[QUOTE=Slick Cam;192998]Many think the future of naval warfare will trend away from aircraft carriers, towards stealthy, single platforms that can enter the combat zone unescorted, take and hold territory (sea, air and land space via power projection), destroy targets, and stay on station for an extended period (months) to ensure victory. Directed energy weapons will play a role.
The Zumwalt class ships have the potential to revolutionize naval warfare, and deserve a chance to do so, I believe.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like a pie in the sky pitch from a lobbyist advocating ships that can accomplish an endless list of missions all by themselves but we know from experience that this kind of thinking produces ships and planes that end up being such compromises that they can’t properly accomplish any of them.
We have eight aircraft carriers, China has just finished building one and Russia has one that is held together with bailing wire. They have zero Zumwalt type boondoggles sitting idle in their yards that only exist to fill insiders’ pockets.
I’m all for a strong military but we are shooting ourselves in the foot with these pink elephants. We’re already bankrupt. How many more billions do we want to flush down the toilet?
The demise of the Warthog is a perfect example of the military industrial complex run amok replacing a proven concept with obscenely expensive do-it-all toys that can’t do the job.
Well, the Navy had decided to axe the Zumwalts anyways, and build additional upgraded units of the proven Burke class. Hopefully they will axe the LCS as well and simply build a small batch of frigates from an off the shelf design to do basic frigate type assignments.
[QUOTE=ombugge;193011]The question is; Multi-purpose or Multi-useless??[/QUOTE]
Both. It keeps the pork barrel full and fills the trough from which the admirals and their handlers feed. It is multi-useless in that it can’t even run long enough to travel between repair yards in the US without being towed,and it sure as Hell isn’t going to exist in harm’s way for more than a few hours before being featured in a video produced by the desert dwellers who destroyed it with a $2000 speedboat.
Burke class? Oh yeah, the ones with the Aegis system. Isn’t that the radar system that couldn’t tell the difference between a climbing airliner (read huge radar cross section)with a pair of enormous turbofan engines (read that as f’ing HUGE radar reflectors)and a little single seat fighter? Either the admirals waste a fortune buying garbage systems or they waste obscenely expensive systems because they are not able or willing to train operators properly. Hell, in the case of the Iranian airliner, even the old FAA surveillance radars can tell an investigator what rpm a prop or a fan is turning just from the primary returns alone. Our admirals blow enough cash on one useless ship to send a million kids from kindergarten to grad school but they prefer to send them out on an aluminum target a few hundred at a time.
How can anyone not be angry with the parasites who suck $600 billion out of the taxpayer’s pocket every year (more than one third of the entire world’s military spending) and all we get is junk ships?
If you are not angry, you are watching too much television or never learned to read.
[QUOTE=Slick Cam;193010]Well, the Navy had decided to axe the Zumwalts anyways, and build additional upgraded units of the proven Burke class. Hopefully they will axe the LCS as well and simply build a small batch of frigates from an off the shelf design to do basic frigate type assignments.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Slick Cam;193010]Well, the Navy had decided to axe the Zumwalts anyways, and build additional upgraded units of the proven[B] Burke class[/B]. Hopefully they will axe the LCS as well and simply build a small batch of frigates from an off the shelf design to do basic frigate type assignments.[/QUOTE]
The Burke class vessels with upgrades will be well worth the money.
Nope nothing wrong with the Burke class ships. They are still among the most powerful ships to put to sea. I would say their only peers are NATO and Japanese/SK Aegis class ships.
The LCS ships should be cancelled and new, upgraded Perry class FFGs built in their place or build a ship of a current design that another NATO navy is fielding if similar class/mission.
Luckily we are only building 3 of the boondoggle Zumwalt ships.
Several of the British Royal Navy’s newest destroyers, the Type 45, suffered breakdowns operating in the Persian Gulf this summer because the intercoolers for their gas turbine engines failed in the Gulf’s warm waters. All of the Type 45s are receiving engineering overhauls to correct the issue. The system had late design changes and was never fully tested before deployment. [U]It’s possible that the Zumwalt’s heat exchanger also failed because of the high temperature of the water in the Panama Canal?[/U]
How can anyone not be angry with the parasites who suck $600 billion out of the taxpayer’s pocket every year (more than one third of the entire world’s military spending) and all we get is junk ships?
If you are not angry, you are watching too much television or never learned to read.[/QUOTE]
Boom time is coming for US shipyards. 60 new ships, incl. 2 carriers a year, to be built for the US Navy in the new era of Trump: http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/12/06/trump-wants-60-new-ships-for-navys-fleet?videoId=370643199
How much that is going to cost and how it is going to be financed is secondary, as is whether the ships will be able to do anything useful in the modern world of warfare.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;193052]Among other things, cruise missiles can turn their point of origin into a parking lot.[/QUOTE]
There must be better ways of creating parking lots.
As for stopping people from attacking US properties and embassies, try diplomacy and truth, it’s a lot cheaper than carriers and bombs.
[QUOTE=Steamer;193056]Point of origin? That sounds to me like a major disincentive to pushing the launch button.[/QUOTE]
only a sub can launch anything and then be able to flee the scene without getting its hair mussed up…vis as long as it is a launch point floating on the surface, it can be made to not float anymore