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!

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[Anonymous Coward]

They should try to shoot peace treaties and diplomatic efforts through that gun barrel. They are a lot cheaper and the area of effect usually covers one or more countries with one single round.

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[KiloByte]

They should try to shoot peace treaties and diplomatic efforts through that gun barrel. They are a lot cheaper and the area of effect usually covers one or more countries with one single round.

Let's see how well Ukraine fared by trading their nukes for a defense pact that Russia, the US and UK will come defend it from attacks. Or, one of your potential Dear Leaders (at least having the decency to say this beforehand!) declaring that Nato Shmato, Lithuania and co are free for Matushka Rossiya back for taking.

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see how well Ukraine fared by trading their nukes for a defense pact that Russia, the US and UK will come defend it from attacks.

We're talking about conventional warfare, not MAD. You should also try to read the treaty. It's not a defence pact.

You also deem diplomacy as a failure when a true diplomatic resolution has never even been sought in that conflict.

It's a bit funny how you obviously think Russia, China et al are the only ones engaging in fixing elections and playing chess with smaller countries.

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

You should also try to read the treaty [un.org]. It's not a defence pact.

Sorry, it's not a treaty either. It's an agreement that doesn't obligate the parties to much of anything at all.

It's actually correct to call it a treaty. The link points to a memo, which supplement Ukraine's accession to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. To read the treaty would also cover reading the memos supplementing it. To link to a memo whose sole purpose is to supplement a treaty and use that particular word as the link's text content seems only logical to me.

But yes, it's just a collection of nice words that whole memo/treaty/agreement.

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[arglebargle_xiv]

the biggest guns the Navy has deployed since the twilight of the battleships

Biggest guns? 155mm is about what, 6 inches? That's a sort of afterthought gun added to a BB for AA work and other odd jobs. It shouldn't even go in the same sentence as a discussion of battleships.

Re:Ah, but there is a good reason!

[syntotic]

The Navy running out of money for high tech advantages? That can only be a good thing...

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.

[gtall]

Nailing Osama's ass in 1998 would have yielded a much bigger return than $1 million. Too bad the U.S. figured the Pakistanis were allies.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Joce640k]

Yep. I'm more worried that they'd have been perfectly happy paying $80,000 per bullet (that was the design!)

And that only half of them would land within 50 meters of the target. That's WWI accuracy from GPS-guided bullets that cost nearly $1 million each.

Also ... that they're about to spend a crapload more money refitting some freshly-built ships that don't have any bullets for their guns when taking them out to sea and making large holes in their bottoms is probably a much more sensible thing to do. At this point in history all they really need is something capable of launching drones.

Re: Cost of the target.

[Nidi62]

Well if it's build quality is anything like the LCS they won't have to wait long. One of the littoral combat ships recently cracked it's hull just transiting the Panama Canal, and I believe has has repeated engine troubles as well. I think the Navy is trying to race the F35 project to see who can spend the most money and get the least amount of operational equipment for it.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Anonymous Coward]

WW1 range was closer to 25 miles. This is 100 miles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_12_inch_Mk_X_naval_gun

Accuracy? Are you kidding? After 10 miles you're lucky if it hits within 50 meters of the target. Perhaps on a clear day with little wind.

Also note that this new projectile is 155mm (6.1in) or about half the size of the big guns from WW1.

That's all this is paying for is accuracy, and when you look at KT newton per dollar this gun is not worth its weight or cost when compared to missile strikes. For 3x the cost you have a highly accurate AGM with a bigger boom and less potential side damage.

Re: Cost of the target.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

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.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nailing Osama's ass in 1998 would have yielded a much bigger return than $1 million. Too bad the U.S. figured the Pakistanis were allies.

Pakistan? We should have let India clean that cesspool out. Most people don't recall that Pakistan and India almost went to war after 9/11.

Also, after 9/11 the US should have told Pakistan that 100 Indian troops will arrive in Afghanistan each week until the US has custody of Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. That would have made the Pakistanis choose between protecting their agents and protecting their de facto control of Afghanistan. They'd have been fucked either way - a suitable result for supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Re:Cost of the target.

[JoeMerchant]

There's a difference between NRE and per unit production costs. The $80K pricetag was based on an assumed volume of production. Slash that production, per unit costs rise accordingly. Now, since they've cancelled the $800K per copy order, I assume the taxpayer will be shelling out several Billion just to cover NREs, without a volume production line spun up to make the things. Which is fine, if the world still believes that we can spin up such a production line in short order, it's almost as effective a deterrent as a live-fire exercise where a ship 100 miles away levels all the target buildings in a small town in 60 seconds.

The 50% accuracy circle is nice, but I wonder, when a shell goes astray, how far does it wander?

Re:Cost of the target.

[JoeMerchant]

Less potential side damage means greater political ability to use, and thus greater deterrent. It make strikes possible where they were not possible before, and that's worth paying for - if it works.

Re:Cost of the target.

[eeyore]

I assume that nobody planned to have a sufficiently large soft target to allow the projectiles to be "soft-landed" for re-use?

Re:Cost of the target.

[Isca]

That's one of the problems with this system. Most of the shells will land just outside of that range. But any shell that has issues with it's targeting system from the start could potentially end up hundreds, even thousands of yards off target. With missiles there are usually backup electronics in the system that can take over plus a redundant emergency system that can detonate the missile harmlessly if it is malfunctioning in many cases (Not all, but much better than most other systems we have) I'm actually perfectly fine with how the navy has worked with this technology. They were trying many things that have never been tried before on any ship and we now know what works and what doesn't. The Pork Barrel issue kept them from killing off parts of this project as soon as they would have liked, but at least the lessons learned can be used on other systems. A direct result of the technologies used for the railgun fired projectiles is a better understanding of how to build those systems better and in a less complex manner on future projects. One of these is a smaller railgun system that can be used to fire off many more dumb projectiles quickly in a phalanx like manner but at ranges of up to ten miles (versus 2 miles or less). Another is adapting the technology used to fire larger payloads at slower speeds - 1000 to 2000 miles an hour versus 4500 miles per hour. This leads to a shell that can only be fired 50 miles, but because the projectiles are larger they are actually testing launching small missiles this way. Launching a 14 inch "shell" at 1000 miles per hour means a missile can have drastically reduced fuel and reach hundreds of miles away. This same technology could also be used to launch smart pebble filled missiles towards ballistic targets much more effectively than the missile batteries we use now. So why these guns are a failure, the designs used to build and test them will still be useful with future projects that could be much more effective.

The F35 program on the other hand.... That is a much better example of throwing bad money away. Unfortunately air force procurement is usually spread out to far more states than Navy is which leads to less chances to overcome pork.

Re:Cost of the target.

[fnj]

The big naval guns of WW1 were 12-14" and fired projectiles weighing 500-900 kg. The big naval guns of WW2 were 16" and fired projectiles weighing 1000-1200 kg. And those projectiles cost practically nothing.

This piece of useless junk with its 100 kg projectiles is a pipsqueak.

Re:Cost of the target.

[tburkhol]

And that only half of them would land within 50 meters of the target. That's WWI accuracy from GPS-guided bullets that cost nearly $1 million each.

To be fair, the biggest WWII guns only had a range of 24 miles and a pattern size of 200 m. So half the accuracy at a quarter of the range. No argument over the cost, though: these "guns" are basically high rate of fire cruise missile launchers.

The US military isn't so much about winning wars as it is a jobs program. In the 1930s, we had the Works Project Administration, handing out menial jobs building pointless roads. Today, we have DoD, handing out engineering jobs building impractical weapon systems. You can win certain kinds of wars with impractical and expensive weapons: short wars against wildly mismatched powers, and the profits keep a lot of other engineering projects alive.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Ihlosi]

it's almost as effective a deterrent as a live-fire exercise where a ship 100 miles away levels all the target buildings in a small town in 60 seconds.

The shells will still be in flight one minute after they were fired.

Re: Cost of the target.

[tburkhol]

Apostrophes also indicate possession.

but not when used for the word {it's}

No, he's right. I see all the time: it's, their's, her's and hi's. Sometimes it goes along with your's, our's, and min'e,

Re:Cost of the target.

[stealth_finger]

Nailing Osama's ass in 1998 would have yielded a much bigger return than $1 million. Too bad the U.S. figured the Pakistanis were allies.

Too bad the U.S. did not figured the Pakistanis were NOT allies.

FTFY

Capcha: Astute

Did not figure they were not allies? So figured they were, like the original guy said?

Re: Cost of the target.

[bad-badtz-maru]

The hull cracked because the pilot ran it into a concrete structure.

Re:Cost of the target.

[stealth_finger]

I don't want to alarm anyone, but there may be a Bogeyman or men in the house.

Re:Cost of the target.

[i.r.id10t]

50 meters at 100 miles is just about 1 minute of angle - a VERY good grouping for just about any gun. At 100 yards, just about 1 inch from center to center of the bullet holes furthest apart in a group.

Inaccurate? Hardly.

Re: Cost of the target.

[Shinobi]

The LCS.... Such a stupid idea to start with. Our Visby class corvette is almost too large for littoral combat at 73m length, especially in dense archipelagos. So what does the US do? They build even LARGER ships for that purpose. Not just longer and wider, but with more draft as well.

Then there's the build quality you mentioned. The one crashing in the Panama Canal was not the first to develop hull cracks. LCS-1 had cracks from firing the Bofors 57mm cannon. And the US Navy tried to blame that on the cannon(as well as supposed accuracy problems), despite the fact that the cannon is used by quite a few navies around the world, without the same problems.

Overall, the LCS are just a clusterfuck.

Re:Cost of the target.

[flink]

Yep. I'm more worried that they'd have been perfectly happy paying $80,000 per bullet (that was the design!)

If it's an alternative to firing a $1,000,000 cruise missile, I could see the appeal. Not that I think this thing is a good idea, but I can understand how it got sold.

Re:Cost of the target.

[magarity]

That's WWI accuracy from GPS-guided bullets that cost nearly $1 million each.

