【英文】国家利益中心报告：风浪中的海权：21世纪美国海军力量的未来（43页）

The Navy’s decisions regarding force structure and ship design are the most complex  and important force-development questions facing America’s military. While the Navy  plays a myriad of roles in support of America’s national defense, its vessels remain its  singular feature and the true measure of its value. Ships are large, complex, expensive,  and enduring, and surface ships must be masters of warfare against enemies in the air,  on land, on the sea surface, and undersea. Modern naval ships must also confront  threats which exist in space, the cyber domain, the electromagnetic domain, and the  information domain. 

Naval ships are designed to face the challenges of their time with the hope that they will  also meet the needs of the future. Naval ships often serve for decades, as the USS  Midway (1945-1992) and USS Blue Ridge (1970-Present) have. No “time outs” are  possible to ponder future developments in academic isolation. While many ships were  conceived, designed, and commissioned under entirely different political and  technological circumstances than those under which they currently operate, a ship’s  best ability remains availability, and ships are regularly tasked with filling roles radically  different than those for which they were built.