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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

No. That'd be like saying the US should stop making carriers because of the new India/Russia BrahMos cruise missile. Or the so called DF21 carrier killer from China.

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.

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> These systems are primarily for fighting nations not named Russia and China.

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).

Didn’t the attack on the USS Cole (a dinghy loaded with explosives driven by suicidal fanatics) demonstrated that being “comically far ahead” in therms of technology sometimes amounts for precious little?

At least Russia now is ready to flung their new technologies to anyone who can pay for them (selling S-400 to Turkey for example).

So that _nations_ can have access to pretty advanced technologies.

Okay I understand that, makes sense. So this isn't so much about stealth not being worth pursuing as the Zumwalt having served its purpose as a technology demonstrator and experience/requirements gathering exercise, albeit one that cost more than intended? (We carry on with a new block of the Arleigh Burke class for the time being.)

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