Why navies need warfighting and presence fleets

Zumwalt provides a procurement case study rather than a technical ship profile. A navy needs both a warfighting fleet and enough presence capacity to deter crises, reassure partners, and keep its combat force from wearing out before war begins. A fleet sized only for major combat will be run ragged by routine peacetime commitments and may enter a war with degraded readiness. Presence ships still need wartime utility, so the problem is one of balance rather than a simple high-low split.