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High costs may sink U.S. plans for new navy
International Herald Tribune ^ | 20 April | Tom Weiner

Posted on 04/19/2005 3:48:36 PM PDT by Lysandru

The navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself. The navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford five - if that.

. The price of the navy's new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

. Shipbuilding costs "have spiraled out of control," the navy's top admiral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, rising so high that "we can't build the navy that we believe that we need in the 21st century."

. The price of the new navy is going up fast. The first two DD(X)s are now supposed to total $6.3 billion, according to confidential budget documents, up $1.5 billion. A new aircraft carrier, the CVN-21, is estimated at $13.7 billion, up $2 billion. The new Virginia-class submarines now cost $2.5 billion each, up $400 million.

. All these increases have materialized in the last six months.

SNIP

(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: currentevents; government; govwatch; military; miltech
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To: Lysandru

This is turning into the Soviet Navy. They had some awesome ships (kirov) but could only afford 3 or 4.

Disgraceful that we're so poor now.


21 posted on 04/19/2005 4:50:16 PM PDT by G32
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To: Wooly

ok.
it is ugly as sin, but the design principles are sound.
I have a personal preference for the eventual development of fully external IPS pods, as it reduces the number of holes in the hull...
but ok, a good design overall.

I assume there will be an integration of stealth materials in the profile above the waterline, plus full prairie-masker underneath.
Stealth costs money.

(but none of that explains the 125% price hike for structural steel in 2004.)


22 posted on 04/19/2005 4:51:38 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: e_engineer

possible correction(?): there is a lot of electronics on these ships, developed through the usual Pentagon pork process, which is new to the Navy and remarkably expensive, but which is NOT new to the civilian market and which costs far more and works less well than the civilian equivalent available through Radio Shack.

does that about cover it?


23 posted on 04/19/2005 4:54:59 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: keepingtrack

damn.

who has racked up the prices for their metal exports? we used to (circa 1995) get a hell of a lot of our metals from the former East Bloc (esp. Russia and Ukraine).

someone doing a little creative gouging?


24 posted on 04/19/2005 4:57:06 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: Strategerist

A 14,000 ton "destroyer?"
I'm with you. The whole DD(X)/CG(X) is nutty. The AGS is not even developed yet. It's a classic "one ship does everything" (aka One size fits all) deal. Even the LCS which is considered littoral in nature weighs almost 3000 tons. (I served on an ocean going DE/FF that weight in at 2500 tons.) At least the LCS project makes sense and the cost is only around $210 million/ship.
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/littoral/
The reason the DD(X) even came about was because the DD-21 become to big and expensive. Here's a good read on the subect, warning it's a big .pdf file, but worth the time if you want to understand this important topic.
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32109.pdf


25 posted on 04/19/2005 4:58:28 PM PDT by ProudVet77 (It's boogitty boogitty boogitty season!)
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To: Lysandru

Like it or not, destroyers have traditionally been viewed as somewhat expendable. These are not expendable prices.


26 posted on 04/19/2005 5:00:44 PM PDT by fso301
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To: keepingtrack

oh, wait, lemme guess...

demand from China for all industrial materials has racked up the prices.


27 posted on 04/19/2005 5:01:24 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: King Prout

>>125% in one year?
>>
>>good GOD!
>>
>>justified by what, energy costs for refinement and logistics???

Supply and demand. Econ 101.

Big chunks of China and India are becoming "middle class". This drives a lot of steel demand.


28 posted on 04/19/2005 5:02:49 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Official Ruling Class Oligarch Oppressor)
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To: SLB; Jeff Head

Thought you'd find this interesting.


29 posted on 04/19/2005 5:06:28 PM PDT by Stonewall Jackson (Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. - John Adams)
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To: FreedomPoster

hehhehheh yeah, i figured out that obvious bit in post 27
*shuffling feet sheepishly*

now I'm wondering why our domestic facilities are not ramping up production/capacity, if the prices are rising so fast.


30 posted on 04/19/2005 5:21:19 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: King Prout
oh, wait, lemme guess...

demand from China for all industrial materials has racked up the prices.

Well, if so we should smile to see the amrket at work and insure we're well invested in key metals/mining corporations as they benefit from improved prices.

31 posted on 04/19/2005 5:38:32 PM PDT by Androcles (All your typos are belong to us)
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To: Lysandru

Back to the quality versus quantity debate.


32 posted on 04/19/2005 5:46:54 PM PDT by Fishing-guy
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To: King Prout

Bush was attempting to protect the steel industry by slapping a large tariff on steel. It has backfired.


33 posted on 04/19/2005 5:47:18 PM PDT by Steve Van Doorn
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To: Lysandru

US Armed Force has no enemy to match in traditional warfare, but has the worst enemy that can never be defeated which is called the budget and the complaining congressmen.


34 posted on 04/19/2005 5:47:40 PM PDT by Wiz
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To: Steve Van Doorn

I hold that tariffs are generally counterproductive.
(I except situations where tariffs are reprisals against other nations who place import tariffs on our goods, designed to artificially bolster *their* industries.)


35 posted on 04/19/2005 5:58:30 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: Fishing-guy

ever heard of the technology/cost "death spiral"?


36 posted on 04/19/2005 5:59:13 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: keepingtrack

how right you are..


37 posted on 04/19/2005 6:06:06 PM PDT by brivette
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To: King Prout
Nope. But, I sure would like to read an explanation.
38 posted on 04/19/2005 6:20:56 PM PDT by Fishing-guy
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To: Fishing-guy

IIRC, it comes from airforce acquisitions tendencies.

the cost of planes keeps going up as they become more technologically sophisticated and multi-mission capable. this forces either an expansion of budget or a reduction of units purchased. as the budget cannot be infinitely expanded, this always means reduction in number of units purchased (which also drives up the per-unit cost by failing to spread the RD costs over more units), which leads to a much smaller inventory of units which are tasked to a larger number of jobs.
eventually, this trend leads to a point at which the airforce has wants to buy a plane which can do everything, but has only enough money to buy one of them.
it is called a death spiral.
though this logical extreme has never been reached in reality, practical limits have been reached several times in recent history (see nazi germany and, in some applications, the USSR)


39 posted on 04/19/2005 6:28:21 PM PDT by King Prout (blast and char it among fetid buzzard guts!)
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To: TruthNtegrity

Bookmarking.


40 posted on 04/19/2005 6:50:18 PM PDT by TruthNtegrity (The local station didn't even show the First pitch of the NATs. What's up with that?)
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