The Navy's $9B Stealthy Super Destroyer Is Covered in Rust | Hacker News Reader

The Navy's $9B Stealthy Super Destroyer Is Covered in Rust

thedrive.com

22 pointsavalys10 comments

I just saw this ship while visiting the USS Midway Museum and caught it on film: https://stream.new/v/sXc9wpNxX9NyhNMYeuYfV7y902WIPlYgFshIPri...

Pretty cool to see, although I didn't capture the tiles in detail to see whether they were rusted.

> I'm dead serious when I say this: Operate less. Paint more. We are not at war. When we show up in a place, we should look good. If we don't, we are defeating the purpose of presence.

This is a highly misguided take. The idea that the navy is only needed when there is a first class shooting war going on is wrong and frankly stupid. There is currently a new cold war going on and the navy has a lot of work to do. It would be foolish to complain that the navy is spending too much time operating and not enough time chipping and painting because their operations are actually really important and it's their job. Instead, complain that the navy is spending too much money on electromagnetic catapults, the F-35, railguns and the Zumwalts. What the navy needs to do is fix their procurement so they can get some freaking ships with guns that work.

Even US Navy is migrating to Rust? ;-)

Nowhere in the article does it provide even speculation about actual operational effect of the rust. Does anyone know if rust as pictured in the article has a detrimental effect to the combat readiness of the ship? That should be far and away the primary concern.

I took away from the article that it's likely merely cosmetic at this point, but concerns have been raised that:

1) The run-down look during peacetime subtracts from the 'gravitas' the ship can communicate to the world and

2) The smaller crew this more automated modern ship has might not be large enough to complete the common scraping and painting maintenance that ships require to stay ahead of rust

The rust gives me the Russian submarine fleet vibes, which is unfortunate.

Considering the sky-high costs of these kinds of shipbuilding programs, why haven't they yet devised an unmanned scraper/cleaner system for flat surfaces above the waterline ?

And to think it was once under the command of Captain James Kirk...

The navy should have registered as DDG 1701

I remember the 90s when people scoffed at the Soviet Navy's rusting fleet. There was no money.

Twenty years later, thirty trillion dollars of national debt seems to have caught up with the US Navy's rusting fleet.

To be be honest that isn’t that bad. Our ships constantly rust and they are usually prettied up before pulling into port. I’m guessing there was more important work to do

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