It’s not as utterly batshit insane as the headline makes it sound. The Burkes are 10k ton ships, DDG1000 is already a 16k ton ship, and we do need a next gen DDG replacement for the Burkes and the Ticonderoga. The Burkes were already basically maxed out internally, and the changes for Flight 3 didn’t help with that at all. It’s also why the latest Burke modernizations look really stupid as things continue to be added beyond the capacity of the hull design.
Adding hypersonic missiles shouldn’t be that crazy too. The ChiComs have already gotten there, and their Renhai already even carries an ASBM.
If the US Navy really wants to continue to maintain its prominence at sea, a next gen cruiser and destroyer replacement is actually pretty “normal” to maintain continuity to the current Fleet design. Defending the CVN has only gotten harder, and debacles like where we took the requirements for DDG1000 and LCS (literally a 180 from legacy CVN/Fleet war at sea) will take effort to undo.
This sounds like a Trumpified version of addressing a “cruiser gap” except it’s probably a lot more of a real gap than the Cold War version.