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New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets
- nradov 10y agoSee also Tyler Rogoway's excellent article on the numerous other design flaws in the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers. http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5343/the-navys-new-stealth-destroyer-has-watered-down-capabilities-questionable-future http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5343/the-navys-new-stea... It was designed to operate close to hostile shores, yet its stealth features were compromised, and it has no long-range air defense or CIWS.
- tomohawk 10y agoI wonder how much of the Zumwalt reduction is due to diverting money to the F-35.
- Avshalom 10y agoTo be fair: as much of a debacle as the 35 is, the Zumwalt has a range of 0-35 km while the f-35 has a range of 0-(what like 1000km).
- _audakel 10y agofirst thought: "hit targets 80 miles away at $800,000 / round." $10k/mile.... move the ships closer and get less expensive ammo? second: "The official added that there was no sense the contractor was overcharging or anything.” Really?
- hangonhn 10y agoThe whole point of the Zumwalt and her sister ships is that they are stealthy and can do pinpoint strikes, especially in support of special forces. They're suppose to operate alone. Getting them closer to shore makes it that much easier to detect and fire on. If the rounds are as precise as they claim, then $800,000 / round is a bargain. For reference, a Tomahawk costs $1.4 million and has a much slower reaction time.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoI dunno if it's that much of a bargain. A Tomahawk carries a 1000 lbs. warhead. These shells weigh a total of like 225 lbs., of which 25 lbs. or so is explosives.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoThis is a precision weapon (take out a building or a bunker) so a massive warhead is not the point. Its for Marine support
- M_Grey 10y agoYou can take out a bunker or a building with precision, without naval assets, or a railgun.
- johncolanduoni 10y agoAre there any alternatives with the same reaction time though?
- ha8o8le 10y agoMisleading headline
- georgeecollins 10y agoThe absurdity of this is not explained very well in the article because of a lack of context. The Zumwalt is not meant to be an "anti-air" ship, it was meant to be a replacement for battleships in the role of shelling land targets from sea. One of the reasons why it is meant to be stealthy is so that it can go close to the shore. The program has been cut down because of problems, though not with the guns. Except that now there are much fewer ships and the rounds will be so expensive the navy won't buy them. They can use old rounds but they won't work better then the cheaper old rounds on the cheaper old ships using cheaper guns. And the point of the ship is .. what? If you are a US taxpayer you should weep.
- grzm 10y agoThe Advanced Gun System/LRLAP have an effective range of over 80 nautical miles.[0][1] "Close to shore" is relative. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Land_Attack_Projectile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Land_Attack_Project...
- imglorp 10y agoThe old heavy battleships would deliver 800lb shells 25 miles, using analog targeting and stabilizing computers. That was already way over the horizon. 80nm can get lots done.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y agoActually, a 1900 to 2700 lbs. shell (depending on type).
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoYeah, I once heard the weight of the shells compared to "Volkswagens". Which isn't far from the truth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle
- supernintendo 10y agoThe United States government pissing our money away as usual.
- M_Grey 10y agoNot pissing it, funneling it. Pissing implies waste, while this is all about some people making profits, and others retaining political power.
- ramblenode 10y ago> Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher. Lockheed Martin, no surprise there. I wonder what it would cost China or Russia to produce something similar.
- M_Grey 10y agoA lot less, since we just did their R&D for them.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThat depends on how much of our designs they manage to steal.
- rangibaby 10y agoRussia is one of the few countries other than the US with a 100% native war industry so I imagine they would get good bang for their buck. US would too if the military-industrial complex didn't have such a good grasp on the nation's purse strings.
- outworlder 10y agoWell, this is not absurd after all. Less ships, less ammo, ammo cost per unit is higher. If the ships and weapons are performing as specified and there were no significant delays, that's a successful program.
- h4nkoslo 10y agoLacking in this conversation so far is the absurdity of yet another "precision ground attack" platform, when there are already ship / submarine / air land launched cruise missiles, air launched guided bombs from (supposedly) stealthy fighters, and in a pinch short-range SLBMs or SRBMs. They might have cost disadvantages compared to the theoretical marginal cost of the Zumwalt rounds, but I get the sense that the DoD is not exactly optimizing for cost.
- trhway 10y ago$800K per round seems a bit off - that would be half the current price of a Tomahawk cruise missile. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur would be a good comparison and it costs about $80K. I remember when i first learned about these guns it looked to me like somebody decided to go for a money saving trade-off - land attack with weaker round at shorted distance at supposedly cheaper price per round than a cruise missile. Looking at that one, i can't help to remember another trade-off - to save money F-35 engines aren't made stealth ...
- teuobk 10y agoThe article you linked to cites a price of about $250k per round, not $80k/rd, and the government is apparently buying over 7000 rounds. Given the lower purchase quantity and similar technology, a 3x increase for the new round seems believable. I mean, it's still crazy to be spending so much per round, but it's believable.
- Retric 10y agoIt's probably all tooling costs. We are spending X + 80k/rd, and the counting looks different even if the cost's don't really change.
- trhway 10y agoyou're right. Inflation though :) Looking at the history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur#History - it was well under under $100K in the first years. In that 2015 order of 7.5K units the program cost is $2B with the procurement cost is $790K - looks strange with that $1B+ tucked on that late.
- int_19h 10y agoThe price likely includes R&D costs - the contractor needs to recoup those, and they are fixed, so the fewer rounds you buy, the more expensive each one is.
- sndean 10y agoI work in an adjacent building to where they developed the Laser Weapon System (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE). It seems like the Navy and military in general is moving toward no bullets. Though I have no idea how expensive it is to fire a massive laser compared to older weapons.
- roryisok 10y agoIf they just cover it in Elon Musk's roof tiles it'll pay for itself!
