FFG(X) is going forward, but with only 20 planned. Arleigh Burke's have another 20 planned, but upgrades have made them very, very capable ships. We could arguably use more, but at some point we need to fund and deliver a replacement.*
Acquisition, and its failures, covers books with a range of topics. Take one, concurrency, which substantially drove up the costs of the F-35 and Gerald Ford carriers. Add new technology which might barely be in the prototype stage, and you have a recipe for a costly disaster.
@BloodStripe and
@DA SWO have some contracting/ acquisition experience (I'm on the very fringe of that world), so they probably have a better perspective.
And then we have politics where saving a few hundred jobs becomes more important than a nation's needs because votes.
* - To highlight some of our myopic thinking, take two portions of our nuclear command and control network: the E-4 Nighthawk and the E-6 Mercury; both are "doomsday" planes, but the E-6 is capable of remotely delivering ICBMs. Yup, the planes have the ability and authority to launch ICBMs from anywhere on the globe. Those planes are based on the 747 and 707 respectively. The E-4's were built in the 73-75 timeframe and the E-6's are the last 707's built in the late 80's. The Navy is replacing the E-6 using an airframe based on the C-130J, but that replacement won't hit the fleet until...2030 at the earliest. The E-4 doesn't even have a replacement frame selected.
We're building new ICBM's and new ballistic missiles, but the nuke C2 infrastructure won't be overhauled for at least a decade. We're talking about using existing airframe types, of which you have maybe a dozen, probably less, capable of performing those missions (size, endurance, cost of operation) and it still take 3-5-ish years to select a specific airframe. That's choosing, not buying, not engineering, not building, just "Hey, let's use that."
We don't just have a politics problem, we have an acquisition problem because everybody and their brother wants a say. Everyone wants a piece, so in essence that also politics. Human nature rears its ugly head and costs us billions in the process. That's all before we get into how we pay for such trinkets and yearly budgets and blah, blah, blah.
I've typed enough and don't feel like proofreading.
