Two weeks ago, the Navy canceled plans to build the rest of its hulking stealth destroyers. At first, it looked like the DDG-1000s' $5-billion-a-copy price tag was to blame. Now, it appears the real reason has slipped out: The Navy's most advanced warship is all but defenseless against one of its best-known threats.

We already knew that the older, cheaper, Burke-class destroyers (pictured) are better able to fight off anti-ship missiles — widely considered the most deadly (and most obvious) hazard to the American fleet. Specifically, the old Burkes can shoot down those missiles using special SM-3 interceptors; the new DDG-1000 cannot.

But now, a leading figure in the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (and Vice-Admiral) Barry McCullough, is saying that the DDG-1000 “cannot perform area air defense” at all. Never mind the SM-3; the ship isn't designed to fire any kind of long-range air-defense missile, whatsoever. It's presumably limited to the same last-ditch “point defense” systems (think Phalanx guns and short-range interceptors, like the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles) that cargo ships, aircraft carriers and even Coast Guard cutters carry in case a missile slips past their screening Burkes. Those point defenses can't intercept ballistic missiles at all — and when they destroy sea-skimming missiles, the debris can still strike and severely damage the ship.

In other words, the world's most expensive surface warship can't properly defend itself or other ships from an extremely widespread threat. That, needless to say, is a problem. Not only is the DDG-1000 vulnerable to the ballistic anti-ship missiles that countries such as China are developing, it wouldn't even be particularly effective at protecting fleets against common weapons in the arsenals of everyone from Russia to Iran. And it's not like this was some kind of new threat; these missiles have been around, in one form or another, since World War II.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Navy has been saying all along that the DDG-1000 can fire at least some of Raytheon's missile-killing Standard Missiles. In other words, according to the inestimable Galrahn over at Information Dissemination, “the Navy has been delivering a lunch bag of bullshit to Congress regarding surface combatants for three years.”

At least the plug was pulled on this farce, but what about rigged up test on the MDS? There isn't anybody today willing to question the run away spending in the Pentagon. We need a reincarnation of Proxmire and the “Golden Fleece”.

Whatever cuts Reagan made in other programs, he piled the money (and more) into defense spending. The intention was to make it clear to the USSR that they couldn't keep up. He was right, and the USSR crumbled.

The USSR had already been spending a crippling share of their GDP on defense since the 1950s. Reagan didn't change our course with regards to the USSR, he merely continued the plan and was lucky enough to be there when it finally succeeded.

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GreenDreams, your last comment included this: “the transfer of public wealth to private hands”

Can you define public wealth for me?

But that was then and this is now. And that's really important. The differences between the two are nothing short of tectonic on so many levels. There is no comparison between the times then and the times now. And any attempt to equate the two on any sort of one-to-one level is a fool's errand. If I were only allowed a five second sound-bite on the topic I would say that that's what worries me the most about McCain. IMO, he has an obvious tendency to consider foreign relations in the past tense, not the future — or even the present tense.

And it's not just foreign relations. GD, you provided a YouTube link to times which documented GW Bush bragging about the strides his administration made in securing minority home ownership. Now we're supposed to ignore that, as well as McCain's repeated proclamations that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”, and concentrate on whatever bail-out plan is du jeur. Later McCain said he meant by “the fundamentals of our economy” is the workers — and oh, by the way, the economy is in crisis, so he has to suspend his campaign to deal with it. Which he didn't. Unfortunately, he has yet to even mention “the middle class” hardly ever. Certainly not in two debates now, and has yet to mention anything at all about the energy situation except “drill, baby, drill” and nuclear energy — except to say that his energy plan includes “all of the above”. What a crock.

Reaganomics didn't increase tax revenue. It borrowed huge amounts from future generations and gave it to the wealthy, who then paid taxes on it, giving back a small % of the public wealth given to them. Giving our kids money to taxpayers would have increased it still more, because as a % of income they pay more.

As for “the type of regulation that makes no sense from a finance perspective, forcing banks to make loans that were highly risky with the taxpayers on the hook for the defaults,” have a listen to GW Bush praising the deregulation that allowed this.

He said it was “to help deserving families with bad credit qualify for a home loan. You don't have to have a lousy home. First time home buyers, low income home buyers, can have just as nice a home as anybody else.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo

First of all, the part of your comment I bolded makes no sense. Second, no one forced banks to make highly risky loans. That being said, however, one could argue that (a) the laws in place at least implied that taxpayers would be on the hook in case of defaults; (b) that the laws in place were intentioned to promote minority involvement in homeownership; (c) that subsequent barriers to affirmative action made the intentions in (b) difficult, if not impossible when the legislative, executive, and judicial climates shifted; (d) once (c) happened the field became open to speculators of all species and; (e) once (d) happened the situation became truly toxic.

That's a simple thumbnail sketch. There is certainly much more to it. But I think it captures the fundamentals as well as capturing why, once the governmental winds shift, absurdities can develop which can take some time to stabilize. The trouble is, in the mean time things can go very, very bad. On the other hand, I think it could be said that one administration doesn't normally challenge so many aspects of the status quo as has the Bush43 administration. Because he has, we are in uncharted territory. IMO, that in itself is unprecedented, and hard to keep up with — and it doesn't augur well for our future. But as I study it more, the more I think a change of parties in the executive branch is essential. I say that partly as a recent partisan, but also as a realist. IMO, there is no other alternative that could come close to a guarantee that things will fundamentally change at the level that most needs changing. That's not to say such a change is sufficient, but I believe it is necessary. Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of divided government. But in the present case, I truly believe it would make more sense to make a change in the executive branch (I have no faith McCain will clean house in that regard), and if he overreaches, hope for the best in 2010 as far as the legislative branch is concerned.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3cd3f...

