1793

A third of the tonnage, less capability, but similar cost to an Arleigh Burke? Yikes.

1794

One of their problems is that they’re built out of aluminum and steel, and when aluminum and steel and salt water meet, holy fucking corrosion problems.

Also, the Navy built two entirely different classes of ship for the same job, littoral combat. And they’re vastly different from one another.

Oh, yeah, and the Navy is already retiring the lead ships in both classes after less than 15 years.

And that reduced manpower/increased automation not only comes at a cost, but it could be catastrophic in combat, when the thing you need most in damage control are bodies to throw at the fires raging on the ship. You’re already operating with a minimal crew, you’re going to task causalities, and the ship is going to be most likely screwed.

It’s a clusterfuck.

1795

You have to think it’s due to kowtowing to contractors, either that or the US Navy, which has usually been pretty smart, suddenly took a bunch of stupid pills. Or maybe someone in Congress rammed it through to help their district. Whatever, it’s just a horrible waste of resources at best and as noted above, at worst it’s a disaster waiting to happen at sea.

1796

LCS has been a disaster, the Zumwalts have been a failure(at least the platform has potential), and the Ford class carriers are way behind due to being reliant on technology that wasn’t actually ready yet.

1797

There’s no answer here - there are so few big military contractors left and they all know exactly how to extract the maximum revenue from the government.

1798

Maybe it’s time to revert to the old system of government armories and shipyards…

1799

The Zumwalts were all about being a next-gen weapons platform for all the stuff coming down the pipe. You can’t retrofit that into the Burkes easily because the Burkes can’t generate the amount of electricity the Zumwalts can.

The Burke is a really potent modern-day system, but it won’t be able to handle directed energy weapons or railguns anywhere as well as a Zumwalt. The Zumwalt can generate 78 megawatts!

1800

Like I said, the platform has potential, but they have no main armament right now. Using it as a platform for proving out future weapon systems definitely seems like a good idea for them.

1801

Meantime they can mine bitcoin!

1802

I saw this video on the Zumwalt a few weeks ago.

And this one on the Latoral

1803

Money well spent!

1804

So someone in charge of budgeting got a hard-on for the idea of being able to scream “I’m firin’ mah laz0rz!” in combat, thus Zumwalt?

1805

This is all making me feel a lot better about our type 31 frigate. It may be a pointless waste of steel, but at least its a cheap pointless waste of steel, and I guess you could bolt NSMs to the deck and get a useful 3rd rate combatant.

Story checks out.

1806

There is this episode on it all. The development cycle was much longer than I had expected.

1807

I did see a great video on why it seemed like Russian Ships were more heavily armed then US ships, and the answer seemed to be ammunition and supplies. US ships need to carry more ammunition and supplies, because unlike Russian ships, they range further away.

1808

I posted this to the hiking thread, but thought I’d also post here. Not sure if it’s been mentioned before, but one of very few good things the Trump administration did was make National Parks have free entrance for veterans and gold star families starting November 2020. I had to go through the rigmarole of filling out a form at my County Veterans Service Office and then visit the DMV, but I now have a California driver’s license that says “Veteran” on it (and as a bonus, I added Real ID), which will get me into national parks and forests for free.

https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/veterans-and-gold-star-families-free-access.htm

1809

That’s awesome. Let me know if you ever make it out my way (Utah). We have a national park or two worth a visit. :)

1810

Definitely. I did the Narrows in Zion a year or so ago and really want to go back to see more of it. And all the rest as well. The Uintas Highline trail is a bucket-list hike for me.

1811

I know that one, that’s the one with Captain James Kirk.

1812

And the US Navy had, and still has I assume, a massive and well-developed capability for underway replenishment and a global network of bases for resupply, things the Soviets never had.