This book more or less sets down into script our deepest fears: That the navy the US has now and continues to reproduce a naval force which will ultimately be inadequate to the future. It is the script of the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost. Like the loss HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales to Japanese aircraft in the South China Sea in 1941 without air cover, 3 days after the Pearl Harbor attacks, this work by submariner Vandenegel illustrates vividly how exercising blindness to changing conditions and reliance on past effectiveness combines to a likely disaster in the future. It is now all about missiles, not manned aircraft, and the ability to direct them will make the difference. Pictured is USS Michael Monsoor DDG 1001, at Naval Station Everett Washington, my hometown, a modern design which may, or may not be of value in the future. The production line began with the USS Zumwalt, DDG 1000 and ends with the USS Lyndon B. Johnson, DDG 1002, if we can draw inferences from that short production line how the Navy sees it. I do not really know, but this design does not figure into the authors hypothetical conflict in the Western Pacific so it's effectiveness must be recognized as limited. Our Naval Station Everett is destined to host a dozen of the new Constellation class frigates which the author counts on to expand the survivablity of the carrier centrist US Navy we all know and love which he argues persuasively is vulnerable to a significant missile capability near peer rivals are likely to have without what he calls the "flex fleet". The "flex fleet" contains a number of smaller combatants and a whole lot of submarines. Congruent with what Mark Esper, last confirmed Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration left us with in 2020 as an admonition: "If we do nothing else, we should be building 3 submarines a year". Well, Congress responded with 2, but we are, finally in 2024 building 3. Yet the United States Naval Institute news reports the Wisconsin shipyards responsible for the Constellation Frigate have advised we will see a years delay in deliver of the first of this new class, 2027. The cause is a labor shortage. We should pray it is not too late, and ask Congress to do what is necessary to accelerate construction as well as consider Mr. Vandenengel's concept of the "Flex Fleet". I cannot recommend this book more to anyone who is even remotely concerned about national defense. It confirmed my worst fears.