- coldcode 10y agoA 4B warship but you can't afford 800K per shell. If we built stuff like that in WW2 we'd all be speaking Japanese.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- caf 10y agoIt'd probably be more cost-effective to pay 80 enemy combatants a $10k signing bonus to switch sides!
- bobsil1 10y agoAlways true in recent wars. $100B/yr in Afghanistan, could pay off almost every combatant for a fraction.
- gscott 10y agoMost of the combatants are doing it for the money. Plenty of articles on dads planting roadside bombs for a payoff. I don't believe these folks care where the payoff comes from. So we could easily just pay it but we will never do so because it makes too much sense.
- lostlogin 10y agoMush of the roams went back into US corporations though. However there is a fairly high chance that the same arms companies would have benefitted had a "paying off the locals" strategy been undertaken.
- desdiv 10y agoJokes aside, tactics like this was actually used in the Iraq war: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-army-chief-says-iraqi-troops-took-bribes-to-surrender-105987.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-army-... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2003/05/smart_bribes.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...
- jessaustin 10y agoFrom the title, I was expecting a gun that shoots e.g. puffs of compressed air.
- ntelson1s 10y agotarget hit, cap'n http://giphy.com/gifs/air-cannon-giant-14dv2oYsh8eyze http://giphy.com/gifs/air-cannon-giant-14dv2oYsh8eyze
- ChuckMcM 10y agoIt's always interesting to think about what is going on in the world versus what people are writing about. It would be a shame to have this ship be basically unarmed (although in time of war the government could just order the delivery of the rounds and figure out fair compensation later) But for me the really interesting question is "What if this is a ruse?" The gun that is supposed to be on the Zumwalt class cruisers is a railgun (http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21174/navy-electromagnetic-railgun/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21174/navy...) which we last heard about in June of this year. Since that time there hasn't been a whole lot of news, except we did get the Zumwalt commissioned. We also saw some discussion about the Navy's 150kilowatt laser (http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2233 http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post...) which would also be an excellent fit for the electrical capacity of the Zumwalt class. So what is the chance that LRPS was there to throw others off the scent of what the real ordinance load of the Zumwalt might be? I agree its pretty low but the Zumwalt is one heck of a power plant to be driving around with guns powered by explosives.
- jonathankoren 10y agoSadly, I doubt there's any subterfuge going on. The simplest reason is the must common reason today, the Pentagon has been captured by the defense contractors. Today, the damning word is "concurrency." The F-35 can't fight. No matter what the Pentagon says, it simply is not combat operational today. It can't fire its gun. It can't track objects. And it's a dog in the air. Good thing that we put all our eggs in that basket, and the convinced all our allies to join us in this hand basket. The USS Ford is $13 billion dollars, and has problems with it's electromagnetic catapults, it's dual-band radar (so bad, that the radar has been dropped on follow-on ships), and is way over budget, and full of preventable errors. The Littoral Combat Ships are jokes. Made of aluminum with a modular bay that the Navy has recently dropped after deciding that this flagship feature was in the end impractical. The ships are underarmed, and in the official description of the Navy, "not survivable." Oh did I forget to mention that the LCS came out of a competition where the Navy decided to buy both competing designs, and both designs suck? Then there's the Osprey that has notorious accident record, and then in deployment in actual combat it was discovered that it actually can't defend itself. (Shoot it from the front or the sides, because the only gun it might be carrying is in the back.) Finally, the weirdest of all is the announced conversion of the UCLASS unmanned combat vehicle into a tanker.[1] Yes tankers, are important, but its at the expense of a next genertion combat platform in order support legacy Super Hornets, and the craptastic F-35. Maybe, just maybe, this is a ruse. But who knows? [1] https://news.usni.org/2016/02/01/pentagon-to-navy-convert-uclass-program-into-unmanned-aerial-tanker-accelerate-f-35-development-buy-more-super-hornets https://news.usni.org/2016/02/01/pentagon-to-navy-convert-uc...
- Taniwha 10y ago$800k a round what are they smoking?
- chrisseaton 10y agoHow much do you think munitions usually costs? The Javelin missile already cost a tenth of that, and that's a weapon carried and used by a single soldier (well pair I think usually) with a range of just a couple of km. This is a weapon used on a ship of 140 people with a range of tens of km.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- alphapapa 10y ago> There was no requirement for the AGS to strike seagoing targets, and the system does not have the programming to do so. But the big guns could be adapted to target ships if necessary, the Navy official said. “We would have to do the software modifications to make that work.” The new gun can't shoot at other ships....
- pjc50 10y ago"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." -- President Eisenhower, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech (Adjust for inflation; insert your own cost substitute for the $800,000 artillery shells. Eight Teslas? Solar panels for 160 homes?) One of the paradoxes of the Cold War was that it led to talk of disarmament, multilateral or otherwise. It seems that will to talk has been lost. One of the paradoxes of the Iraq War was not only the spending of multi-million-dollar munitions to destroy civilian buildings occupied by enemy infantry, but the need to spend the same money again to rebuild the buildings in an attempt to rebuild the peace. (I don't know whether there's any building which was rebuilt by the coalition only to be blown up by the coalition again, but perhaps there's such an example in Mosul.)
- roryisok 10y ago> Eight Teslas? That makes it seem like less money than it is. Try: - 4 Modern Homes in the USA - 50 Ford Fiestas. - 333 new 15" Macbook Pros - 16,000 Kindle Fire Tablets (!) - 80,000 Acres of Rainforest (or, y'know, a days worth - https://www.rainforesttrust.org/10-for-1/ https://www.rainforesttrust.org/10-for-1/) - 800,000 lbs of potatoes - Bread to feed one person for 1,900 years (or I guess, 1,900 people for 1 year each)
- rahkiin 10y agoBut that is for 1 shell.