The Navy’s Second Stealth Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Is Almost Ready for Action
nationalinterest.org
nationalinterest.org
but:
> Given the sheer expense of the DDG-1000 class and its lack of certain ballistic missile defense capabilities—not to mention a number of outmoded technologies onboard—the Navy opted not to continue building the Zumwalt class. The three-ship class has cost the Navy $23 billion, with each ship coming in at roughly $4.25 billion per vessel when research and development is not factored in.
> In the medium term, the future of the Navy’s surface fleet lies with the new Flight III Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class destroyer—which BIW will start building starting with DDG-126 and DDG-127.
Flight III Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) class destroyer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arleigh_Burke-class_destroyer#...
Naval shipbuilding needs a SpaceX.
Not just Naval shipbuilding. I can think of a few contractors that could stand to get shaken up. Problem is you probably need an obscene amount of money and connections to get into that space.
From what I have read about the maintenance needs of systems like the F-22 and B-2 someone who has simpler, easier to maintain airplanes should also have an advantage once things get busy.
Also from a numbers standpoint. They keep buying fewer and fewer airframes as costs rise, which I'd assume means they'd be very vulnerable to attrition against a peer adversary. High-tech planes aren't very helpful if you have none left or too few to risk.
Compare the tanks of WWII. American Shermans (at first) were something of a death-trap in terms of armor and carried weaker armaments. But you could churn them out quickly and teach someone with a high school degree how to do maintenance. Germans went the opposite: high-tech behemoths that were fast, heavily armored, and big-gunned. They were hell to fight, but they also couldn’t be produced or maintained at anything close to the speed of a Sherman. And as it turns out, modern war is not just about having the best toy but the one the market can produce and replace reliably.
It seems to me that our extreme willingness for expense and new tech fetishism is putting us in the position of the Germans of last century—we’ll win all our short engagements but once we have to start replacing parts and vehicles, we’ll be hamstrung.
EDIT: and so as not to seem like I’m repeating the myth, I’ll link here to a little debunking—the Sherman wasn’t a bad tank, just not a particularly cutting-edge one:
http://knowledgeglue.com/dispelling-myths-surrounding-m4-she...
Or should have they have gone for the Brit conversion using the 17pounder - towards the end Brit doctrine was 50/50 firefly / stock Sherman.
Ok the 76.2 with the right ammo was good but they only had 2/3 rounds per tank of those as opposed to a British troop with 50% 17 pounders
There are rumours of Infantry generals delaying the introduction of the 76.2 as allegedly one had an interest in the factory that made 75's - There is also the NIH aspect in refusing the funnies in American Beaches.
We knew this once - hence the F16. But it has been forgotten, while there are F16s still flying!
People in the 20th century didn't think WWI would happen, because it would be incredibly stupid to blow up yourself and your trading partners. We did it anyway, and underestimating our capacity for self-destruction invites it.
The entire Chinese economy is oriented around global trade in the neoliberal system built post-WW2. In the scenario you're outlining, the entire country would face massive food shortages and the resulting riots would quickly force the elite from power.
The big difference between now and pre-WW1 is that back then most countries were still able to be self sufficient at their then-current living standards. Trade was more for domination and luxuries, not basic necessities. It's impossible to maintain current living standards without extensive trade.
Edit: Re capacity for self destruction, we have a far higher (IMO 1,000x) risk of permanently dooming our planet via climate change or chemical pollution than armed warfare. The solution is unprecedented global cooperation, which also lowers the risk of a WW type scenario. So I think we're on the same page wrt that.
I am not so sure about that. People said the same after WW1. Looking back at history we'll probably smash the planet again sometime in the future.
$4.25B/ship is the wrong way to frame it. Think of it as $23B to keep our shipbuilding expertise current, to make sure we have the capability to build navy ships that incorporate a bunch of cutting-edge technologies (some of which have worked out and some of which haven't, as is the nature of cutting-edge technologies). If a shooting war started to look likely we'd be building a lot more than 3 of them and the unit cost would come way down.
Maybe there was space for a ground attack aircraft for the Navy and Air Force that could replace the F/A-18 and the A-10. But expecting the same plane to also replace the Harrier was a mistake, as was stopping production of the F-22.
Waste is the entire point of the exercise. Massive spending on complex military hardware is the New Deal of the post-Reagan era.
The F-35 is widely regarded as a complete fiasco - massively over-budget, ineffective in most combat roles and plagued with defects. After 20 years and $1.5 trillion in spending commitments, it's still not contributing to the strategic defense interests of the US; many analysts think that the F-35 is simply incapable of being made combat-ready.
To see the actual point of the program, you need to look at Lockheed Martin's Economic Impact Report. 32,000 direct and 138,000 indirect jobs. 1,400 suppliers across 46 states and Puerto Rico. It's not a multi-role fighter aircraft, it's a pork barrel with wings. It's politically unstoppable - a Democrat legislator can vote against wasteful military spending, a Republican legislator can vote against expensive job creation schemes, but nobody can vote against both.
These systems are primarily for fighting nations not named Russia and China. If China decides to sink a carrier or a Zumwalt, it's WW3, millions will die.
But are those "nations not named Russia and China" realistically going to be able to do anything to a destroyer like this? Could they have realistically done anything to the previous generation of destroyers? It seems (to my uninformed eye) that these upgraded destroyers are almost comical in how far ahead of the technology that any adversary has (once again, those not named China and Russia).
So that _nations_ can have access to pretty advanced technologies.
Trying to roll so many technical leaps forward into a single ship proved to be a big mistake, though, as many of those advances were never able to be practically realized and some of those that were ended up costing much more to develop than originally anticipated. So the Zumwalts have become kind of a white elephant; the cost overruns caused the Navy to eventually cut its order for the ships from 32 to just three, and those that will be delivered are unlikely to ever be as capable as they were originally planned to be.
As far as whether they'll end up on the Zumwalts? Who knows. The lack of a missile defense system on the Zumwalts has more or less made them pointless beyond research/development testbeds. We're just going to build more Burkes and upgrade existing ones instead, which is more cost effective on the whole.
What no one in the navy wants to say clearly and openly is: the Zumwalts, as well as the 2 LCS designs, are pretty much useless as built. They won't be used for more than training, development testing, and perhaps mine sweeping duties.
Out of all 3 of those classes, the only fully capable ship anyone is talking about is a new, stretched version of the Freedom class LCS that tries to be a mini-frigate. And that's only getting talked about because foreign customers are interested.
It's an incredible waste of taxpayers money.
I wouldn't be so negative. The money coming in allowed newbie engineers to get into the field and existing ones to get smarter and increase their skills. Not having such a project would lead to a vacuum in the knowledge required to do those sorts of projects (I don't believe the US has any other project of this sort underway). I'm sure they'll be able to learn from what went wrong to make the next project turn out better.
No one is expecting the Navy to have stealth carriers any time soon, even if naval stealth was reliable enough to obviate the need for missile defense.
I watched a lecture by one of the decision makers in the Ford class carrier development program.
They actually looked at a stealth carrier concept. You can shroud the deck and elevators with side walls that screen them from radars. But that creates huge problems with jet engines and acoustics, to the point that being on the deck even with ear protection would be very risky health wise. Also they'd be hideously expensive.
The bigger issue would be that for this to work you would have to make the entire carrier battle group stealthy, which would be beyond cost prohibitive.