Thanks Selil - a lot of food for thought there.

On the "distributed, networked" as buzzword - thee is plenty of that, and cutting through it to get at the "Meat" part of what I am after.

Terms like this tend to be "code word labels" on complex, sets of ideas that individual groups have spent a lot of times thinking through. And unfortunatley disparate groups (deliberatly or out of ignorance) use the same code-word labels. Software development has it easy with nice sequential numbers (or at lesat used to before things like "Vista Extreme Gamers Special Edition").

In this case "Distributed netorked system" is a code-word label on a family of ideas to disaggregate sensors, weapons, and command from platforms. That is the "far-term" ppt answer. The near term effect has been to allow platforms to share info at the individual watchstander level without having to go up the chain of command and back down again - and allow platforms to be "net enabled" to communicate in more robust ways than radio telphone and teletype.

This disaggregation desire stems from two sources, one that increasing aggregation of every possible capability into every platform have nearly made ships unaffordable (and leaving a capability off opens up the decision - maker for being pilloried if a ship is ever lost becasue of the missing system not being there...) The other being a more formal argument based on the work of Capt Wayne Hughes (ret) pointing out a "tactical instability" problem when you have a few "super capable" ships - putting too many eggs in one basket. A notion Adm Cebrowski tried to address with the "Streetfighter" concept that got corrupted and mismanaged into the debacle that is LCS.

So looking ahead (partly in response to what may well be a short run of LCS, what is the "right way" (not necessarily exculding an LCS-like thing, but recognizing it is woefully insufficient) How do you disaggregate (distribute) sensors, weapons, information fusion and other C2 functions?

We are already spending billions on the network part, so that is a fait accompli, at the CVN level and "higher up" but the question is open as to how much of that needs to trickle down to the escorts. And then there are the "disadvantaged users" like subs, who suffer from Mother Natures presumption of laws that do not allow radio waves to go very far through water...(How dare she! Though I heard it put this way - The greatest desire of the silent service is... comms at speed and depth, and the greatest fear of the sub skipper is... comms at speed and depth).

So a network is coming, is it the right one to allow 'distribution' - and distribution of "what". Do you need "fighting ships" if you can achieve effective disaggregation leaving you a fleet of trucks for "stuff"? What sort of "stuff"? SOme systems are being directed top down (PBD 753) but are they the "right ones" and as this has a big effect on "Undersea Superiority systems" how do get joint leverage and buy in for the 99 and 44/100 % Navy mission of ASW ("undersea superiority system" is code word label for "ASW 2.0").

Anyway that is a pretty stream of concsiousness response, but hopefully further explains the context of what the issue is...

Like I said I will think some more about your response and hopefully post some more organizaed thoughts after a few more (I hope) repsonses...