Defending the legacy

My friend at Information Dissemination has a post on CNO Gary Roughead speaking strategy.
"There are some who would say small patrol boat showing a small coastal Navy how to conduct a fisheries patrol is the best form of engagement, but consider what we have done with our African Partnership Station, where we took a little bit larger ship, an amphibious ship, where we could still go off and work with that coastal nation. "
Galrahn is excited because the mothership concept gets lots of play in the discussion. Which is good.
But then we have the counter of last week's Navy Times article that says Roughead wants to significantly reduce the number of amphibious ships. And those ships are the only ships that can really do the mothership role.

But...in the end, my problem with CNO's comments is that I am hearing what Seth Grodin is referring to here: "Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing. I bet you can list a dozen "critical" industries that will be as relevant to life in 2020 as Singer is to our world today."