Harriers are flying longer than they were initially expected to, said Jesse Sloman, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The fleet was supposed to be retired in 2012.

That’s because they have realized that even the best surface vessels and warplanes are vulnerable to anti-ship or anti-aircraft missiles, says Bryan Clark of Washington’s Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think-tank.

The difficult to detect and intercept MADL was designed for F-35s to talk to F-35s and not intended to share information beyond other JSFs, Bran Clark, a retired Navy officer, the former special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and now a senior fellow at CSBA, told USNI News on Tuesday.

“The Navy may want to…in the frigate design, for example…come up with ways to simplify the propulsion architecture,” said Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, a former top aide to the Chief of Naval Operations.

"The problem with a CR is normally when you go into a CR you don’t have the ability to do any new programs or new starts or add funding to an existing program,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a D.C.-based defense think tank. "You can continue the funding for a current program at the current level, which for a lot of programs is fine because ... the amount of money you need maybe doesn’t change that much.”…

Rowden’s program-wide review of engineering procedures should go a long way towards reducing some of the sailor errors that have bedeviled the ships this year, said Bryan Clark, a former senior Navy aide who's now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.