In all fairness, no, nothing in WWI was able to fire 100 miles in the first place, never mind 50% within 50 meters from 100 miles. The German "Paris Gun" could fire about 80 miles and the accuracy was, well, Paris.

Re:Cost of the target.

[nitehawk214]

A 6" gun is not half the size of a 12" gun.

Re:Cost of the target.

[the_other_chewey]

...and how many of those guns had > 100 mile range with 50 meter accuracy?

Zero. these are not in the same class of gun, except they are 'big' and on 'ships'. One is meant for pin point accuracy, the other is meant for wide-scale destruction.

Well... for a nuke, 50m CEP is indeed pretty much pinpoint, considering that its destructive radius
is 10 to 100 times larger than that.

For those projectiles, 50m CEP is lousy and not even close to "pinpoint", and means
you're more likely than not to bomb the wrong house. In other words: It is useless if what you
want to destroy is smaller than a city block (while leaving its surroundings standing).

Re:Cost of the target.

[techno-vampire]

To be fair, the biggest WWII guns only had a range of 24 miles and a pattern size of 200 m.

I remember reading the manual for those back when I was in the Navy in '72. If memory serves, the range was 25 nautical miles, which comes out to a tad more than 28.66 statute miles. Of course, my memory may be wrong, as it's been over 40 years.

Re:Cost of the target.

[rahvin112]

Navy's don't throw lead at each other anymore because a missile can do 10x the damage with 1000x the accuracy. Ballistic fired lead can be easily avoided with standard naval countermeasure steering (random changes in direction) making it essentially worthless in naval battles. Even 16" guns can be negated with as little as 18" of reinforced concrete that the battleship could unload every shell in their arsenal into without penetrating making the big guns essentially worthless for land bombardment. Big balls of lead are worthless, that's why all the real munitions these days are missiles with shaped charges or other hi-tech warheads.

Re:Cost of the target.

[budgenator]

That's not too shabby over a 6 times more range. I suspect that most of their shooting will be with Army munition in the 155mm caliber; I seem to recall that their is a nuclear round in that caliber, W48 that was retired in 1992, what ever retired means.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Cramer]

If you want to bomb a single house, and only that house, you do it with a precision guided bomb dropped from a plane. You don't rely on a floating cannon out at sea. Plus, with a 100mi range, that house would have to be pretty close to the ocean to even be in range. If that "house" is mobile (i.e. another boat), your odds of hitting it drop to nearly zero at that range. WW1/WW2 boats had trouble hitting each other at 5mi visual range. We learned very quickly in WW2 that air power is everything. The last time we (USA) used a battleship, it had been refitted to fire missiles.

Re: Cost of the target.

[The Grim Reefer]

Well if it's build quality is anything like the LCS they won't have to wait long. One of the littoral combat ships recently cracked it's hull just transiting the Panama Canal,

To be fair, The Montgomery was under the control of one of the canal pilots and he ran the ship into a concrete wall. The crack was 8 to 10 feet above the waterline and it continued on to San Diego.

I believe has has repeated engine troubles as well.

The Montgomery was also struck by a tug that was pulling it out of the path of hurricane Matthew. That did create a crack that caused it to take on seawater. I'm not sure if the leak that entered its cooling system was related, but that did shut down one of the engines a couple days after being commissioned.

Re:Cost of the target.

[budgenator]

Even 16" guns can be negated with as little as 18" of reinforced concrete that the battleship could unload every shell in their arsenal into without penetrating making the big guns essentially worthless for land bombardment.

Dude stop yourself, if your inside 18" of reinforced concrete, and it get hit with a ton of comp B from a 16 inch navel gun, your shit and you brains get mixed together period. It doesn't matter if it penetrates, you get homogenized by the concussion.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Hognoxious]

16 inch navel gun

You fat bastard.

Re:Cost of the target.

[thesupraman]

Except it is not a gun, it is just a launcher for self-guiding unpowered missiles.
I guess now we will see (or not..) what the spread is firing normal projectiles, I would imagine, since it was designed for guided ones, it will be horrific.

Re:Cost of the target.

[dunkelfalke]

Well, the thing is, in the actual India-Pakistan war USA had sided with Pakistan, the Soviets had sided with India. After that it is kind of difficult to rudder back.

Re:Cost of the target.

[the_other_chewey]

I concur. So what exactly is the point of and usecase for having that weapon?

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

Actually, that five miles you cite was fairly close range, and the sophisticated fire control systems of the more advanced WWII navies would consistently get hits at that range. The guns were typically fired so the shells would land in a large pattern, to increase the odds of hitting first at the cost of total number of hits, since the time of flight was significant and ships can move.

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

Typically, the point of naval gunfire is to throw a lot of shells into an area, since there's better ways to pick out individual targets if you can identify them. However, if these things throw a lot of shells, they'll wind up exceeding the defense budget, so I really don't know what they're good for.

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

Naval shells have historically not been lead. In the Twentieth Century, they were made of steel. Big balls of lead are indeed useless, which is why cannonballs were last serious weapons of war in the Nineteenth Century.

If you're shooting, course changes mess up your own fire control, since the precise movement of the ship is hard to model. In WWII, such maneuvers would be used by ships that were not currently shooting but wanted to close the range.

The only ship armor in WWII that could stop an armor-piercing shell from the latest US 16" guns was 24" of armor plate (not face-hardened) at a 45-degree angle from vertical, found on the front of the turrets of the Japanese battleships Yamato and Musashi. Putting that two feet of armor plate vertical would have allowed penetration at short range. 18" of reinforced concrete would just slow one of those shells down some, although it would probably stop the large lead cannonballs you seem to imagine were used.

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

Under the circumstances, wouldn't leveling a small town require a special Congressional appropriations bill?

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

The longest US ranges in WWII were a little over 35,000 yards, or call it 18 nautical miles or about 20 statute miles. The guns could fire further, but their elevation was limited by the turrets. The Japanese battleships could fire significantly farther, although it's not clear to me that firing at extreme range with a minute and a half shell flight time is going to be worth it. The farthest a WWII battleship fired and actually hit something was something like 25,000 yards.

Re:Cost of the target.

[ebvwfbw]

Nothing in WW I would do 100 miles. You'd be lucky to get 20 with a WWI Naval gun.
WW II 16" battleship gun would do 20 miles, to a bushel basket. Even today, probably the best deal out there. We were fools to decom the Iowa class battleships. They filled a need no aircraft carrier can. There is nothing as intimidating as seeing one of those babies off shore. We still have WWII ammo left over.

100 miles is an awfully long spear.

Re:Cost of the target.

[techno-vampire]

It's always possible, of course, that my memory's wrong; after all, it was over forty years ago. However, at the time, my impression was that on a clear day their maximum range was the horizon. If they could see it, they could hit it, or at least bracket it.

Re:Cost of the target.

[Ihlosi]

You start the clock when the first shell lands.

In that case, one minute is a pretty long time, because you can assume everyone in the target zone gets down once the first shell lands.

The main thing this type of artillery if good for is the thing where they fire the shells on different trajectories so they land close to the same time.

So the effect ist similiar to cluster munitions, just without the "evil" cluster part and twenty times as expensive?

Re:Cost of the target.

[david_thornley]

Given some way to spot the fall of shells, battleships had no problems shooting over the horizon.

Re:Cost of the target.

[techno-vampire]

That depends on how clear the day was. On a good, clear afternoon, max practical range was somewhere around the horizon unless you had spotters. Night actions were often fought at ranges of a few thousand feet because radar wasn't as reliable back then as it is now.

War 3.0

[jovius]

I propose that the ships should be financial organizations rather than military ones. For example, to fund the operations and perhaps to turn profitable even the smart missiles could pick and deliver goods to nearby customers before striking the targets.

Re:War 3.0

[colinwb]

Where is Milo Minderbender when you need him! (Would Donald Trump be an acceptable substitute?)

Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[jcr]

It's because our government is not only wasting trillions of dollars on the DoD, but also the fact that the engineers working on this shit aren't working on things that provide any benefit to civilians.

-jcr

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[gtall]

The U.S. Defense budget is about $600 Billion per year now, the Federal Budget is about $4 trillion. So that's about 15%. So 85% of the budget is going for Grandma, her meds, her opiate addicted great-grand kids and their parents, etc. The military also spins off a lot of technology, networks for instance.

This isn't the 60's anymore, grow up.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[Joce640k]

The military also spins off a lot of technology, networks for instance.

Really? None of that would have been invented without blowing things up?

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[KiloByte]

for Grandma, her meds

Actually, for pharma companies selling drugs for 1000x times or more it takes to produce them.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[JoeMerchant]

The military also spins off a lot of technology, networks for instance.

Really? None of that would have been invented without blowing things up?

Really, yes. Without competition, threat of annihilation, etc. bread and circuses rule the day. Networks, jet engines, satellites are all used to deliver bread and circuses today, but they wouldn't have been developed if that was their only use.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[JoeMerchant]

I agree, right up to the point that we can't be invaded.

Castle walls are obsolete, everybody is invaded all the time - with minor exceptions like North Korea.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[meglon]

DoD budget is about 600B of the discretionary spending.... over 50%. Not including, of course, the share of the debt and interest that's a direct result of the military and military adventurism, as well as the Veterans administration. https://www.nationalpriorities...

Social Security and the majority of Medicare are paid for by a tax specifically for that purpose, which congress does everything in their power to use on everything else they can.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

...Dwight Eisenhower

.... and this was before the stupidly expensive weapons systems that cowards scream at the top of the lungs that we need, while they sit useless still on the drafting table, or on some tarmac collecting dust because they simply do not work. The death of the nation will be because of the loud mouth cowards who are scared of their own shadows.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[meglon]

.... not with the cowards we have in politics, and in the rest of the country, that we have today.

When Kennedy said we were going to the moon... that wasn't declaring war, or even a threat to anyone else. We didn't kill people in another country just to do that. And you can damn well be sure that NASA has developed and spun off far more useful and groundbreaking technologies than the military ever has... at an incredibly small fraction of the cost.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[fnj]

Imagining a military invasion from overseas is ludicrous. You couldn't possibly support an amphibious assault against opposition with that length of highly vulnerable and spectacularly expensive oceanic supply train. It is, however, easy to imagine invading South America from overseas, building up bases there, and marching north.

