Our allies built mostly smaller vessels, including diesel-electric submarines, to operate in shallow waters.
When the Cold War ended, inertia kept our shipbuilding geared toward larger Aegis destroyers and cruisers while we discarded the cheaper and smaller frigates that supplied ASW capabilities in cheap platforms. Despite calling our smaller ships "destroyers," they are really cruisers. We have a virtually all-capital ship Navy.
About a decade ago, I wrote an article describing the problems we faced in the Tripolitan War and argued for smaller ships to keep a well-balance force able to get close to the land. The Naval Institute rejected it and I retooled it for Army Magazine as a lesson in the limits of naval power in power projection ashore.
Well, with operations ashore our main threat today, the Navy is getting serious about actually building vessels to get close to shore. The latest is the effort to restore the Cyclone class to the Navy:
The U.S. Navy is scrambling to get back its Cyclone class patrol boats, now that it is building a “brown water navy” for operations along coasts and up rivers. The thirteen 170 foot long Cyclone class PC (Coastal Patrol) boats were built in the 1990s. But after operating them for six years, the navy decided they had made a mistake, and loaned some of the Cyclone class ships to the Coast Guard and SOCOM (Special Operations Command), while seeking foreign buyers for the rest. But now the navy is establishing a coastal force, complete with naval infantry. For this brown water navy, the Cyclones are perfect, and the navy is getting them back.
Our Navy is supreme in the blue waters. The brown waters could use a little attention, I think.
I think these vessels could also be of use in the Taiwan Strait, for that matter, along with the new LCS and LSC classes. Based out of Guam or Okinawa, they could make the trip to the Taiwan Strait and bring American power directly into the contested body of water.
Modern diesel-electrics would be useful in this role, too.
