With all due respect, this is really just ex post facto justification by the Navy and is contradicted by the
enormous effort (via CEC and SSDS) put into improving carrier self-defense capability
particularly against high-diving (VSR) and sea-skimming threats (MFR). The Ford's radar layout on the
island was in-fact informed by these efforts.
VSR was not intended to be single configuration either and was supposed to be the SPS-43/48/49 replacement/retrofit.
Flexibility-wise it's very hard to argue with dual-band even just for things like meteorological resiliency
and missile data links.
And it's the deletion of the MFRs from the Ford class that is most troubling especially since you'll have lots of
at-sea track data coming back from the Zumwalts long before still the notional AMDR-X and EASR-X
(or even AMDR-S for that matter) are in a similar position.
Having said all of that: EASR-S is a major improvement over the current LCS radars even if
just from a data rights/growth perspective.
On a related matter, I am curious if the active SM-2 will have the same anti-surface modes
being incorporated into SM-6.
