OT: DDG Zumwalt....$1,000,000 per shell

[Lecivius]

All depends on which side of the cannon you are on [:D]

[Big B]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

All depends on which side of the cannon you are on [:D]

No, it depends on if you actually see them taking YOUR money to pay for it..... for the rest of you and your grandchildren's lives [;)][:D]

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: Big B

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

All depends on which side of the cannon you are on [:D]

No, it depends on if you actually see them taking YOUR money to pay for it..... for the rest of you and your grandchildren's lives [;)][:D]

War is a great way to waste the wealth of a civilization.

[joey]

It amazes me that we are $22 trillion in debt and we buy ships that can't shoot.
Won't it be more efficient and faster to simply flush the money down the toilet than actually build non-usable ships?
Albeit it would have to be a really big toilet.....

[FlyByKnight]

ORIGINAL: Big B


The obvious question is - "Will each shell do at least 0ne Million Dollars worth of damage?" If not, someone needs to look at this again and rethink it.

[:D] Now there's the worthwhile question to ask. Gotta get that money back somehow.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: Big B

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

All depends on which side of the cannon you are on [:D]

No, it depends on if you actually see them taking YOUR money to pay for it..... for the rest of you and your grandchildren's lives [;)][:D]

Exactly. "The growth rate for interest payments is soaring. In fiscal 2018, the government spent $371 billion on net interest, while the Defense Department budget was $599 billion. ... In comparison, net interest on the public debt increased by $62 billion, or 20 percent.The growth rate for interest payments is soaring. In fiscal 2018, the government spent $371 billion on net interest, while the Defense Department budget was $599 billion. ... In comparison, net interest on the public debt increased by $62 billion, or 20 percent.

How much longer before inteset on the debt exceeds military spending????

[FlyByKnight]

One thing is for sure: the USS Zumwalt's namesake is rolling in his grave. [:o]

[rustysi]

And it's worth noting that manpower in the modern military is not cheap. Which is a good thing, for several reasons - the highly qualified people the military needs to man the high tech "stuff" find other industries just as or more attractive.

Depends upon your outlook. When I was in I didn't make much. Made as much my first year out as four years in the service. I was trained, and all Uncle Sam need do was take a look and say, 'Hey buuuddyyyyy', come on back now.[:D] I'd have been back in, in uniform the next week doing my old military job. Just a different philosophy.

It's not so much that it's "a stealth ship that was designed for fire support of landing forces", it's that it was designed for fire support of landing forces, while also being something of a stealth ship, while also being something of a destroyer, while also being a missile platform, etc.

OK, but to me the problem is these multi role thingies don't usually do any role all that well.

Also, in the case of the DDG 1000s it's radical and innovative. And developed in (relative) peacetime, by a nation that can afford to take on such experiments. Snags are inevitable, more so for complex and unconventional new designs such as the DDG 1000, F35, etc.

Fine, but at what point do we say, 'enough is enough'. To spend money just to 'prove' technology is not very cost effective. Take the F-22, amazing aircraft, but unsustainable. Especially when one looks at the F-15. What are we spending all that money on? 'Beware the military industrial complex', Eisenhower.

[Lecivius]

The F-15 is obsolete. so is the F-16, and the F-18. I know where you are coming from, and what you are trying to say. But the weapons systems you are talking about were mid 70's tech. Think of how far everything else has come. Sure, they have been upgraded repeatedly over the years. And dealing with backwaters like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran ect. they can get the job done. But a navy sky-king better have his act together if he's flying around the South China Sea, or in the North Atlantic. The guys he's flying against are using 5th generation fighters now. The Russians (and Chinese, and damned near everyone else) are equal to, or beyond the U.S. in many capabilities. That has not happened before in 3 generations.

I fully agree this thing was one EXPENSIVE dunsel. And the money could have been spent better elsewhere. But at least this fallacy was caught, and rectified by stopping the entire order of ships. Pushing the envelope costs. Lots. You pay it if you want to continue to be the Top Dog.

[Denniss]

lots of money for something that didn't work out or can't even shoot. reminds me of the over-expensive F-22 and the other one with overruning costs.

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: Denniss

lots of money for something that didn't work out or can't even shoot. reminds me of the over-expensive F-22 and the other one with overruning costs.

The F-22 is quite possibly the best air superiority fighter in the air. It was not, however, ,ulti-role. This, and politics, doomed the project. The F-35 was asked to be a 5th generation swiss army knife. That overwhelmingly caused it's development costs to skyrocket.

There are other weapons platforms we can talk about as well. The Paladin is one. But there are a lot of reasons these things get expensive. Just looking at development costs is akin to what cost the US so badly in WWII. No one wanted to spend the money pre-war to test the torpedos is an excellent example.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Denniss

lots of money for something that didn't work out or can't even shoot. reminds me of the over-expensive F-22 and the other one with overruning costs.

The F-22 is quite possibly the best air superiority fighter in the air. It was not, however, ,ulti-role. This, and politics, doomed the project. The F-35 was asked to be a 5th generation swiss army knife. That overwhelmingly caused it's development costs to skyrocket.

There are other weapons platforms we can talk about as well. The Paladin is one. But there are a lot of reasons these things get expensive. Just looking at development costs is akin to what cost the US so badly in WWII. No one wanted to spend the money pre-war to test the torpedos is an excellent example.

It wasn't lack of funds that prevented the Mk 14 from being effective; it was lack of leadership and politics.


The American sub skippers had given the War Department tons of real-life experiences and "testing" of the Mk 14 yet the continually blamed the Sub Captains and crews for the failure of the '14.