But it's silly to worry about that. First, because of nuclear deterrence. And more importantly, because who the fuck wants a gigantic banana republic with no industrial base anyway. And finally, because we have invited the hordes to culturally invade us and wipe out our identity, so there is no more "us".

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so naive. For sure when Kennedy said you are going to the moon it was about military superiority. The panic was that a potential enemy was going to take the high ground before you did. Orbit and the moon are a great place to rain down nukes from. Sputnik put the fear of God into the Yanks and something had to be done to counter it.

All that military panic led to NASA which, as you say, had many nice spin offs.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[DarkOx]

And you can damn well be sure that NASA has developed and spun off far more useful and groundbreaking technologies than the military ever has

That is an extraordinary claim given such are large part of the technology for the moon shot was Military technology the NASA leveraged. You might be right but you're going to have get specific and show your work here.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[legRoom]

Actually, for pharma companies selling drugs for 1000x times or more it takes to produce them.

Are you accounting for the cost of researching dozens of dead-end candidate drugs before finding something that seems to work, running expensive, time-consuming (time is money) and dangerous clinical trials to find out that some of those which work have unacceptable side-effects, and finally going to market with the small percentage that make it all the way through the process to FDA approval?

I'm not saying that pharma companies always price things fairly, but claims of "1000x" on an industry-wide level are a gross exaggeration - cynical anti-capitalist propaganda targeting the ignorant. The industry's profits are nowhere even vaguely close to being that high. If you want to make accusations, keep them factual; it's not like it's hard to cite real evidence of corruption and greed...

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[TangoMargarine]

It is, however, easy to imagine invading South America from overseas, building up bases there, and marching north.

Not so much.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[erapert]

[NASA] also spins off a lot of technology, [velcro] for instance.

Really? None of that would have been invented without [building insanely expensive one-use rockets to go to planets that we can never use]?

or how about:

[The government] also spins off a lot of technology, [computers] for instance.

Really? None of that would have been invented without [spending insane amounts on free handouts for people that don't contribute]?

It's totally true: we could get there in much more efficient ways without the waste of government.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[KiloByte]

What exactly R&D costs does a 50 years old drug have? Beside costs of bribing officials at all levels to get rid of generics, that is.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[legRoom]

There are certainly instances of price gouging for medical goods whose R&D is long since paid for (like the Epipen). But, do you have any specific evidence to offer that such cases are really a major component of MediCare's overall costs? Have you calculated or looked up how much the MediCare program would save if all such corruption were eliminated?

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[budgenator]

It's because our government is not only wasting trillions of dollars on the DoD, but also the fact that the engineers working on this shit aren't working on things that provide any benefit to civilians.

-jcr

So you don't think that if the DoD can build a Projo that can survive the tremendous G forces involved in shooting at a target 100 miles away, you wouldn't get a smartphone that doesn't break when you drop it out of it?

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[budgenator]

Going to the Moon was really showing the Soviets we could drop an inherently very massive nuclear warhead anywhere we wanted.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[budgenator]

We spend 1/3 of our revenue on defense.. yet we haven't been invaded since 1812? I'll give ya 1941 since the japs did fly into our airspace... But.. now we have nukes. We can't be invaded.. No, what we do is spend 1/3 of our money invading OTHER countries.

Go fuck yourself.

So other than Pearl Harbor and some insignificant aleutian islands, it worked for 200 years.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[JoeMerchant]

Not just the Soviets, the whole world. It's really cool that we were able to demonstrate "our might" without having to actually kill anybody or blow anything up (on purpose). Both sides' ability to build and deliver arbitrarily large nuclear weapons was solidly demonstrated by 1963, and the babies of the world only got a little fallout in their milk. The space race was an even cleaner way of flexing military might without painting the hardware in camo.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[david_thornley]

Pearl Harbor was not invaded. It was hit, once, on a very long-range carrier mission. The Japanese developed means of refueling at sea just for that one mission. They did make a very few attacks on the mainland US, including (IIRC two) submarine bombardments that accomplished nothing, and sending incendiary balloon bombs in 1945 that killed a few civilians in one incident.

Some Aleutian islands were indeed invaded, but Alaska was not a state then.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[budgenator]

The point still remains, as we hadn't had any significant invasion since 1812, our military and the spending on it spending has been remarkably successful for the last century. As far as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the biggest surprise was how successful it was, not that it happened, the powers that were wanted an excuse to enter the war.

Re:Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet?

[david_thornley]

To continue to be pedantic, yes, we haven't faced any significant invasion since the War of 1812, the most damaging attack being on September 11, 2001. The US military has been, when it had to be, extremely successful for the last century. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise. While the Navy had considered attacks on Pearl Harbor, and had done two in Fleet Problems, they thought those attacks would be when the Fleet was at sea. Roosevelt wanted an excuse to enter the war against Germany, and had been half-heartedly trying to avoid a war with Japan.

It makes sense

[MrKaos]

All the scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses not trained, all the people that didn't get help when they needed it, all the tax money not spent on roads, education, bridges and hospitals, everyone made a willing and needed sacrifice so that the Navy could use that money developing a weapon system that is too expensive to use because that saves money.

It makes perfect sense.

Re:It makes sense

[JoeMerchant]

The logic goes: the overpriced weapon system makes the world safe for democracy, without it there would be no capacity (peace) in which to train scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses, etc. The question is: do we need to spend $1T/year ($2800/year per capita) doing this, or maybe could we get by with $2600, or even $1400 per year per capita, if we did it smarter? If we guess wrong and underspend, the consequences could be... severe.

Personally, I think we can do it for less, and do it better. But, then, I'm not stupid enough to want the job of President.

Re:It makes sense

[hey!]

It probably does save money. The key is that you have to ask in comparison to what.

In comparison to not making a naval super-gun, of course it's a money loser. But the problem is that there are people in Congress who really, really like big guns. At the time this particular gun was proposed there were still people advocating for re-activating the New Jersey, with it's titanic (although primitive) 16 inch guns. And that would be very expensive indeed.

The New Jersey fired 2700 pound Mark 8 shells which cost about $100,000 apiece, and the last time we used them (in Beirut) we fired 300 of the suckers. Given that these shells were so powerful, why so many? Because given how far the New Jersey had to stand off to be safe, they ended up falling in a circle some 18km across. We had to spend thirty million bucks saturating an enormous area to hit anything, all pretty much to prove that reactivating the New Jersey was a good idea -- it wasn't. In fact the collateral damage from that single day of political theater was so horrific that it has created headwinds for US interests in that region for the past three decades. In comparison to that, a shell that cost $800,000 but falls within 50m of its target half the time is not only a bargain, it's likely more effective. It's just less impressive.

Of course it would make more sense just to give up on big gun shore bombardment altogether, but given that Congress says you do it, somethingn like this is the best a reasonable person would end up with an an era of high sensitivity to collateral damage and widespread adoption of anti-ship missiles. If you want to save money, elect congressmen who aren't so enamored of things that go "boom".

Re:It makes sense

[Jodka]

Redirecting wasteful military spending to wasteful spending in other branches of government is no benefit.

All of those expenditures which you list are justification for government spending to directly harm the public. Predominantly, the U.S. Federal Government funds salaries for unaccountable, lying, criminal bureaucrats who use the IRS to harass the public, who browse porn at work, who murder military veterans by putting them on phony waiting lists for life-saving medical procedures, who dump toxic mine tailings into pristine rivers and who smuggle guns to Mexican drug lords. Civil asset forfeiture. Corporate welfare. All together, those are a but a drop in the vast sea of waste, fraud and abuse which constitutes federal expenditures.

As soon as the public starts to notice what an enormous fraud is the federal government, the liberals shout "roads", "bridges", "crumbling infrastructure!", "education!" So give us money! Yet it is because the federal government preferentially funds waste and corruption that we have a 4 trillion-dollar annual federal budget and still "crumbling infrastructure." The appealing expenditures are not genuine intentions, they are justifications for politicians slipping their hands into taxpayers wallets.

It is incorrect to assume that the spending efficiency of the other branches of government is better than that of the military. In fact, it seems worse; even when wasted the military is only spending taxpayer money , whereas other branches of government are both spending and directly harming the public.

It is interesting that in that long list of alternatives which you gave to military technology boondoggles that you excluded the sole legitimate option: Slash government and let the taxpayers keep more of their damn money.

It is such old and worn-out propaganda. Those who plead infrastructure and education should be assumed left-wing astroturfers. Not that it would not be a good thing to improve infrastructure and education, but the notion is absurd that we get that by diverting military spending, as opposed to tearing down the federal government and rebuilding it in smaller scale on rational principles.

Re:It makes sense

[Major Blud]

The New Jersey fired 2700 pound Mark 8 shells which cost about $100,000 apiece, and the last time we used them (in Beirut) we fired 300 of the suckers.

While true for the New Jersey, the Missouri and the Wisconsin were both used during the Gulf War...both of these ships are Iowa Class battleships, same as the New Jersey. The Missouri fired 783 16-inch shells while Wisconsin fired 319. A curious development happened when a group of Iraqis tried to surrender to a drone launched from Wisconsin......the first such incident on record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Both ships also fired dozens of cruise missiles and took part in mine sweeping efforts. While this suggest that the Iowa-Class may be multi-purpose, they were insanely expensive to keep in service after recommissioning, and the Navy decided that the same missions could be conducted by smaller ships such as Ticonderoga Cruisers and Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

Re:It makes sense

[david_thornley]

I love being pedantic on Slashdot, so here goes:

The 16" guns fired 2700-pound armor-piercing shells. The HE shells were lighter, I believe about 2K, and the Navy later developed shells with less steel and more explosives.

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.

Classic over-engineering.

[Qbertino]

I'd say this all is classic over-engineering. As with the F35 JSF, Airbus A400M and Jaeger90 ... errrm, sorry, "Eurofighter". These projects have been running over time and budget for *decades* (you may guess when the Jaeger90 was supposed to enter service ...) and are just about outdated by drones and new types of asymmetric warfare when they'll finally will be finished.
Meanwhile the russians are gradually updating their Mig29s and Sukolevs with junkyard scraps or something and can actually fly. Like, they have pilots trained on them that can strap in and take off in 3.5 Minutes flat.

