Navy's next-generation warships.

• Author: Zirbes, Walter B., III
• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

Regarding Ben Freeman's article, "Canceling the DDG-1000 Destroyer Program Was a Mistake," (Jan. 2015], I was on active duty when the decision was made whether to overhaul the battleships or start new construction. Congress decided that they wanted to have new ships built because doing so would provide much more money and longer building projects for some congressman's local shipyard.

Overhauling and modernizing the battleships would cost $600 million to $700 million, and new construction would run into the billions of dollars. And from their point of view, spending billions and having a much longer period of time for their shipyard to be working was better. There was a lot of quibbling. For some reason, having a battleship with nine 16-inch rifles and hundreds of cruise missiles was not as good as a new ship (Zumwalt class) with only two guns and a few missiles.

So now after doing research, those two 155 mm guns can fire 10 rounds per minute each, for a total of 20 rounds per minute and have 600 rounds aboard the ship. That will provide the Marines ashore 30 minutes of fire support. Now it is stated that the Zumwalts can be resupplied with ammo, by a ship coming to it. I doubt an ammo ship will sail into a combat zone. The Zumwalts will have to go farther away from the combat zone to rearm.

A battleship would have been capable of providing fire support to the Marines ashore for days if not weeks. And these 155 mm guns can only fire special rounds, not any other available 155 mm ammunition.

These unwanted and worthless vessels should have never been constructed to start with and should surely not have more built. Billions of dollars down the rabbit hole and the Marines still have no fire support.

So I disagree. Building them was a huge mistake to start with. Having the battleships with their armor and big guns that had already had new 16-inch shells tested that were rocket-boosted and laser guided, plus having new propellant bags made would have made the battleships the toughest ships afloat. Impervious to modern torpedoes and with 36-inch armor at the water line could have been utilized to steam right over anything any enemy has afloat today.

Walter B Zirbes III

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* "Canceling the DDG-1000 Destroyer Program Was a Mistake" is a great article, but I suggest you dig deeper into the lifecycle cost savings that result from reduced crew size. The referenced Reserve Forces Policy Board report is an excellent analysis of military...