Money had almost nothing to do with it.

[Panther Bait]

One problem I find in much of the military development (especially the US Navy), is that they accept insane levels of development risk all at the same time with new platforms. In the years after WWII when technology was advancing rapidly, the Navy typically tried things out incrementally first. So you got little mini-batches of new weapons technology on an existing platform first, and if the new tech didn't work out, you just converted back to the regular weapons kit. Dramatically new platforms generally did not seem to also include drastically new weapons tech, so if the platform didn't work out (or required extensive redesign), you weren't also delaying a generation of weapons.

Now because they only develop a very small number of platforms, they have to cram new generations of every kind of tech (hull, sensors, engines, weapons, etc.) into a common development cycle. Needless to say, that hasn't worked out so well (DDG-1000, LCS, Ford-class CV, German F125 class, etc.)

[Lokasenna]

The circumstances under which the Navy was developing things in the Cold War, especially its early stages, are much different from now. In the 1950s and 1960s, other navies could at least make an attempt to challenge the dominance of the USN.

Nowadays, the gulf in capabilities is so wide that the Navy doesn't need to make sure their next generation of stuff is going to work nearly flawlessly. They can afford to take bigger risks (with bigger rewards) because if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still orders of magnitude better than the best thing the nearest competitor has.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

The circumstances under which the Navy was developing things in the Cold War, especially its early stages, are much different from now. In the 1950s and 1960s, other navies could at least make an attempt to challenge the dominance of the USN.

Nowadays, the gulf in capabilities is so wide that the Navy doesn't need to make sure their next generation of stuff is going to work nearly flawlessly. They can afford to take bigger risks (with bigger rewards) because if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still orders of magnitude better than the best thing the nearest competitor has.

You realize the DDG-Zumwalt was designed around the 155mm gun and that gun doesn't work.

As an engineer that tells me the program has failed.

Doesn't that set off any alarm bells for you?

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

You realize the DDG-Zumwalt was designed around the 155mm gun and that gun doesn't work.

Even if this were true (and there are grains of truth in saying "that gun doesn't work"), that's like saying your bicycle is designed around the gearshift indicator mounted on your handlebars.

The Zumwalt-class isn't so expensive just because of the stinkin' gun. It is/was experimentation and R&D on a much larger scale - an LCS as a (the) future frontline ship, modularity, and so on.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

You realize the DDG-Zumwalt was designed around the 155mm gun and that gun doesn't work.

Even if this were true (and there are grains of truth in saying "that gun doesn't work"), that's like saying your bicycle is designed around the gearshift indicator mounted on your handlebars.

The Zumwalt-class isn't so expensive just because of the stinkin' gun. It is/was experimentation and R&D on a much larger scale - an LCS as a (the) future frontline ship, modularity, and so on.

No ammo = effectively dead-weight. It was moronic to design a ship that was too expensive to be able to shoot its main armament.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

The circumstances under which the Navy was developing things in the Cold War, especially its early stages, are much different from now. In the 1950s and 1960s, other navies could at least make an attempt to challenge the dominance of the USN.

Nowadays, the gulf in capabilities is so wide that the Navy doesn't need to make sure their next generation of stuff is going to work nearly flawlessly. They can afford to take bigger risks (with bigger rewards) because if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still orders of magnitude better than the best thing the nearest competitor has.

You realize the DDG-Zumwalt was designed around the 155mm gun and that gun doesn't work.

As an engineer that tells me the program has failed.

Doesn't that set off any alarm bells for you?

In this missile age, if a combat ship is using it's main gun in serious engagement, they've probably lost. It's all down to sensors, missiles and missile defence in naval engagements.

There's a reason why naval design did a sharp turn away from developing better surface guns, and why modern warships rarely mount more than a single conventional gun ranging from 75mm to 155mm - they're no longer relevant to the role. They offer nice flexibility and a cost-effective way of dealing with small combatants, but they are by no means essential.

As Loka says, it was more about pushing the technology out there. The Yubari wasn't a amazingly successful ship, but it offered the IJN the chance to learn a lot of lessons.

[Rusty1961]

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

The circumstances under which the Navy was developing things in the Cold War, especially its early stages, are much different from now. In the 1950s and 1960s, other navies could at least make an attempt to challenge the dominance of the USN.

Nowadays, the gulf in capabilities is so wide that the Navy doesn't need to make sure their next generation of stuff is going to work nearly flawlessly. They can afford to take bigger risks (with bigger rewards) because if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still orders of magnitude better than the best thing the nearest competitor has.

You realize the DDG-Zumwalt was designed around the 155mm gun and that gun doesn't work.

As an engineer that tells me the program has failed.

Doesn't that set off any alarm bells for you?

In this missile age, if a combat ship is using it's main gun in serious engagement, they've probably lost. It's all down to sensors, missiles and missile defence in naval engagements.

There's a reason why naval design did a sharp turn away from developing better surface guns, and why modern warships rarely mount more than a single conventional gun ranging from 75mm to 155mm - they're no longer relevant to the role. They offer nice flexibility and a cost-effective way of dealing with small combatants, but they are by no means essential.

As Loka says, it was more about pushing the technology out there. The Yubari wasn't a amazingly successful ship, but it offered the IJN the chance to learn a lot of lessons.

Of course the era of the gun is over. Why would they design a ship around a gun in this age?

The era of the gun ended when the HMS Sheffield was sunk by the Exocet.

[Lokasenna]

No, designing with the 155mm gun they wanted for shore bombardment does make sense - shells are cheaper than missiles, and when supporting a landing it may make sense to fire shells instead of expensive missiles.