Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a policy institute, told Defense Daily that the administration wants to increase the content of U.S. produced goods used by the defense industrial base and larger supply chain. There are concerns that many of the smaller suppliers, who are "always on the bubble," are so specialized around their defense products that they don't have commercial outlets to ease their way through periods of slow or non-existent defense orders.

Experts said the Kennedy is not in danger of creating a Nunn-McCurdy breach that could jeopardize the program. Nevertheless, a cost overrun could still be problematic, noted Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“Underwater data links are a relatively mature technology. The challenge here is to create one that can provide high bandwidth if the UUV needs to send data to the submarine and can also be hard for an enemy to detect,” said Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and former aide to the Chief of Naval Operations, how the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. 

Beyond their smaller crew capacity, the problem with the existing LCS hulls is that it is unclear whether they are large enough to effectively accommodate these additional weapons systems. This is why the analysts behind one of the most talked-about proposals for the Navy’s future fleet design from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments advocated a frigate of 4000-5000 tons, significantly larger than the 3000 ton LCSs.

Bryan Clark was unconvinced. “The Iver Huitfeldt uses mostly commercial components that may not be rated for the run time” — the sheer wear and tear of long deployments — “and potential effects of (battle) damage that US ships are expected to experience,” he told me. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal year 2018 defense policy bill directs the Navy to begin designing a smaller carrier. Three entities conducted recent Navy force structure assessments: the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Mitre Corp. and the Navy's assessment division in the office of the chief of naval operations (N81), all of which recommended the service add smaller aircraft carriers to its future fleet.