Combatant commands and the missing US cruiser

Has the Goldwater-Nichols system become detrimental, and what does it mean for US cruiser policy?

He thinks it made more sense during the Cold War and now helps create conflicting briefs that obstruct a practical cruiser program.

The combatant-command structure suited the Cold War better than the strategic environment that followed it. The US Navy still needs a surface combatant with enough independent weight to matter when a full carrier group is unnecessary. The Ticonderoga class is a destroyer-derived solution, while the Zumwalt hull offers a more convincing starting point for a true cruiser. Enlarging that hull by roughly 2,000 tons and adding more vertical-launch capacity is presented as a manageable engineering step. The harder obstacle is a requirements system in which one ship must satisfy too many competing command briefs before the Navy can build it.