If I were king of the US i'd cancel these projects inmediately and do a maintainable iteration of existing aircraft.
Upgrade/iterate the F15, F16 and A10, get some new upgraded missiles and stuff and built 700 of each and get some pilots to learn to fly them.

This new warship is also not much more than some PR move/dick measuring contest of the US Navy vis-a-vis the other forces.
Insanely expensive and not really of any pivotal value in a conflict I would guess. Not much different than in WW1.

New-toy-cash would be way better invested in stealth drones or something.

My 2 cents.

Re: Classic over-engineering.

[Nidi62]

Maintaining existing fleets of aircraft doesn't advance your career, let you stroke your ego by putting your name on a big budget project, or guarantee you a nice cushy position at a defense contractor (on top of your flag officer pension) after you retire like the LCS, F35, etc do.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[jabuzz]

The issue with the Eurofighter is that it is an intercept air defence fighter designed for the cold war. As it came into service the Soviet Union collapsed and the claim was that we no longer (at least here in the UK) needed an intercept air defence fighter.

I suggest that you go live near one of the current bases for the Eurofighter in the UK for a few weeks, because they are being scrambled for intercept air defence on a regular basis, and far from being unneeded are actually essential.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[prefect42]

Part of me wonders how essential air intercept really is. We play this big cat and mouse game of flying planes up to the edge of another nation state's airspace.

What if we just ignored them? What if we tracked and filmed them violating our airspace and simply resorted to diplomacy and coordinated sanctions when international law was broken?

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[dbIII]

What if we just ignored them?

From hitting the archives after the USSR fell it turns out that the USSR completely ignored the Nixon era "madman theory" probes by US bombers getting close to their territory. It turns out they knew what real madmen were like. Nixon didn't rate.
So it appears that empty sabre rattling can be ignored.
Another bit of history - doing the same with Cuba and North Korea just showed a lack of follow through on an empty bluff resulting in a dead pilot and a captured ship (which is still on display in North Korea).

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[dunkelfalke]

If Ukrainians want freedom and prosperty, why have they kept voting for crooks for the past 25 years and went on being the most corrupt country in Europe for the same 25 years?
Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?

That's how you get to be like Ukraine, not by not scrambling interceptors for every fart in the border proximity.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[smooth wombat]

The reason people wanted freedom and prosperity in Ukraine was because of the corruption foisted upon them by their pro-Russian "leaders". That's why Putin was so desperate to bribe Yanukovych when he saw the people of Ukraine wanted closer relations with the West. It's why Yanukovych fled into Putin's arms after he ordered his Berkut security forces to murder protestors.

It's also why Putin recently met with Yanukovych to discuss the bribes Yanukovych was giving to a former Trump campaign aid.

That is why Putin has invaded Ukraine because the people are tired of corruption. Putin doesn't want Ukraine to prosper. He's upset that the Baltic states have had a surge of prosperity now that they are out from under the boot heel of Russia while Russia continues to sink further into the mud. He doesn't want his people to see how backwards, how poor, how far behind countries such as Latvia and Lithuania the Russian people are.

Speaking of which, considering the corruption endemic in Russia under Putin's regime it's funny to hear Russian trolls talk about corruption in other countries. When Putin decides who can and cannot run for elected office, when Putin decides to shut down independent radio, tv and newspapers, when Putin decides your business belongs to him or one of his oligarch friends, when Putin decides a political opponent should be shot dead in front of the Kremlin, now that's corruption!

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Feral Nerd]

I'd say this all is classic over-engineering. As with the F35 JSF, Airbus A400M and Jaeger90 ... errrm, sorry, "Eurofighter". These projects have been running over time and budget for *decades* (you may guess when the Jaeger90 was supposed to enter service ...) and are just about outdated by drones and new types of asymmetric warfare when they'll finally will be finished. Meanwhile the russians are gradually updating their Mig29s and Sukolevs with junkyard scraps or something and can actually fly. Like, they have pilots trained on them that can strap in and take off in 3.5 Minutes flat.

I find it interesting how you managed to shit all over the F35 JSF, Airbus A400M and Jaeger90 ... errrm, sorry, "Eurofighter" because they have been obsoleted by drones and the transitioned into praising Russians for still producing and fielding manned aircraft, re-designs and re-re-desings of cold war relics from the 1980s, which makes them basically 1970s vintage airframe designs that Russia cannot afford to replace. At least the Jaeger90 ... errrm, sorry, "Eurofighter" is a design that went into design when the current crop of Russian fighters was in the process of entering service.

If I were king of the US...

You have for years to prepare for a mudpit bitchfight with Mrs. Clinton or Donald Trump over that title. Better get training, they fight dirty.

Upgrade/iterate the F15, F16 and A10, get some new upgraded missiles and stuff and built 700 of each and get some pilots to learn to fly them.

F-15, F-16 and A-10 pilots already know how to fly they've been proving it in the Middle East for years, even the Turkish F-16 drivers are in good shape, shot down a trespasser not that long ago I seem to remember.

This new warship is also not much more than some PR move/dick measuring contest of the US Navy vis-a-vis the other forces. Insanely expensive and not really of any pivotal value in a conflict I would guess. Not much different than in WW1.

That's why it is being cancelled. Can only criticise the navy for not doing it sooner.

New-toy-cash would be way better invested in stealth drones or something.

My 2 cents.

That's true, which brings me back to wondering why you are heaping praise on the Russians for fielding un-stealthy manned aircraft designs from the 1970s. Make up your mind...

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Type44Q]

Like,

Imagine standing in front of a large audience, lecturing... only you've accessorized the back of your pants with a massive shitstain. Can you see how that'd kill your credibility?

Using "like" in that fashion achieves a similar result.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Feral Nerd]

If Ukrainians want freedom and prosperty, why have they kept voting for crooks for the past 25 years and went on being the most corrupt country in Europe for the same 25 years? Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?

That's how you get to be like Ukraine, not by not scrambling interceptors for every fart in the border proximity.

The same reason that the US voting public kept voting for crooks for the past 60 years? limited choice. People keep talking about how the wonderful thing about a democracy is that you can vote out your government and vote in a better one. Well what do you do when you can only choose between several different flavours of crook? I suppose you can run for office yourself in the best traditions of democracy, promise reform, get elected and change things for the better. The truth is, hardly anybody ever does that and when they do these reformers seem to get infected with corruption-n-greed and integrated into the establishment inside of a single term of office. For those that don't catch the disease, they find out that changing things and reforming society is a lot easier to say than it is to do just like it is easier to dump on the Ukrainians when one own good self as well as people all over the democratic world keep re-electing the same crooks over and over again just like the Ukrainians. Their crooks may be a bit more bold than the standard variety of elected crooks but that's all they are.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[JoeMerchant]

Stealth drones are for actually achieving a destructive objective.

Flashy weapon systems are mostly for not having to actually destroy anything, yet still achieving a political objective.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Duhavid]

They do upgrade and iterate the aircraft.  The F-15 is up to version D/E ( E being the strike variant, ground attack roles are often added towards the end of a fighter's lifespan )

Unfortunately, there does come a time when, depending on the intended use, upgrade and iterate does not work any more.
For aircraft like the B-1/B-52 and like the A-10, I am in much more agreement with you.  But for fighters, things get different.
You can do what the Russians are doing, buy many less expensive aircraft.  But you have to buy more. Expense can still be high.

When the F-15 ( Design from 1967, First Flight 1972 ) entered service, 20k pounds of thrust per engine was norm, now, 40k pounds of thrust, with vectoring thrust is the norm.  You say, shore it up, make it stronger.  Sure, but then you really have to re-engineer a fair bit of the aircraft.  Low observable was just on the horizon at that time, so the aircraft shape is not optimal, they did not have the resources to refine the shape.  More re-engineering.  And there are improvements in the radar and avionics.  Often, existing aircraft are updated with these, but at some point the space and power and aircraft shape requirements mean it just wont go.

So, my prescription would be
  update and iterate as needed
  when a new aircraft is really needed, design a specific aircraft for that role.  The F-22 had it's teething pains ( if you watch closely pretty much *every* aircraft does.  Famous example, P-51 Mustang.  Almost didn't make it.  The British stuck a Merlin engine ( with 2 speed, 2 stage supercharger ) replacing the Allison single stage supercharged engine* in a test aircraft sent over for evaluation ( the Mustang was built for the English ) after they tested it with the Allison, and found it lacking.  Today, everyone forgets it's teething troubles, and praises it )
Where things go really sideways is when the aircraft is designed for multiple missions.
We keep thinking we are being smart, but it keeps biting us in the bottom.  F/B-111, is an obscure example..  Supposed to be a naval fighter and ground attack aircraft.  When it's role was finally limited to the ground attack part ( with the F-14 emerging as a fighter to take that role ) it was able to succeed.
The F-35 is our recent example.  It may turn out to be an excellent aircraft, but it is going thru it's teething time now.  And trying to make it a good fighter and bomber, and STOL/STOVL aircraft ( to suit Marines and British interest in a Harrier replacement ) is complicating things.
Separate the concerns.  And, in a sense, they are, with the A/B/C variants of the aircraft, but the ties to each other complicate things.

* the Allison engine was a good engine, it was crippled by the supercharger.  Army Air Corps people did not believe there was a need, never mind what was going on in Europe. The same engine, turbocharged, in the P-38 gave America it's first 400+ mph aircraft.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Xest]

"Meanwhile the russians are gradually updating their Mig29s and Sukolevs with junkyard scraps or something and can actually fly. Like, they have pilots trained on them that can strap in and take off in 3.5 Minutes flat."

Nonense, many of Russia's projects are in complete disarray too. They created a high tech electronic controlled tank that crashes more than Windows ME, and a 5th gen fighter jet that spontaneously explodes and has become such a fuckup that Russia has reduced it's order to a mere 12 aircraft, a number of which will be kept for spares and training meaning at best 3 - 9 available for active duty, 10 years after the F-22 entered service (and was still more effective).

