In this personal account, Cold War naval officer and USNA ’64 graduate Charles C. Jett sets the record straight on an untold chapter of submarine history: how his innovations developed aboard USS RAY (SSN 653) and later at the US Naval Submarine School where he taught tactics and Soviet Naval Ship Recognition to prospective nuclear submarine commanding officers— commended by Vice Admiral E. P. Wilkinson and the Secretary of the Navy, and endorsed by Admiral Bruce DeMars and Rear Admiral Albert Kelln — provided Tom Clancy with the foundation for both the character Jonesy and the original Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. As shipmate Dennis Parker wrote: “A little bit of the Ray, and a little bit of Charlie Jett, lives on in every U.S. nuclear attack submarine since.” At 85, Jett finally places this story where it belongs: in the record.

In the third installment of this series, we deliver the verdict on the Littoral Combat Ship: a program whose total exposure approaches $95 billion for a platform that failed its own testing, retired hulls barely a decade old, and survived every cancellation attempt not because it worked but because the machine that built it was designed to protect itself. Drawing on GAO and DOT&E findings, congressional lobbying records, and Eisenhower’s 1961 warning, we trace the dual-vendor political architecture that locked two shipyard states into the program, the revolving door of lobbyists who protected it, and the quiet institutional cowardice that kept it alive long after the public record had established its failure. The verdict: $95 billion. The ship that wouldn’t die. And a Navy that deserved better than both.

In “The Dividend,” the sixth episode of the “Have a Nice Day!” dramatic series, Phil and Doris Dalton open their quarterly retirement statement and discover the war’s newest arithmetic: their savings are down nineteen percent — sixty-one thousand dollars — but the only sector still making money is defense. Raytheon. Lockheed. The companies building the Tomahawk missiles at three and a half million each. When their financial advisor calls and recommends “increasing allocation to the sectors benefiting from current conditions,” Doris translates: the only way to recover what the war took is to bet on the war continuing. And if the bet pays off, it means Danny — their nineteen-year-old grandson, now in infantry training — stays in it. Phil holds up two documents: the retirement statement and Danny’s enlistment letter. “This is the money,” he says. “This is the name.” He doesn’t connect them. He doesn’t have to.