Posted on 06/04/2012 6:36:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In terms of investment, on top of the cost of the carrier itself and its aircraft one has to count the cost of all the supporting vessels in the carrier group whose task is to protect her. I would rather see funding go toward Stealth, Rail Guns, Chemical Laser anti-aircraft and anti-missile technology, etc. than one more carrier group. The idea of small, flexible, nearly invisible, and packed with incredible firepower sounds like the way forward in the "next" war.
Maybe not a long while. An air-launched hypersonic missile would not have the heat signature of a silo launch.
What do you get for $7 billion in stealth technology that doesn’t come for free in a submarine? (Well except for the base price of the submarine).
Just as a point of reference, the world’s largest yacht is under construction in Germany at an estimated cost of $600 million. (0.6 billion)
"Our two biggest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." - Werner von Braun
Major tactical error, this is a fine weapon to invade, but the issue is not with invading China, but China invading us. Better to have a steath destroyer than a new Battleship.
A healthy marketplace does a lot more to appease your neighbor than ripping him off.
I once worked for a company doing DOD work. We had a saying, “When the paperwork weighs as much as the part you are producing, then you are getting close”....
China has one of the worst Anti Submarine Warfare capabilities. US wants to contain China, stick to good subs with good sub launched weapons.
I haven’t followed rail gun technology, but I think it’s a safe bet, based on other technologies, that the first run will be problemmatic, short range, and bulky compared to what will eventually be available as the technology matures.
Given that, deployment on a ship would seem to make sense. It’s mobile, it’s big, it can generate a lot of power, and it’s a good test bed.
When viewed that way, perhaps the cost isn’t as much of a concern if it leads to smaller, longer range, and more portable versions later that have already been proven to be robust.
If this were on a nuclear ship (I don’t know if that is the case here), you would have a great source of power and wouldn’t need to stockpile explosives for projectile launches.
Depending on the eventual accurate range of this technology, the stealth aspect may end up like I understand it’s use on aircraft - our weapons are able to engage just about any enemy so far out that even defeating the stealth would not give a significant advantage in most cases. In close range combat, the ship obviously isn’t invisible to the naked eye so it’s going to be vulnerable no matter what to optical targetting. Let’s hope we don’t let anyone get that close.
I’m obviously not an expert, and I’m making a lot of guesses here, but that’s my sense of what may be the thinking in this case.
Navy warships have been using RAM (radar absorbent material) in the form of tiles and blankets for quite some time and, like everything else in a marine environment, require attention and maintenance.
How well would the three, $7 billion ships stand up to 1000 $21 million ships?
$7 billion for a destroyer is a crime. Seriously. And the Zumwalt doesn’t even have the Burke class’ anti-air capability. Not enough room to shoehorn that caliber of AA electronics into the current design. This ship is a multi-billion dollar solution in search of a problem. Zumwalt would be appalled at his name being stuck on this turkey. He was all about “many and cheap”... building a huge fleet of small, easy to build and inexpensive warships vs. a small fleet with a few hyper-expensive behemoths. He was the brainchild behind the Sea Control Ship and the Perry class frigate. Sometimes I think someone in the Navy Department named this ship just to insult his memory.
China won’t have to invade. We are selling them (at bargain basement prices, I might add) everything they need to gain control of our economy. We will be the beggars willing to work for food in a couple of more decades.
If we did that, two things would happen - an instant increase in the price of so many consumer goods that it would depress sales, hurting American consumers and throwing tens- if not hundreds of thousands more out of work. China would further retaliate by calling in our debt (which they may do anyway), with our Treasury monetizing the payout, further weakening the dollar while increasing the cost of foreign oil.
There is no question that China's trade policies are unfair, but they are increasingly unsustainable as their own debt rises and as our economy slowly slips into another recession. Even today, real Chinese GDP (not the fake "reported" GDP) appears to be falling substantially. The real way to fight them is to make ourselves more competitive in domestic manufacturing, production and trade - which means lower taxes, less regulation at all levels, and fewer barriers to entry... none of which Barack Obama will ever, ever support, of course.
As to the $7 billion destroyer, I have to question the wisdom of spending such sums on an admittedly potent (and very cool) defense platform when we're broke. Maybe we should think about securing our national borders first. Can we build a reliable fence for $7 billion?
I thought “Land Attack” was what those big, converted (from SSBN to SSGN) Trident subs were for? They replaced the Trident missiles with bundles of cruise missiles and added room for SEAL teams.
I wonder if the BBG (they sure as heck ain’t DDGs) Zumwalts will have any other useful abilities like air defense and ASW?
ICBMs?
Why?
Just package them in bales of marijuana...
I think this is definite proof Autobots are for real because in the 2nd Transformers a navy ship was equipped with a rail gun courtesy of the the Autobots.
The current carriers being constructed are $4 billion a unit. Also worries me that there is so much new technology. Usually projects like that end up bad or have huge cost overruns.
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