Long-Range Projectiles For Navy's Newest Ship Too Expensive To Shoot (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is the U.S. Navy's latest warship, commissioned just last month -- and it comes with the biggest guns the Navy has deployed since the twilight of the battleships. But it turns out the Zumwalt's guns won't be getting much of a workout any time soon, aside from acceptance testing. That's because the special projectiles they were intended to fire are so expensive that the Navy has canceled its order. As [Ars] described [Zumwalt's Advanced Gun System (AGS)] in a story two years ago: "The automated AGS can fire 10 rocket-assisted, precision-guided projectiles per minute at targets over 100 miles away. Those projectiles use GPS and inertial guidance to improve the gun's accuracy to a 50 meter (164 feet) circle of probable error -- meaning that half of its GPS-guided shells will fall within that distance from the target." The projectile responsible for that accuracy -- something far too complex to just be called a "shell" or "bullet" -- is the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile (LRLAP). Each projectile has precision guidance provided by internal global positioning and inertial sensors, and bursts of LRLAPs could in theory be fired over a minute following different ballistic trajectories that cause them to land all at the same time. Lockheed Martin won the competition to produce the LRLAPs, and the company described their capabilities thusly: "155mm LRLAP provides single strike lethality against a wide range of targets, with three times the lethality of traditional 5-inch naval ballistic rounds -- and because it is guided, fewer rounds can produce similar or more lethal effects at less cost. LRLAP has the capability to guide multiple rounds launched from the same gun to strike single or multiple targets simultaneously, maximizing lethal effects." The "less cost" part, however, turned out to be a pipe dream. With the reduction of the Zumwalt class to a total of three ships, the corresponding reduction in requirements for LRLAP production raised the production costs just as the price of the ships they would be deployed to soared. Defense News reports that the Navy is canceling production of the LRLAP because of an $800,000-per-shot price tag -- more than 10 times the original projected cost.

Comments

Ah, but there is a good reason!

[thesupraman]

They have to be expensive, they are made of the very VERY finest pork!

Cost of the target.

[fremsley471]

Reminiscent of the remark made regarding firing $1 million cruise missiles at Afghanistan in 1998. "I can't think of anything in Afghanistan worth $1 million".

Re: Cost of the target.

[Nidi62]

"One of the littoral combat ships recently cracked it's hull"

Did it run into an extra apostrophe? It's means it is.

Pork in the funding bill required extra locally sourced apostrophes be included in all LCS hulls.

There's a simple way to reduce the defense budget.

[Anonymous Coward]

We can save a lot of money if we stop with these expensive weapons systems and just start killing our enemies by throwing heavy bags of money at them.

Don't Worry

[Roger W Moore]

Don't worry - the UK are busy building aircraft carriers without any jets. So perhaps if you bring the jets the UK can provide some ammunition and Canada can provide the fuel? Clearly the reason recent conflicts have required coalitions is so each government's incompetence can be cancelled out.

Re:Don't Worry

[NotBornYesterday]

What makes you think Senators would make better projectiles?

Re:There's a simple way to reduce the defense budg

[jcr]

For what we're spending, we could simply outbid any potential enemy for their own soldiers' services.

-jcr