... and another thing...
... don't get me started about Ship design...
What advantage does this "specialization" doctrine have over a "bit of everything" doctrine? What disadvantages?
The advantages should be obvious. I have chosen that instead of giving every ship a little bit of Gauss PD, a little bit of Laser PD, a little bit of AMM PD... I will give most ships NONE of those things, and instead build a line of ships that are NOTHING BUT Gauss PD, another design that is nothing but Laser PD, and so on.
The point is that if every ship has a little bit of Gauss PD (and a little bit of Laser PD, and a few AMMs...), then EVERY SHIP must carry an appropriate fire control system for each one of those weapon systems. All of them. Every ship will need to devote a substantial fraction of their tonnage to an assortment of various fire controls... thousands of tons in total, spread evenly across all the ships of the fleet.
... and yet I can get the same total PD firepower (and the same effect in battle!) by concentrating all of those PD weapons in a few specialized ships instead... and then we only need to carry a few Fire Controls, instead of thousands of tons of them! All that tonnage can be devoted to THE MISSION instead.
So the advantages of specialization are obvious. What about the disadvantages?
In one phrase: Point-failure risk.
If we were using the "bit of everything" doctrine, then the loss of any single ship will only degrade our combat effectiveness by a small amount. But using the "Specialization" doctrine instead, the loss of a key element such as the AWACS (or the Carrier, or the PD escort) can cripple our fleet with a single blow.
The solution? Redundancy.
Don't bring an AWACS. Bring four instead. Or maybe eight. Don't bring a Carrier. Bring a Carrier Group instead. PD vessels? They're as cheap as dirt. Bring a dozen. Or a couple of dozen.