I agree that military procurement is a complete and utter shambles, but it's not just the West getting it wrong. The problem is rarely what gets produced (you mention the F-15 and F-16 - there's a reason both these aircraft have reached their E variants, you can't compare the stability of an A variant aircraft against an E variant aircraft, the A-10 however is a masterpiece in it's role I'll admit.). The problem is entirely about corruption, but it's not even just the military - people scoff at the $122million price tag of an F-22, but here in the UK we're spending $100billion on a fucking train line and a handful of trains), the fact is public sector is entirely hopeless at producing sensible contracts with private sector - public sector ALWAYS gets ripped off, because unlike with private sector there's fuck all accountability when it comes to overspending - the Department of Defence doesn't go bankrupt like a company would if it blew way over it's budget (this is FWIW the same problem with bailing out the banks, when you remove the risk of failure, you also remove the accountability and incentive to do a good job that failure provide).

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[Feral Nerd]

The issue with the Eurofighter is that it is an intercept air defence fighter designed for the cold war. As it came into service the Soviet Union collapsed and the claim was that we no longer (at least here in the UK) needed an intercept air defence fighter.

I suggest that you go live near one of the current bases for the Eurofighter in the UK for a few weeks, because they are being scrambled for intercept air defence on a regular basis, and far from being unneeded are actually essential.

Well it should not surprise anybody, as you point out, that now that Interceptors are back in fashion now that we have a cold war again thanks to Big Vlad. Pundits delight in pointing out that the Eurofighter would have a bad time against the F-22 and use it as a way to argue that it is obsolete. Well experiences from maneuvers have so far shown that while stealth is an advantage even the lower tranche Eurofighters without AESA, state of the art jamming pods, IRST and advanced AWAC backup do not necessarily have to fear the F-22. Not that that is of any importance since the idea of Eurofighter operators going to war with the US is about as likely to happens as the state of Connecticut invading and annexing Rhode Island. What is important is that tranche 3+ Eurofighters can kick the tar out of pretty much everything the VVS has except maybe the PAK FA which it might have trouble with if Big Vlad could afford to re-equip the entire VVS with it, which he cannot. If he ever develops the ability to pay for the replacement of the what is it? 1500? ... assorted Mig-29/31/35s and Su 27/30/35 with PAK FA's there are ways of dealing with it such as the F-35 or even licensing the F-22 in an emergency.

Re: Classic over-engineering.

[bluegutang]

This is also true of websites. Maintaining an existing, working website doesn't advance your career. Rewriting it in a trendy new Javascript framework, with flat rectangles bouncing all over the page, and half the functionality moved/hidden and the other half gone - now THAT advances your career.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[guestapoo]

limited choice

Exactly!
After an election that ended the 'Orange Revolution', Ukrainians had a joke:

- Hey, there are good and bad news!
- The good one!?
- Julia (Tymoshenko) loses!
- ...and the bad one!
- Yanukovych wins!

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[guestapoo]

the corruption foisted upon them by their pro-Russian "leaders"

Oh, how coincided that today, Saakashvili resigned, and said something many non-brainwashed Ukrainian people already known:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

“What difference for Ukrainians does it make who will treat them like dirt: Poroshenko or Yanukovych; what difference who will steal from them?”

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[dunkelfalke]

I am German, not Russian, but I minored in Slavic languages and can speak Czech and Russian. I never have been in Russia, but I have visited Ukraine a few times. Oh, and I have also visited Latvia and Lithuania and wasn't impressed - even Romania seems to be more prosperous.

So, instead of trying the old and tired whataboutism - a stupid Soviet tactic designed to distract from the actual topic - and calling me a Russian troll (because, frankly, you are the one who sounds like a shill), pray tell me why the exactly same corruption has existed when their anti-Russian leaders were in power? Why is Ukraine's GDP per capita is only half of GDP per capita of Belarus and has continuously been lower since 1995 or so even though Ukraine is far more resource-rich and has started as the a lot better developed country?

Re: Classic over-engineering.

[TangoMargarine]

You're assuming its purpose was to be a deterrent. If it's not a deterrent but instead a dead man's switch, nobody cares if your enemy knows about it, only if it works.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[WindBourne]

actually, the zumwalts are NOT being canceled, just limited. However, like the F22, they are very likely to restart production since the zumalt design with railguns and lasers are very likely to take out any other destroyers.

Re:Classic over-engineering.

[WindBourne]

the fact that you think that Russia has better equipment or that the Zumwalt is junk, would indicate that you have absolutely NO IDEA of what military equipment is about.
BTW, the zumwalt is not using this gun, because they have a rail gun that shoots at over 100 miles range, AND for less than $100 / shot (the cheaper dumb stuff costs only 20 / shot). And the stealthiness of this is such that on ANY radar it shows up as a 30' fishing boat. That is pretty darn small and obviously the chinese and russian will not be able to see it without going after their own civilian boats. And as to the German fleet, good luck having ANYTHING close to a zumwalt.

Re: Classic over-engineering.

[david_thornley]

Do you realize how many people have been saying things like that since before WWI (i.e., over a century now)? I see no reason to believe it's true now.

Re: Classic over-engineering.

[cwsumner]

This is also true of websites. Maintaining an existing, working website doesn't advance your career. Rewriting it in a trendy new Javascript framework, with flat rectangles bouncing all over the page, and half the functionality moved/hidden and the other half gone - now THAT advances your career.

That is true! And a major pain. 8-P

the end

[Anonymous Coward]

The human race will give up war, not when we become too civilised but when growing inefficiency and bureaucracy make it too expensive.

TF2

[jonr]

"It takes one million dollar to fire this weapon.... once"

Re:TF2

[Joce640k]

OMG! Who touched Tasha?

WOW. Just. WOW.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

A few things, after 5 minutes of Googling, in no particular order:
1) That max range was 100 km, not 100 miles; so, 53 miles. It's only been tested to 83km/45mi. And that's just the "let's see how far it will go" test.
2) Yeah, it's 155mm, but not compatible with any other 155mm munitions.
3) The elevation is 70 degrees, so it's really a guided missile launcher, not a "gun".
4) There's so much guidance and propulsion crap onboard, there's hardly any (24 lbs) room for the High Explosive for the warhead.
5) Most of the lethality estimates involve using the Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact theory. So the plan is to have half-a-dozen rounds land on target, at the same time. Good luck with that.
6) So, $80,000 per shot was the pie-in-the-sky target cost??? From a glorified cannon?

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[drinkypoo]

7) A cruise missile can hit a 1 square meter target. This can only hit a 50 square meter target. That's pretty fucking useless "accuracy" for a "guided" munition that costs nearly as much as a cruise missile.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time on Target salvos are old hat for artillery. They've been doing that since WW-1

Modern self-propelled guns can shoot 5 shots from one gun (at different angles and speeds) and have all 5 shots land at the same time in the same place.

http://www.military-today.com/artillery/top_10_self_propelled_howitzers.htm shows several models from different countries around the world that can do this

youtube has lots of videos that have been up there for years showing this in practice

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=multiple+rounds+simultaneous+impact

You can have smart guns and you can have smart shells. In this case, since the gun is on a moving platform, they've opted to go with smart shells (note, we have smart shells for other artillery already, it's not bleeding-edge science). Given the public's refusal to accept any collateral damage, the better accuracy that a smart shell can provide is very attractive

Also, remember that Kinetic energy is 1/2 Mass * Velocity ^ 2 when you get to high velocities, you don't need to have an explosive charge in the shell.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[drinkypoo]

Tomahawk costs $1.5m

That's how it's currently priced, but they've simply marked up the price over the years.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[willy_me]

A big waste of money, I agree. But this gun should be able to strike a vessel being guarded by a missile defense shield while keeping far enough away that it is not put in danger. For example, sinking a defended enemy carrier. There will also be other niche applications where this gun is a perfect solution. But one could easily argue that this does not justify the price - and I would have to agree.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[Ihlosi]

Sounds more like a mortar for rocket-assisted, guided projetiles.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[jittles]

7) A cruise missile can hit a 1 square meter target. This can only hit a 50 square meter target. That's pretty fucking useless "accuracy" for a "guided" munition that costs nearly as much as a cruise missile.

That may be by design. For instance, the chain gun on the AH-64 is called the AWS or "Area Weapon System". It is designed so that it spreads its shots over an area. There's no point in firing a cannon at foot soldiers and have a 10 round burst hit in one spot. It's far more effective to have those 10 rounds hit in a predictable pattern that the co-pilot can depend on when he aims the gun.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[meglon]

8) a 16 incher can hit a 1 meter target, a 50 meter target, a 100 meter target, and a 1000m target.... all with the same shell at the same time. Too bad ours are sitting and turning into rust because weapons of war are completely useless for anything to do with helping society.

Biggest gun since a battleship... pfft. If danger close isn't counted in miles, it ain't a big gun.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[meglon]

In time of conflict, nothing will get within 100km of the Admiral Kuznetsov without going through it's perimeter ships, and the Chinese jump carrier is a training ship.... so the whole "sinking a defended enemy carrier" is an incredibly small one-off event, and no one else has any carriers. Nothing an Exocet hasn't been able to do for the past 40 years or more.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[fnj]

A cruise missile can hit a 1 square meter target. This can only hit a 50 square meter target.

It's worse than that. An accuracy of 50 m means a circle of 50 m radius, which is 7900 m^2, not 50 m^2. If the cruise missile does indeed have an accuracy of 1 m (dubious), that would be 3 m^2.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[serviscope_minor]

6) So, $80,000 per shot was the pie-in-the-sky target cost??? From a glorified cannon?

Yes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are already similarly priced GPS guided rounds which can be fired from stock 155mm howitzers.

Of course they asked BAe for some special service (rather than using the off the shelf shell). And BAEe idea of special service does not involve lube.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[techno-vampire]

4) There's so much guidance and propulsion crap onboard, there's hardly any (24 lbs) room for the High Explosive for the warhead.

