Ah yes. . . . Dont worry, Boss, we will just fix it with software! ROTFLMSAO! ("S" = silly!)

IF you had differential stabilization fins, forward and aft, you might be able to keep the hull stable fore and aft, but without the flare on the bow you will be taking spray all over the foredeck as well as that BIG TALL deckhouse! Now. . . make it a nice winter storm with the wind blowing off of the Greenland ice cap and all of that spray turns to ice! TONS and TONS of ice, and not even a decent handrail to grab for all of those sailors who have to go on deck to try to break off the ice and keep the ship from turning turtle! LOL! Yep, you are gonna fix that one with software and high tech. . . right?

And the ship does not even have those hypothetical fore/aft differential fins! LOL!

The tumble home wave piercing hull of the Zumwalt class HAS been proven! Check out the hulls of most of the pre-Dreadnaught battleships and heavy cruisers built in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s! It was proven to be very wet in just about any kind of seas and generally a poor sea keeping design! LOL!

By the 1920s, the familiar flared clipper bow and traditional hull (like an Arleigh Burke if you will!) had come back into favor.

"Asymmetry" works both ways! :-)

Let the bad guys try to fight the "insurgency" with their high tech, spic-n-span, high profile weapons, but make those rag-tag commandos just as lethal as possible without turning them into logistics-burdened "tread-heads", and. . . .. . I bet that THEY dont have any better answers to the issues than we do!

Between procurements "botched" because of flaunting "rules" that just don't apply to USAF program offices, and "fudged" LCC calculations apparently "backfilling" the predetermined and "politically correct" answers, it makes me think that my dear service should either become more adept at burying the cat droppings, or preferably, sign up for some remedial lessons in personal and organizational integrity. Somehow the finer points of "situational ethics" just don't seem to be all that compatible with the trust placed in the military and civilian members. Its embarrassing!

Yup, a classic it is, and on several different fronts. Even though, from one angle, it was written for that teenage boy audience, of which I was one, it also has some very poignant points on military tactics, social engineering , the penal system, and the granting of the democratic franchise, in other words, perhaps Heinlein's first foray into the political arena before he went off on the "Grok" tangent! LOL!

Still think about it. . . .. put 250 to 500 independently operating commandos (aka "Marauders") into a one or two day raid and some serious damage can be inflicted, and how do you defend against them? You either have to intercept them afloat or you have to practically "nuke" the area, otherwise the defenders have to stamp on each ant, one at a time, and that would be practically impossible in a modern urban or semi urban terrain. If an ARCLIGHT had been a single BUFF with a nuke, we could have stamped on the NVA and VC within a 10 mile radius, but. . . . we were unwilling to use the big hammer. How much less willing would an opponent be to "nuke" his own cities and urban centers to get rid of those raiders?

Not saying that the powered exoskeleton/battle armor, or the "k-gun" firing pocket nukes at every "bounce" would be necessary, but. . . . .One intelligent, hostile, well trained . and independently operating commando equipped with multiple demolition charges, a personal weapon, multiplied by 250 or 500, could quickly inflict a very significant military and psychological blow against any enemy. (for a modern, real-world example, look at the overall impact on the war in the pacific that was the result of the Doolittle raid on Japan! The physical damage was relatively minor, the psychological and eventual military impact after Midway was huge!)

The first thing I thought of when reading the original posting was an old juvenile SF novel by Heinlein, i.e. "Starship Trooper" (the book, not the pathetic movie version). Perhaps a quick read, translating the fictional "star ships" into LHAs or maybe converted SSBNs, and the interstellar warfare into a Pacific campaign. It COULD work, but it would require a very different Navy to support it, and a very different US population to support tossing a bunch of Marines into a hostile coastal region to "raise hell" and accept the casualties that would likely be included in the deal. It might just be time to start thinking about employing, instead of just enduring, some of the themes of the "asymmetrical warfare" that have been plaguing us for more than a few years.

A battalion of heavily armed Marines, dumped into a coastal region with instructions to blow up, burn, and otherwise disrupt anything of military value for a day or so, and then be extracted, could tie down a major defensive force just to "prevent" such an event.

The Russians do not even ALWAYS export their best tanks! LOL! Consider the Syrians and their PT-76 Amphibious Tanks on the Golan a few years ago. Looks like a tank, smells like a tank, even sounds like a tank, but when the PT-76s ran into the Israeli M-60s. . . .. the marketing brochure took a hit. . . along with a sizable percentage of those rather worthless imitation tanks.

Translate those 50-60 JDAMS into 25-30 DMPIs and you might see the practicalities of a B-747 airframe. If I take a mere 10 minutes to receive the 9-line, move to the IP, and release the pair of bombs, that translates into about 300 minutes of plowing around the target area. (But if the 9lines are not stacked up and cued for immediate sequential servicing, you need even more time moping around in the target area!) so. . . that big ole airplane could be used to carry some serious fuel bladders to extend range and loiter. WIth that extended range, I might even want to add a second crew and crew accommodations (ala the old B-36). Since I have the SWAP, I might include a much more extensive ISR suite as well as the operators and comm gear to put all of that gear to good use. with just a little bit of imagination, I dont think that a cubic inch of the B-747 could not be put to gainful use!

LoL! Yes, there are very real OpSEC and COMSEC concerns with any IT or comm system. It's also inescapable no matter how much high tech you try to throw at it. To steal a line from all of the acquisition classes, a need CAN be addressed with personnel, procedures, or systems. If I operate on an open tactical network passing status and location left and right, up and down with encryption that takes two or three days to "hack" is that network satisfactorily secure for tactical operations, or do you deny the comm capability until the TACTICAL net is secure enough to also pass SIOP?

Sent from my iPhone

LOL! I gather that you would vote against deploying smart phone technology? Own any stock in a JTRS compliant company? :-)

The "responsibility" for communications security will always have to rest on the individual user. If I want to have the most secure communications system in the world, its very easy to implement. Turn the ON/OFF switch to the OFF position! We would then revert to the pre-telegraph army C4 of the Napoleonic era! ABSOLUTE security would be achieved without any "compliance requirement" on the lower echelons.

As for holding the users responsible for compliance with the necessary security measures, it does so woefully limit creativity and individual initiative, and we KNOW that accountability is one of those anathemas of the current system. <sarcasm dripping>