Last summer I had the pleasure of reading "No Higher Honor", a book about the USS Samuel B Roberts, a Perry-class guided missile frigate in the US Navy that survived a mine explosion while patrolling the Persian Gulf in 1988. The crew performed a miracle rescue, using expert damage control procedures that saved the ship after suffering a total flooding in its main engine room and a severed keel.
One of the aspects of the Roberts story was the background given on the Perry-class frigates. These were very small ships, built with a well-rounded capability and fast speeds, using gas turbines. The cost per ship was miniscule by today's standards. Nonetheless, when the contract was awarded to Bath Iron Works to build this class, it saved the shipyard from near bankruptcy in the early 1970s.
I believe the Navy needs to adopt a very similar shipbuilding strategy going forward. Rather than spend billions on a few high-tech stealth ships, we should be building fast and versatile fighting frigates that can deliver missiles on target on the cheap.
A much greater amount of our defense budget should be devoted to building a robust missile inventory, deployed on small maneuverable ships, or forward-deployed on bases around the world, or on planes that can fly fast and far on the cheap. Missiles will define the defense environment of the future, not huge, expensive ship classes or bombers. Quantity has its own quality.
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