What's the total weight of the projectile? I ask, because I happen to know that a 16" armor piercing round weighs 2700 pounds, of which 150 pounds is the bursting charge.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[erapert]

That's why they canceled it.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[ebvwfbw]

Better off with a regular guided missile.

Re:WOW. Just. WOW.

[david_thornley]

A 16" gun is not going to reliably hit a one-meter target, and battleship guns were deliberately mounted inaccurate to create a salvo pattern to maximize the chances of a hit per salvo. A battleship is an awfully expensive way to fire one-ton shells up to 20 miles away with limited accuracy. It's great for firing at large armored naval targets, which are currently in short supply.

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

[Joce640k]

perhaps if you bring the jets the UK can...

Are there any operational F35s to bring?

Re:Don't Worry

[dbIII]

Funny you mention those things - the same company is involved with those as with the expensive shells.
Looks like a trend.

Maybe we should ask them how much a bunch of Senators costs?

Re:Don't Worry

[stealth_finger]

Plan of action
1)Cancel Harriers
2)Build new carriers
3)Wait a while
4)Maybe finally get some f-35s
5)....
6)Profit

Re:Don't Worry

[stealth_finger]

Oh and don't forget the £2b odd for rejigging the carriers to the new jets we don't have.

Re:Don't Worry

[eeyore]

Oh, so the RN is not buying F-18s to make up the numbers?

Re:Don't Worry

[jeremyp]

No point. The carriers don't have catapults.

At one point, they were going to put catapults on the ships but the cost was later deemed too high. It didn't seem to occur to anybody that ships with catapults could deploy any kind of naval aircraft, not just the F35B.

Re:Don't Worry

[Xest]

"Clearly the reason recent conflicts have required coalitions is so each government's incompetence can be cancelled out."

I know you're (half) joking but there's some (half) truth to this. The reason it was such a problem when the UK first refused to join strikes in Syria, and such a big deal when we eventually did join is because of the UK's Brimstone missile, it provides a capability that the US just doesn't have - it's accuracy against moving targets, and ability to cancel very last minute if there's a risk of civilian casualties is immensly important when striking inner city areas such as those ISIS hides in, but it also has millimetre wave and laser guidance options making it incredibly flexible in terms of hitting the target. There was some buzz about buying Brimstone in the US, but instead they chose to reinvent the wheel and just try and upgrade the hellfire themselves to do the exact same thing - launch from fast jets, with dual mode seekers, because military industrial complex money wasting.

As an aside the F-117 was cancelled in 2008, but there have been numerous videos of them flying since despite supposedly being mothballed, including earlier this year - one theory is that it's because the F-22 doesn't do laser guidance and so can't hit moving targets on the ground, therefore the F-117 remains the USAF's only option for doing this, hence why they're keeping them airworthy and flying and the crews trained and active just in case. The F-35 can do this (which is why when people say the F-35 can't dogfight they're missing the point, it's not meant to, it's a strike fighter, dog fighting is what the F-22 is for, which is why the F-22 can't hit moving ground targets - there's no jack of all trades aircraft that can do everything perfectly).

Regarding the carriers, Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm fast jet pilots were transitioned to the RAF, but are seconded to fly with countries like France and the US to practice carrier efforts - there are currently RAF (former fleet air arm) pilots flying French Rafales with the French Navy and American F/A-18s and Harriers with the US Navy and Marines.

France does a decent job of maintaining full spectrum capabilities making it much more independent than the UK and US but the cost is that it means some of those capabilities are now incredibly dated - it's hard for one single country to afford everything. The US can afford to do it, but due to overly inflated project costs through corruption and backhanders it just runs out of money even though it shouldn't.

It's not just the West though - Russia's joint project with India, the PAK-FA, their 5th generation attempt at creating a competitor for the F-22 is also in the shit, with Russia now dropping it's order of them to a mere 12 aircraft so probably only ever between 3 and 9 combat ready at best (you don't have all your aircraft flying at once, some are always used as reserves, some will be trainers etc.). China's having a good go but whilst many of it's designs are based on stolen US designs (there's a reason some of it's aircraft have striking similarities, they don't appear to have ever managed to steal a comprehensive design, so what you get is something where half of the plane looks like a cutting edge Western equivalent design, and the rest of it looks straight out of the 60s. See this image for example highlighting the front of the aircraft having a similar profile to the F-35, but the engines demonstrating the stealth profile of a gigantic flying turd (and likely the avionics of a Commodore 64).

So you're actually not far wrong, countries genuinely are working together to fill gaps, and it genuinely is because of terrible decision making based on corrupt procurement processes - there's really no question that the Brimstone was far and away the most sensible purchase option for the US, it would've saved millions and does everything they want. Similarly selling the Royal Navy's entire 72 Harrier fleet to the US for less than the price of 2 F-35s only to then pay the US to let our pilots keep

Re:Don't Worry

[NotBornYesterday]

What makes you think Senators would make better projectiles?

Re:Don't Worry

[Jason1729]

I think the point is that using these particular Senators as projectiles would do more to benefit American interests than using these $800,000 shells would.

Re:Don't Worry

[DarkOx]

better is a subjective term. That could mean a lot of things. Armor piercing capability, Total force of impact, accuracy over target, or even fun!

Senators would definitely be more fun!

Re:Don't Worry

[serviscope_minor]

Funny you mention those things - the same company is involved with those as with the expensive shells.

lol you guys bought shells from BAe systems? You are *boned*.

Re:Don't Worry

[WallyL]

What makes you think Senators would make better projectiles?

They're cheaper?

Re:Don't Worry

[mlts]

The hot air helps with aerodynamics.

Re:Don't Worry

[DarkVader]

No they aren't. You ever try to buy a Senator? They're really quite expensive.

Representatives are cheaper, though. Maybe we could use them as projectiles instead.

Re:Don't Worry

[Dutch Gun]

I think their heads are pointy and dense enough. I'm willing to volunteer my state's senator as a test fire.

Re:Don't Worry

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

So the next war is truly going to be a potluck event?

Re:Don't Worry

[pnutjam]

These ships are really designed for Rail guns. They aren't ready yet, but they are close enough to the horizon that it's hard to justify these projectile costs.

Re:Don't Worry

[TheRaven64]

It's not even a new thing. I remember talking to someone in the RAF back the early 90s. He was talking about a mission where the pilot of an Apache had popped up from behind a hill, targeted a convoy, fired a load of missiles at it, and destroyed it. In the debriefing, the officer in charge had pointed out to the pilot that each surface-to-air missile cost roughly five times as much as a truck and asked who he thought had won the engagement. It's possible that the trucks had been carrying something very expensive, but not that likely.

This is part of the argument in favour of drones: they a lot cheaper than fighters and a lot more likely to be reusable than missiles.

Re:Don't Worry

[Xest]

Incredibly well it would seem:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.u...

The only dissenting voice seems to be some guy from a site called Airwars whose evidence to the contrary is merely "I don't believe them because past wars have had more casualties!". That theory is nonsense of course, because that's the whole point - this isn't a past war, this is a war learning from the mistakes both in terms of missile technology and rules of engagement of past wars. Given the low destructive nature of Brimstone, which is why it's great at avoiding collateral damage in the first place, it should be trivial to find remnants of Brimstone missiles at the site of civilian casualties, but even ISIS with their love of propaganda seem to have been entirely unable to do so.

Of course, you might argue that no missile would leave remnants, but we know that's bullshit because every other time this happens it's been trivial to find remnants, this is from a US predator airstrike with a hellfire for example (which has a larger warhead than Brimstone so would be expected to leave even less evidence behind) in Yemen:

https://www.hrw.org/sites/defa...

I'm not saying I specifically believe the MOD's claim of no casualties, but given the lack of evidence of any casualties caused by RAF Brimstone strikes it seems pretty clear that the number is incredibly low, and yes Mr Airwars, unprecedented in the history of warfare - that's how progress works, things improve.

Re:Don't Worry

[budgenator]

This is part of the argument in favour of drones: they a lot cheaper than fighters and a lot more likely to be reusable than missiles.

Except the drones are firing the same AGM-114 Hellfire missile as the fighter, the A10 or the Apache. We've gotten too carried away with the guided surgical strike, war is always messy and should be, lest we become complacent about it.

Thinking that war is a clean surgical operation, causes us to under-value avoiding it.

Re:Don't Worry

[Hognoxious]

Depends how fine you slice them.

Still it's all moot, it'd constitute a biological weapon under the Geneva Convention.

Re:Don't Worry

[Agripa]

What makes you think Senators would make better projectiles?

Who cares? Let's try it and find out.

Re:Don't Worry

[ebvwfbw]

Think a few just retired. They'd make cheap surplus ammo.

Re:Don't Worry

[stoatwblr]

"They aren't ready yet"

They haven't been "ready yet" since the germans started trying to use them from about 1934 onwards.

Re:Don't Worry

[Xest]

That's entirely false. If anything you said is true then someone should probably let India know, because they're on the verge of dropping out of the project altogether because of the abject failure of Russia to manage the project reasonably.

Who are these reliable sources you talk about? I'd be intrigued to know what source is more reliable than the Kremlin itself.

Re:Don't Worry

[stoatwblr]

"when people say the F-35 can't dogfight they're missing the point, it's not meant to"

It's being sold to allied governments with the premise that it's an air-superiority fighter, not an air-support fighter.

Unlike the USA, other buyers will never have the F22

Re:Don't Worry

[Xest]

It's always been the JSF project - Joint Strike Fighter, and it's never been billed as anything else other than a strike fighter in any country it's due to be exported to.

You're right that the F-22 is blocked from export, but countries buying the F-35 already have their own existing air superiority fighters (although none as good as the F-22). For most countries receiving the F-35 this is either the Eurofighter, the F-15, or F-18s that have been transitioned from the strike fighter role into the air superiority role. Certainly here in the UK our air superiority fighter is the Eurofighter Typhoon, and the F-35 is entirely intended to be a strike fighter.

Re:Don't Worry

[pnutjam]

They are closer then you think.

Rocket assisted guided projectiles

[GuB-42]

I call these "missiles".
They cost as much as actual missiles too.

sunk costs

[Anonymous Coward]

how much of that $800K/shell is from sunk costs like R&D that has already been spent.

