No word on the middle initial:
Captain James Kirk, the prospective commanding officer of USS Zumwalt, will lead the 610-foot vessel, the Navy's largest destroyer and first of three new Zumwalt-class ships "designed for littoral operations and land attack," the Navy said.
I shudder seeing that the ship is designed for littoral operations--that is, near the shores. This is insane:
Honest to God, I think our Littoral Combat Ships are too expensive to send into actual littorals. Yet we will send this 600-foot long ship that displaces more than 14,000 tons--making it longer and half again larger than our current cruisers--and expect it to survive? Good grief, we can't afford it if the paint gets scratched let alone risking scratching one off the fleet list.
And the prospective captain's name sounds like a bit of propaganda that implies the Navy will not only be moving into the terrestrial littorals but into space. Seriously, the Air Force should be wary of such forward-looking budgetary battlefield preparation by the Navy as the Air Force loses missions to Army precision firepower on the ground and on Army drones and seeks new missions:
Science fiction calls space assets "ships" but there is no reason we must have a space navy in the future. Aim high, Air Force. Space Force has a nice ring, too.
Cyber-war isn't enough. The Air Force needs to aim high.
