Is Zumwalt-class worth $8-billion-plus?

[Rosseau]

Read all the media, but wondering what the CMO experts think of the Zumwalt in-game performance, as there are (thankfully) no real-world combat performance, yet.

Best wishes!

[thewood1]

As modelled, I don't really see the benefit of the Zumwalt. While VLS pods as risk mitigation on its magazines is interesting, its no where near worth the cost. It has also limited the missile types it can carry. I also have always been skeptical of concessions for stealth on large warships. But the crippling blow was the screwing around with the SPY3 and 4 radar configurations. It somewhat neutered the electronics advancement over the Burkes. And then the decision-making around its guns removed another supposed benefit over other DDGs and CGs.

On the plus side is the significant reduction in operating crew. I'm hoping some of that carries over to the new Burkes.

[BDukes]

Read all the media, but wondering what the CMO experts think of the Zumwalt in-game performance, as there are (thankfully) no real-world combat performance, yet.

Best wishes!

Very expensive tech-demonstrators. Hoping their cost will be recovered with permanent fits in the future.

When I mod I tend to swap out VLS fits or add new deck guns. Not sure the powerplant will support a large laser in the future.

M

[Shkval25]

On the plus side is the significant reduction in operating crew. I'm hoping some of that carries over to the new Burkes.

That's only a plus until a sleep-deprived helmsman plows into a container ship or you lose the ship to a fire that should have been fightable.

[thewood1]

Hate to break it to you, but that already happens with fully manned ships. Might actually be better with an AI watching traffic.

[Shkval25]

Hate to break it to you, but that already happens with fully manned ships. Might actually be better with an AI watching traffic.

Nothing is fully manned anymore ("Optimal Manning," remember?).

[thewood1]

Optimal manning is the new fully manned.

[ultradave]

I realize that's partly in snark, however, when I was involved in the propulsion plant design of the CVN78, one of the big drivers was reducing engineering section crew size. Over the 50-ish year life of a CVN, guess what a major driver of total cost of the platform is?

Pay and benefits for the crew and aircrew over 50 years.

Dave

[thewood1]

I work on large capital projects all the time. Almost all of them are driven by human cost to operate and maintain. Traditional automation has helped somewhat, but is somewhat mooted by the higher costs to main the automation equipment. Its a geometric curve, not exponential. Some form of better routine decision-making is where its at for finally dropping the human cost. But of course now its being applied where it shouldn't be.

One of my old jobs in a factory had us replace a 5-person forming press crew with a press with an articulated robot for material handling. It dropped the press crew to 2 people. But I had to have an engineer and technician on staff to support the automation. We did drop the total human commitment to 4, but the overall human cost was 5% higher.

[ultradave]

For CVN78 the engineering department ended up roughly half the size of Nimitz class. That's a pretty big savings. I know there was similar effort in other areas of the ship but I don't know what the result was. I'm retired now but am a nuclear engineer and worked on naval nuclear propulsion, so forward end stuff - I know more from CMO than I ever did in my career

Dave

[joey]

Optimal manning is the new fully manned.

I hate to tell you but fully manned went out with the draft. It is not a new issue. We were lucky to be 50% at any given time after the draft went away....