This is CBS, I on the world, I'm John Bachelor. The U.S. Navy, in contests with the People's

Liberation Army Navy, looking at a conflict zone that can start in

2027. What is to be done? More ships? What kind of ships? I welcome Captain Cherry

Hendricks, the United States Navy Retired

aviator, the author of a 2009 piece in which he created the conditions for an argument over the last 15 years.

By Ford's not Ferraris or by Ford's not Maserati some expensive car by Fordds not Tesla's.

Jerry a very good evening to you. I see David Ignatius has pointed the way forward

for all the services including the US Navy, buying force and not an expensive automobile that is in the shop

90% of the time.

What does that mean, Jerry?

And what is it, what relevance does it have to the concerns about the contest with China imminent?

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John, and thanks again for having me on.

And I can't tell you how thrilled I was that Mr my thinking and in fact when so far back is to find this

essay that I wrote in the Naval Institute's proceedings in the April issue of 2009,

in which I talked about, you know, what could we do? And the original thought

experiment for that

experiment for that was if I took the cost of one Arley Burke class destroyer and mind you we were building three a year at that point in time and I converted that over to smaller

lighter less exquisite platforms what could I get out of it and I was really

interested at that time in unmanned surface vessels unmanned underwater vessels

unmanned aerial vehicles.

And so if I could do that one cost conversion,

...