You're getting into details of military spending that attribute opinions to me that aren't accurate; I wasn't talking about maintaining military spending for more nukes; for technology I'd have a mixed opinion- but mainly I'm talking about troops. You don't increase enlistment unless you have the funding to pay them adequately, reward those who stay in as a career, and take care of the vets as they deserve. We need more special ops forces, and new and expanded types of training for the current threat of insurgent warfare instead of traditional battlefields.

And on the economics, well, forgive me for not agreeing that I'm the one who's drunk the Koolaid when you are the one who has a propagandistic dismissal of “Reaganomics” without even being able to address what failed and what didn't (revenues did increase with his tax policy as the economy grew, but spending increased too and that's why the deficit ballooned) and without even being able to distinguish that from neoconservatism.

Military deterrence. We still have more than enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. We don't need a single additional nuclear weapon. Ever. (except replacing one occasionally I suppose). Our high tech weaponry was next to useless in Afghanistan. We needed more troops, but mainly more FOCUS. Military spending won't give us that. As for Iraq, it was a dumb self-inflicted wound. We should have left Saddam to keep radial Islam at bay in Iraq and worked as we have elsewhere to empower resistance and envy for our healthy economy (which it was then) and democracy. Saddam was no threat to us and I do hope you see the debacle we have created both in Iraq and at home with that misadventure.

As for “neocon” economic thinking, I don't know what else to call it, so let's call it “Reaganomics”. It certainly isn't conservative as I learned it. That was about being responsible about money, which we clearly are not.

I raise fear not as a strawman, but as the appeal that the GOP has used to frighten people into voting against their own best interests. If you are not voting based on that fear, then you drank the Kool Aid and believe what has been proven false about Reaganomics. You could rightly call it a bankrupt policy.

Why is our Pentagon spending a sacred cow. Our defense budget is like 50% of the worlds military spending. The USSR collapsed under the burden of the arms race, why should the USA be any different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_...
World Total 1,200,000,000,000 (USD)
United States 583,283,000,000 (USD)
European Union Total 311,920,000,000 (USD)
In times of record deficits and no universal health care, why are we spending on stealth destroyers? What enemies are we fighting, the neo-Russian empire, Iran or Terminator SalvationTerminator Salvation?
How will the DDG-1000

BTW, here's a good primer on regulation pros and cons- and I don't think you'd call this blog a neocon hangout.

I don't think you'd call it a link, either

I mostly do agree with your final paragraph, but one of the problems that I think you miss (and it's a big one) is when it's not externalities aside from govt, but govt intervention itself that screws with the market's ability to self correct (ie, govt intervention into the mortgage method, which was in some senses a deregulatory intervention and in another sense it was the type of regulation that makes no sense from a finance perspective, forcing banks to make loans that were highly risky with the taxpayers on the hook for the defaults.)

Staunch conservatives desire the market to be totally free and unfettered. And up until very recently, it wouldn't have been hard to find a staunch conservative that would have argued that case in its extreme. Staunch liberals, it seems to me, are less of one mind about it. Clearly, liberals generally prefer greater control over the markets, but you'd have to look very far to the left indeed to find one who advocated anything close to total central control.

The fact is, though, we are nowhere close to either extreme. The current credit meltdown is a major kick in the head to the staunch conservative bunch, though. And if it's not recognized as such it should be. There have been other knocks in the recent past (e.g., salmonella in our veggies, mad cow disease in our meat, lead in our kids' toys, melamine in our chocolate, toxic chemicals in our groundwater, etc.), but if the credit meltdown doesn't make it clear that there are major externalities that the market can't easily deal with, nothing will. Apart from trying to attribute blame, or trying to decipher what approach would have been better, the fact is the argument from all sides is that the laws in place were inadequate to the task. That begs the question: what would have happened if there were no laws at all? I shudder to think.

There is a difference between classical Keynesian economic philosophy (which did not distinguish between money supply and economic issues) and neo-Keynesian economic philosophy (which does). The Reagan administration was a good example of the supply side economic philosophy in action with a considerable amount of deficit spending in other areas. That didn't happen in isolation either. He (and Volker) also tightened the money supply. Likewise, his Star Wars concept was a federal R&D project that has cost many billions of dollars. It's hard to say exactly how much because much of it is cloaked. But that represents an economic stimulus package. The Clinton administration was an example of neo-Keynesian philosophy in action more than Reagan. Clinton emphasized R&D and technology transfer, both in information technology and biomedical technology. And that, I think, is something that needs to be done in the present case, with an emphasis on energy. Nonetheless, Clinton largely kept in place the same monetary policies as Reagan, but changed the tax policy. The bottom line is, fiscal policy, tax policy, and economic policy are not the same. They are related, but not the same.

IMO, the wheels came off in the Bush43 administration. He managed to combine the worst of everything. But I think I'll reserve that discussion for another time.

BTW, here's a good primer on regulation pros and cons- and I don't think you'd call this blog a neocon hangout.