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Comment by pat76 | Hacker News Reader

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The navy was in a conflict with illiterate goat herders?

I can decode this rant.

The Zumwalt class started out as a requirement from the armed forces committee in congress for a replacement for the old battleship Naval Gunfire Support mission. That is sit a bit off the coast and go boom with big guns to help the boots on the ground.

Just one wee little problem with that: anti ship missiles have made that a suicide mission since approximately the late 60s. And no, all the stealth in the world wasn't going to make a difference in that when a simple counter battery radar would spot you, not to mention other means.

The Navy tried to get out of it but couldn't, so we got stuck building 3 rather useless boats and then canceling the program. Some neat naval design and engineering went into them which may be useful in the future, but it wasn't worth it for the sticker price at all.

The people created this fuster cluck are the same folks that kept the battleships operational or semi operational post WW2 when it was clear they were obsolete, at non trivial cost to taxpayers.

Prime example of why military spending needs to be cut in half at least to focus on what's important. Not to weaken the military but to stop bullshit like this in its track.

Speaking of tracks, apparently production of M1 tanks is going at full pace, thanks to the factories being located in the districts of influential politicians. The military has no need for them though, so they are going straight to storage.

Despite, as far as I know, even the Army saying they don't want nor need these Abrams. Keeping the factories running is good, one never knows when that industrial base might needed at scale. and we no longer in the 40s when car factories could easily converted to tank production. You don't need full capacity production for that, so.

They were given 10 billion to design/build 30 ships. They spent 30-40 billion and got 3 ship that can barely float. Only in the US.

The ships float fine. There's a sort of internet forum meme about them having poor seakeeping due to the unusual tumblehome hull. That's 100% imagined by forum warriors. The boats have remarkable stability and superior seakeeping. That's not the problem with them at all. The problem with them is they they were designed for a mission that was boneheaded from the beginning, and that costs ballooned tremendously to build them.

The Navy's plan for them now is to convert them into missile boats for the new hypersonic missiles, if/when those are ready, so they main end up being somewhat useful eventually. But again, you'd not want to spend money the way we had to get to this result if you had some way to rewind the errors.

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