Alex Clarke rejects a reader's inference that admitting future ship losses means ships should no longer be built. He also denies saying that losing ships is the only way to learn how to defeat hypersonic weapons. The distinction is between acknowledging vulnerability and treating a new weapon as grounds for abandoning surface forces. He compares contemporary claims about hypersonics with the rhetoric surrounding aircraft in the 1920s.
Notable Point · 7:21-8:20
Expected ship losses and the airpower analogy
Arguments about hypersonics are compared with interwar claims about aircraft, while expected losses are separated from abandoning shipbuilding.