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The Navy Thinks This New $7 Billion Ship Is The Answer To All Its Chinese Concerns
Business Insider ^ | 06/03/2012 | Robert Johnson

Posted on 06/04/2012 6:36:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Looking a bit like an old Civil War Ironclad, the $7 billion DDG 1000 USS Zumwalt will focus on land attacks, relying heavily on its advanced stealth technology to slip in close to shore before unleashing its massive onboard arsenal.

A new take on the Zumwalt was published today by the Eric Talmadge at the Associated Press who points out that in addition to the ship's wide array of conventional weapons the Zumwalt will eventually carry the Navy's much anticipated "railgun".

The railgun is an electrically powered artillery weapon that launches massive projectiles at high speeds without the use of gunpowder or explosives. Instead, an electric current is run through the artillery shell, the current interacts with the magnetic fields in the rails and pounds the shell from the barrel.

The Navy successfully tested the railgun in February, but it has not yet been fielded for service.

The Zumwalt was originally estimated to cost about $3.8 billion, but so much technology crammed on board that its cost has nearly doubled, and after the first three are built, production will stop. Including the exhaustive research and development required by each vessel to total cost jumps to $7 billion apiece.

In addition the Zumwalt will be built to receive the Navy's new electromagnetic rail-gun that can fire projectiles at over five times the speed of sound. All this new technology adds up.

Defense analyst Jay Korman says "They were looking to introduce so many new technologies at once, and the cost ballooned." Korman works with the Avascent Group concluded, "I don't think people have changed their minds that it's a capable ship. It's just too expensive."

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; navy; ship
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To: SeekAndFind

21 posted on 06/04/2012 7:19:53 AM PDT by Yo-Yo
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To: Sudetenland
In a conflict with China (or even Iran) it is possible that our aircraft carriers will turn out to be what battleships were in WWII. Large and vulnerable anachronisms of the "Last War". I get worried whenever I hear that they have positioned a carrier inside constricted waters like the Persian Gulf or the Taiwan Straits to make a "statement".

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.

22 posted on 06/04/2012 7:26:21 AM PDT by katana (Just my opinions)
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To: Politically Correct
ICBMs are mostly detected by their heat signature in the boost phase not by radar. It'll be a while before that can be hidden

Maybe not a long while. An air-launched hypersonic missile would not have the heat signature of a silo launch.

23 posted on 06/04/2012 7:28:18 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (If I can't be persuasive, I at least hope to be fun.)
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To: SeekAndFind

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).


24 posted on 06/04/2012 7:29:20 AM PDT by DManA
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To: KC_Lion

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)


25 posted on 06/04/2012 7:29:27 AM PDT by GunsAndBibles (All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing)
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To: Politically Correct
I'm not sure why this is so expensive. All most all of this technology has already been developed and paid for.

"Our two biggest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." - Werner von Braun

26 posted on 06/04/2012 7:34:36 AM PDT by mvpel (Michael Pelletier)
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To: SeekAndFind

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.


27 posted on 06/04/2012 7:36:23 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: Last Dakotan
I think the best way to fix the currency manipulation issue with China is to stop doing it ourselves. China would be a lot less likely to invade if we would stop printing money like it was toilet paper and destroying all the hard currency that China worked long and hard to earn.

A healthy marketplace does a lot more to appease your neighbor than ripping him off.

28 posted on 06/04/2012 7:39:22 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: mvpel

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”....


29 posted on 06/04/2012 7:40:09 AM PDT by joe fonebone (I am the 15%)
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To: katana

China has one of the worst Anti Submarine Warfare capabilities. US wants to contain China, stick to good subs with good sub launched weapons.


30 posted on 06/04/2012 7:40:53 AM PDT by Fee
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To: SeekAndFind

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.


31 posted on 06/04/2012 7:43:01 AM PDT by chrisser (Starve the Monkeys!)
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To: Politically Correct

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.


32 posted on 06/04/2012 7:49:31 AM PDT by GreyHoundSailor
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To: SeekAndFind

How well would the three, $7 billion ships stand up to 1000 $21 million ships?


33 posted on 06/04/2012 7:50:27 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: SeekAndFind

$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.


34 posted on 06/04/2012 7:56:45 AM PDT by DesScorp
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To: American in Israel

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.


35 posted on 06/04/2012 7:59:28 AM PDT by B4Ranch (There's Two Choices... Stand Up and Be Counted ... Or Line Up and Be Numbered .)
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To: Last Dakotan
A tariff on all Chinese products equal to their manipulation of the currency would go a long way.

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?

36 posted on 06/04/2012 8:02:45 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: SeekAndFind

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?


37 posted on 06/04/2012 8:03:40 AM PDT by Little Ray (FOR the best Conservative in the Primary; AGAINST Obama in the General.)
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To: TexasFreeper2009

ICBMs?

Why?

Just package them in bales of marijuana...


38 posted on 06/04/2012 8:05:12 AM PDT by null and void (Day 1231 of our ObamaVacation from reality [and what dark chill/is gathering still/before the storm])
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To: SeekAndFind

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.


39 posted on 06/04/2012 8:05:18 AM PDT by C19fan
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To: SeekAndFind

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.


40 posted on 06/04/2012 8:08:53 AM PDT by C19fan
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