This is your annual reminder that, in addition to the Spruance DD, the Ticonderoga CG were designed to armed with an 8" gun, the MK-71. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I rise once again to state that Fincantieri is not responsible for the dog’s breakfast that was the Constellation Class process. This is all in the lap of NAVSEA and OPNAV. Full stop. As I wrote at the time, the 57mm part of the selection process, clearly done due to LCS program backwash, was an indicator that the same people, processes, etc that begat that disgrace were not purged. Uniformed and civilian leadership post selection of the FREMM design failed their Navy and their nation due to their institutional failure to understand the larger picture.

This is your reminder of the great circle routes that ICBM would take to hit the center of the USA from: Iran (Red); Purple (Pakistani) [NB: these are also the routes from most of the Russian ICBM fields]; Russia (Yellow); PRC (Orange); NORK (White). Adjust actual launch sites and actual targets as needed. You can do this yourself on GoogleEarth. Greenland is the shield for North America from most of the worst places in the world. To have it under utilized as such has always been a threat to the USA since the invention of intercontinental bombers and missiles. This is by far an exceptional net good. Well meaning people can argue about how we got here, but we got here. No one else made it happen.