High costs may sink U.S. plans for new navy

International Herald Tribune ^ | 20 April | Tom Weiner

[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

[Thinkin' Gal]

the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

Nothing to see here just move along...

[Travis McGee]

Maybe we can get the Chinese to build the for us? They have the world's biggest shipbuilding industry.