, and then still likely not get a hit.)

"Short Range Air Defense Missiles over large interceptors." What if the short range interceptor misses? You lose your ship. Interceptors aren't measured in cost, they're measured in cost of the thing they're protecting. Your long range interceptor misses? You have another chance. Assume a probability of kill (pK) or 0.5 for example: one short range interceptor has a pK of 0.5; a long range interceptor backed up by a short range one has a pK of 0.75. And if the long range one misses, you get to reuse the short range one.

"Ballistic missiles over hypersonic missiles." Yeah probably. That's part of the reason why the US isn't investing so much in hypersonics, although they use planes rather than ballistic missiles because you launch a ballistic missile and there's suddenly a question of whether or not it's a nuke.

All that about his ship design being said, his shipbuilding stuff isn't bad. I'm in favor of cancelling the Jones Act and letting the yards fail just because I don't think there's any other way Congress is going to care enough to change the status quo, but that's another issue.

Sorry if this is a little disjointed, it's 3:00AM here.