They expected that the shells would be reasonably cheap when produced for 60 ships, but that same startup cost now is only being spread across 3 ships because the others have been canceled.

That doesn't make the production costs of individual shells _that_ much more expensive, just the overall program costs are split across far fewer shells, so the overall program costs per shell are much higher (even if the total cost of the program is less)

This is the same stupid logic that is applied any time they reduce production of something and then want to reduce it more because if they cancel 90% of a production run, the remaining 10% that are produced still are charged with the full R&D (including testing) budget, they actually only save 5-10% of the overall program costs. But they then act surprised that the remaining 10% now 'cost' 10x as much as before.

The B-2, and F-22 also suffered from this, if they had been built to the original quantities, the 'cost' of each plane would be 1/10 the 'cost' that they are listed at now.

For these shells, what is the cost to finish production from this point, forget about the money that's already been spent on the program, canceling the program doesn't make that money re-appear. I guarantee that it doesn't cost $800K to produce each shell once they are being manufactured.

David Lang

Re:sunk costs

[Joce640k]

how much of that $800K/shell is from sunk costs like R&D that has already been spent.

Who cares? The point is that somebody sat down and thought it would be OK to build this at taxpayer expense.

Re:sunk costs

[Fire_Wraith]

What's even more curious is that the entire gun system itself may soon be obsolete, as the Navy's eventual plan is to replace it with a railgun:
http://thediplomat.com/2016/03...

Re:sunk costs

[vandamme]

They have to get it to work right first.

because there is a development cost

[RobRyland]

The Navy originally projected that they would buy thousands of rounds (to outfit 28 ships). Then they cut the order because they decided to only make 3 ships.
Well, you have a large fixed development cost.
The "per missile" cost = (DevCost + RealPerMissileCost)/N
naturally, when N goes down by a factor of 10, then the "per missile" cost will go up by nearly a factor of 10.
that just tells you that you can't look at it as a "per missile" cost.

This sounds like a complete screw up from the Navy; not at all clear how much of a screw up by the contractor.

Re:because there is a development cost

[JaredOfEuropa]

Total per missile cost = (R&D cost + Tooling cost) / N + per missile production cost. If N decreases by a factor of 10 and the per missile cost goes up by a factor of 10, then all the costs are in R&D and setting up the production line, after that the costs of producing each missile would be 0.

Re:because there is a development cost

[RobRyland]

you are right. should have said "per missile" cost = DevCost/N + RealPerMissileCost.
Complete poster screw up... can only plead that it was 6:30 am.

Re:because there is a development cost

[thegarbz]

not at all clear how much of a screw up by the contractor

I'm inclined to believe the contractor is in the clear and made no screwup at all as to their own well being. Now contractor management on the other hand....

prescience

[Tumbleweed]

Looks like Chris Rock called it. Well-done, sir.

This doesn't sound right

[smooth wombat]

Time and again we have been told private industry does things better than government. They're more efficient, less expensive and get things done more quickly.

That we are now talking about private industry over-promising and under-delivering sounds preposterous. Clearly someone has moved the commas to the wrong position. Simple artillery shells can't cost $800K. Private industry would never let that happen.

Re:This doesn't sound right

[Zak3056]

Time and again we have been told private industry does things better than government.

If you're going to make this argument, defense spending is probably not the place to do it, because everything about it is inherently controlled by the government. (hint: cancel 90% of the ships, and the fixed costs don't suddenly decrease).

I'm not saying your point in general is a bad one, just that it has nothing to do with this issue.

Re:This doesn't sound right

[PackMan97]

This isn't private industry, this is government contracting. I'm not sure we are quite ready for private industry to have it's own armies...but I guarantee you that if they did they wouldn't be spending it on pie in the sky weapons systems like this one.

Re:This doesn't sound right

[david_thornley]

Which means that the private armies would be inferior to the public ones. Keeping an advanced military force requires building cutting-edge weapons, and not all of those are going to turn out useful.

Re:Over pricing not over engineered

[JaredOfEuropa]

It's about development plus production costs. If these guns and ammo require a lot of expensive R&D to develop, and your client ends up ordering these for 3 ships instead of the originally planned 27, then you can reasonably ask a higher price per item. How much more? If you know that the military is happy to pay whatever, and that they will sell the notion that 100% of the cost is R&D and production costs are near 0 to whomever it is in the US that holds the purse strings, then apparently you can ask 10x the price.

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

Re:Over pricing not over engineered

[JeffOwl]

It's the thing with fins, a GPS and a little actuators to move the fins, attached to a projectile isn't it?

If they can make drones for a few hundred dollars, it isn't the true cost of the projectile, its the price the company thinks the military would value it at. They guessed wrong it seems.

I sort of guess, the company figured that estimating the price at 80k, the military would buy the guns, and then get stiffed with the 800k price tagged once they were locked in, rather than admit they'd been screwed over.

Clearly you may aswell buy a missile and get better accuracy, range and more launch options than this. So the munitions supply priced it wrong and the military decided to cut their losses on the project.

The government has a very keen insight into how much it costs to produce these projectiles. This isn't a car lot where they just show you some bullshit invoice. Even the government doesn't think the contractor is over-charging, just that the cost dramatically exceeds the original estimate. FWIW the guns and projectiles are built by different companies. This is a classic cost spiral. When the ships cost too much they reduce the quantity, making each copy cost more to build. When you only have three ships you reduce the quantity of the projectiles and will not ever receive the economy of scale. For example, Small Diameter Bomb II: Initial production run unit cost was double what the latest unit cost is in production. That improvement happened in a couple of years with an order of ~3000 units. In the original AGS plan, a cheaper, non-rocket propelled, round was also to be developed for the gun, that was canceled early in the program. Don't know why.

A lot of people like to think cost over-runs are just slimy contractors grabbing for the brass ring. Sometimes, but it is usually much more complicated than that. Science projects: both the government and the contractor reaching too far forward for technology that isn't ready for prime time. This isn't just being over-sold by contractors, the government has subject matter experts of their own that assess the state of the art. Requirements creep: When originally conceived a weapons system is designed to do a particular mission and counter a particular set of threats; missions and threats evolve. LCS is a good example. Originally intended by the procurement organization to be a cheap to produce using commercial standards (COTS use where not appropriate is a recurring theme in defense procurement, leading to cost growth later). The contracts for the original two ships for the competition were awarded. Only afterwards did the Navy come back with "the people who actually have to operate the ships in harms way have told us that commercial standards for hull construction are not adequate." Funding profile: When a contractor bids a project, they, along with the government, put together a plan. The contractor has to assume that the post-negotiation contract will be funded per the negotiated plan. Unfortunately, politicians don't have any skin in the game (unless it is being built in their district) and have a habit of diverting funds to cover the latest fire or a deal with an overall decreased budget (remember sequestration?). Obviously this is being penny wise pound foolish because in the long run it cost the contractor a lot more money to slow things down and then ramp them back up. Which leads us to budget proofing: regardless of efficiency, contractors are driven to spread out production across as many congressional districts as possible. Don't blame the contractors here, this is just them responding to pork barrel politics. Which is our own fault for electing representatives, not based on what they will do for the country, but how much money they can bring back to the district, whether the project is needed or not. These are just a few examples of cooperative inefficiency between the DoD and defense contractors.

Naval artillery

[Orgasmatron]

We have other 155mm artillery, such as the M284 (commonly mounted on a M109 Paladin chassis). Current versions of the Paladin have capabilities eerily similar to the desired capabilities of the Zumwalt's guns.

So, how exactly did these geniuses develop what appears to be the same gun, with the same capabilities, but somehow make it incompatibly different?

Re:Naval artillery

[stealth_finger]

is it seaworthy? continuous exposure to sea water, doesn't explode on a boat's conditions, etc.

So I'd imagine some kind of coating to the external parts is in order and some straps for the shells so they don't knock around with big waves.

Re: Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet

[Duhavid]

We would not have VA spending if we did not have defense spending.

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

[Joce640k]

True.

Most of the people signing up for ISIS are doing because ISIS pays well, not because they really, really believe in Allah/Islam/etc.

Re:Over pricing not over engineered

[JoeMerchant]

This is a defense contractor, they will not take a loss. Even if they take a loss on this program, it will be made back via profits from other programs. Since they aren't allowed to work for other countries, all this money comes from one place.

Looks like the defense industry figured out ...

[Ihlosi]

Looks like the defense industry figured out how to earn lots of money selling arms while making an actual large-scale war way too expensive.

Re:Over pricing not over engineered

[ai4px]

It is the gillette razor marketing plan.... the guns are cheap, but the razor blades, that's where they get ya!

Re: Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet

[fnj]

You wouldn't NEED a VA if there was no defense spending, because that would mean you had no defense and no veterans.

Re: Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet

[Isca]

VA Spending is just massively delayed military spending. If you didn't promise medical for life, you wouldn't have the VA.

(Just to be clear, I am not advocating for less VA spending, and in fact I would allocate more to help the PTSD and other health issues plaguing our soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. But lowering the spending on the current military system is still something we can do without lowering spending on past military ventures, which the VA most certainly is.)

I don't get it.

[nospam007]

Only 50 Meters accuracy for this expensive crap?

Since cheap drones could send guided missiles through a tiny the bathroom window of a bunker 10 years ago, this seems a bit poor.

Read two sentences of rocket history

[raymorris]

You might find it interesting to spend even 30 seconds reading the history of rockets. Hint- they went to the moon atop a missile.

Re:Read two sentences of rocket history

[Anonymous Coward]

You might find it interesting to spend even 30 seconds reading the history of rockets. Hint- they went to the moon atop a missile.

The Mercury and Gemini programs launched on re-purposed missiles (Redstone, Atlas, Titan). The Saturn boosters used to go to the moon were neither designed nor ever used as missiles.

Re: Want to know why we don't have flying cars yet

[Duhavid]

Quite true.  And what would happen after no defense?

Shell is about 20% larger

[perpenso]

Perhaps on a clear day with little wind.

That's what the GPS is for.

