There Is Really Nothing To See There.

Trump is an empty suite and hot air balloon, who never controlled any of his administrations which are nothing more than collections of shysters with competing interests. Only cretins from the US pundits' class could hypothesize about some "strategy" and "balances" from such "composition" of Trump's "team", not seeing that the only purpose of Trump's presidency is self-aggrandizing and serving people who own him. 

Someone in Washington could be trying to undermine US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov has suggested, commenting on the recent leaks of his conversations with the envoy. At least some of the purported leaks are fake, he added. Speaking to Kommersant newspaper on Wednesday, Ushakov defended continued contacts between Moscow and Washington, including by phone, and maintained they are needed to build trust between the two nations. He also said that neither side was interested in leaking the contents of the conversations. According to the presidential aide, the incident might point to infighting in Washington. “Do you remember the case of [former National Security Adviser] Michael Flynn? This case could be the same,” the official said.

Ushakov is being diplomatic here, of course. The US is ungovernable and this chaos will continue. Which brings us to this: 

The Navy is walking away from the Constellation-class frigate program to focus on new classes of warships the service can build faster, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced Tuesday on social media. Under the terms negotiated with shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the Wisconsin shipyard will continue to build Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63) but will cancel the next four planned warships. “We are reshaping how the Navy builds its fleet. Today, I can announce the first public action is a strategic shift away from the Constellation-class frigate program,” reads the statement from Phelan. “The Navy and our industry partners have reached a comprehensive framework that terminates, for the Navy’s convenience, the last four ships of the class, which have not begun construction.” A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that the cancellation of the ship program was part of the Navy’s latest effort to build and deliver new ship classes faster. “A key factor in this decision is the need to grow the fleet faster to meet tomorrow’s threats. This framework seeks to put the Navy on a path to more rapidly construct new classes of ships and deliver capabilities our war fighters need in greater numbers and faster,” the official said. In tandem, the wider Pentagon is retooling its acquisition system to emphasize speed. 

What you witness here is a bankruptcy of the whole acquisition and procurement policy not just in the US Navy, but US Armed Forces as a whole. For starters, it is inconceivable that the ship such as Constellation, carrying a rather timid air defense and strike packages--same ole', same ole' VLS with SM-6 and TLAMs, with subsonic Naval Strike Missile with the range of around 300 nautical miles, cost more than $ 1 billion dollars. 

It is a beautiful ship, but it is obsolete on arrival due to a new warfare paradigm driven by the ability to develop firing solution for long-range supersonic and hypersonic weapons 24/7. It is an anathema for the average US admiral and general to grasp a very simple truth. This, $100 million small ship:

Can sink in one salvo both Constellations, and it will have targeting and develop firing solution even before any of the modern US Navy ships can get into range. But here is the deal--for the price of a single Constellation Russia builds 10+ of these guys. Or, about three of these:

These ARE game-changers capable of sinking the whole CBG in a single salvo while staying way beyond the reach of anything CBG can launch back. But then again, unlike SM-6 and SPY-1, 2, 3 ...6, Poliment-Redut, known in its ground-base version as S-350 Vityaz is known for its outstanding real combat performance against every single stand-off weapon in NATO's arsenal. I guess, you get this simple math here, right? These are realities which the US military is simply incapable to face. And so, as they say:

“Sometimes, you’re just better off designing a new ship,” Navy’s former top acquisition executive Nickolas Guertin said at a conference in February. “Turns out modifying someone else’s design is a lot harder than it seems.”

Well, good luck spending another 10 + years designing a frigate while continuing with building unfit for combat LCS and fast becoming obsolete TLAM-carrying platforms such as good but insanely expensive and, as already stated--nearing obsolescence, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Late Admiral Rickover once stated that "The US Navy is used to traveling first class"--meaning the fleet of very large (and visually impressive) ships which today turned into a menagerie of very expensive white elephants good only for blowing up some third rate opposition from a safe distance. Read the comments to the USNI article I linked--they are very instructive. Always remember--it is COFM (Correlation Of Forces and Means) which is in the foundation of modern forces.