Also note that this new projectile is 155mm (6.1in) or about half the size of the big guns from WW1.

Its a Destroyer gun and US Destroyers have been armed with 5 inch guns. So the shell is about 20% larger.

Re:Shell is about 20% larger

[khallow]

It's not destroyer-level recoil.

They are now 10x the cost?

[Rhipf]

But what I want to know is who thought $80000 a round was a realistic price in the first place?

I guess cutting the US military budget is really going to hurt their safety after all.

Hit, miss or don't know?

[petes_PoV]

For a projectile aimed at something 100 miles away, it's going to be very difficult to tell, in real time, whether you've hit the target or not. The best you could do would be to have a drone nearby to report back. But if you can operate a drone in theatre, why not use that to fire a missile of its own?

Re:Hit, miss or don't know?

[legRoom]

This is the military equivalent of claiming that long-distance communication is impossible without a smartphone. Just because big, vulnerable attack/surveillance drones like the Reaper are trendy right now doesn't mean that there are no other options. Otherwise, how did people manage to hit anything before drones were invented?

A few troops on the ground, concealed in elevated locations, can often do the job with the aide of some binoculars and a radio. Or, spy satellites can be trained on the target. Or, small (as in too small to carry bombs or missiles), stealthy drones can be used which are much more difficult to detect or target, and cheaper to replace if they are shot down. Or, an aircraft (maybe even just a balloon) can be flown directly over the attacking ship, high enough to see over the horizon, without actually getting within weapons range of the target. Or, a manned submarine or stealth aircraft can be moved closer to the target, such that it can safely observe, but cannot actually attack without revealing its position.

Of those options, the first (ground observers) is actually still the preferred method in many cases, even when aerial surveillance is available. Being on the ground nearby often gives a better perspective - especially if the purpose of the strike is to aid those same troops.

Senators as projectors

[phorm]

And if any of the senators survive, the enemy will gladly accept a trade.
"We'll give you three of our leaders and lay down arms if only you take this ****** back!"

Re:sunk costs - "death spiral"

[Anonymous Coward]

how much of that $800K/shell is from sunk costs like R&D that has already been spent.

They expected that the shells would be reasonably cheap when produced for 60 ships, but that same startup cost now is only being spread across 3 ships because the others have been canceled.

That doesn't make the production costs of individual shells _that_ much more expensive, just the overall program costs are split across far fewer shells, so the overall program costs per shell are much higher (even if the total cost of the program is less)

This is the same stupid logic that is applied any time they reduce production of something and then want to reduce it more because if they cancel 90% of a production run, the remaining 10% that are produced still are charged with the full R&D (including testing) budget, they actually only save 5-10% of the overall program costs. But they then act surprised that the remaining 10% now 'cost' 10x as much as before.

The B-2, and F-22 also suffered from this, if they had been built to the original quantities, the 'cost' of each plane would be 1/10 the 'cost' that they are listed at now.

Indeed. This is the well know "death spiral" in DoD acquisitions: costs go up, quantity is reduced, so costs go up even more, quantity is reduced again, rinse and repeat... The F-35 now teters on the edge of this fiscal black hole

Different use

[phorm]

Range, speed, and impact.

Drones are good for smaller, precise stuff, generally against entrenched land positions. I believe that these are supposed to have more penetrating power and generally would be pretty difficult to shoot down versus a drone.

Re:Different use

[legRoom]

Drones are good for smaller, precise stuff ... I believe that these are supposed to have more penetrating power

Drones can be built smaller than manned aircraft, but they certainly don't have to be.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone is still kind of small, but it can carry two 500 lb bombs, giving it explosive power equivalent to a 10 round LRLAP salvo. A full-size strike fighter can carry over ten times as much, and a heavy bomber even more. Combined with the fact that the Circular Error Probable for modern laser- or GPS- guided bombs is more like 10m than 50m, it would not be difficult to design a strike drone whose destructive power would put the Zumwalt's gun to shame.

... and generally would be pretty difficult to shoot down versus a drone.

This is true: a drone - or even a glide bomb dropped from many kilometers away - is a much larger, slower moving target than many small, supersonic LRLAP shells. Also, a ship can afford to carry the extra weight of active defences like CIWS batteries.

Saturn is updated Jupiter missile engines, for spy

[raymorris]

The Saturn design process, with the various competing proposals from different branches of the military, is a bit complex and confusing. Anyway they ended up with a Frankenmissile, using the engines from the Thor and Jupiter missles with small upgrades, and various parts from other missiles. Originally it was designed for launching spy satellites. So military technology through and through.

That specific configuration of missile parts wasn't designed to have a warhead attached, just spy gear, but it was still a bunch of missile parts.

The really disturbing fact about the Zumwalt is

[popo]

From the article:

"155mm LRLAP provides single strike lethality against a wide range of targets, with three times the lethality of traditional 5-inch naval ballistic rounds".

The really disturbing part is that these $800k shells buy us a whopping THREE times the lethality of a traditional 5-inch round.

Just. Wow.

Re:The really disturbing fact about the Zumwalt is

[cwsumner]

... The really disturbing part is that these $800k shells buy us a whopping THREE times the lethality of a traditional 5-inch round. ...

So how does that compare to a 16 inch projectile, which we have had operational for nearly a hundred years?

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

[TheRaven64]

Hmm, I wonder if you offered $1m and immunity to prosecution to any ISIS soldier who killed all of his squadmates and defected how long ISIS would last...

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

[Hognoxious]

Reminds me of a joke (might have been from Bill Maher) that went along the lines of: The drug cartels made about 20 billion in profit last year. We spent 30 billion on the war on drugs. Why don't we offer them 25 billion to just sit on their butts?

Cheaper...use samsung

[p51d007]

Washing machines & phones Toss a samsung phone into a samsung washing machine, set it to "spin" mode. Fire it at the bad guy....BOOM!

rail gun will take over

[WindBourne]

Seriously, the rail gun is the way to go. These only costs less than $100 / shot. And ideally, they will move the rail gun to a gatling gun approach to deal with the cooling issue. But the ability to fire at 1 x / second would be a big deal.

Re:rail gun will take over

[legRoom]

These only costs less than $100 / shot.

Not a chance. The real cost per shot must not only account for the ammunition expended and fuel burned, but also for the wear-and-tear on the very expensive gun and power supply.

Also, the Navy plans to use guided projectiles in their railguns just like they tried to for the conventional gun on the Zumwalt, at a price of at least $25,000 per round. (That's just a pre-production estimate, and could well prove inaccurate just like the $80,000 estimate did for the LRLAP.)

The proven advantages of railguns are higher projectile speed (which in turn increases range and makes them harder to evade or intercept) and safer ammunition storage (since the dawn of naval explosives, many ships have been lost to a chain reaction in their ammunition stores). Any costs savings are purely theoretical, and (as with any brand-new technology) should not be trusted until at least one system has been successfully mass-produced and deployed operationally.

Re:rail gun will take over

[WindBourne]

The 100 / shot is for the dumb loads. And USN plans to have BOTH smart and dumb on-board.
In terms of the overheating issues (which is what wears the rail down), just move the design to a Gatling gun approach.
IOW, multiple rails.

Re:rail gun will take over

[legRoom]

The 100 / shot is for the dumb loads.

Again, that's a bogus number. It doesn't fully account for the substantial wear-and-tear on the very expensive gun and its power supply, which is certainly more than $100 per shot.

In terms of the overheating issues (which is what wears the rail down)

No. It's not "overheating" in the ordinary sense; it's erosion which occurs for each and every shot individually, regardless of how much time the rails are given to cool down in between.

There is a tremendous electrical current passing from one rail, through the projectile, to the other rail. If the projectile fits tightly against the rails, erosion occurs because of the tremendous friction forces generated by two solid surfaces sliding past each other at hypersonic speeds. If it doesn't fit tightly, then the current must jump the gap via electrical arcing which creates a plasma far hotter than the boiling point of any known metal. Either way, the heat builds up to damaging levels basically instantaneously; the thermal conductivity of the parts involved is just too low to prevent that even with active cooling.

The DOD has made real progress in mitigating these issues, otherwise they wouldn't continue the program. (Early hypersonic railguns had to replace the rails after every full power shot.) Nevertheless, the erosion must still be significant; the rails will have to be replaced fairly often: the Navy is aiming for (but has not yet achieved) a rail life of 1000 shots (but not necessarily full-power ones). Given how hard it is to make rails that can withstand multiple shots in the first place, as well as their sheer size and connection to high-voltage electrical equipment, you can bet that replacing them isn't cheap.

That's just the rails, anyway; capacitors, switches, and voltage converters don't last forever under such extreme and intermittent loads, either.

Bankrupt the enemy

[TJHook3r]

If I was the enemy, I wouldn't bother sinking these ships, just let them keep firing. A week of fighting and your enemy is bankrupt. Then sink them.

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

[v1]

While on the surface that seems like a good idea, you have to look at how the market will adapt. Paying a criminal not to do the crime just creates a bigger market for criminals, looking to get paid NOT to do the crime, even those that wouldn't normally have been doing the crime, due to risks and other factors.

That $20B they made was an investment, not just in materials and effort, but in risk (of arrest or death) and direct loss. (materials, deaths, arrests, etc) You can't look at all $20B as pure profit because it's not, not even close.

Let me ask you how much I'd have to pay you to sit and do nothing for a year. Now ask me how much I'd have to pay you to sit and do nothing for a year, with an added 10% chance of your getting killed as a result. Now how about 10% chance of death PLUS a 25% chance of 10 years in prison. See how the costs go up? It has a high value because it has a high risk. Remove the risks, and the bottom falls out on the value.

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

[david_thornley]

Back in the Vietnam War, one of my favorite humor columnists (Art Buchwald) compared what we were spending on the war, number of enemy dead, and what the Mafia was charging at that time for a contract murder. The Mafia was cheaper.

curso NR 10

[Instituto Santa Cata]

Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online

curso NR 10

[Instituto Santa Cata]

Curso NR 10 online curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online

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

[Hognoxious]

There's something wrong with your display. Where I typed "joke" it's showing "serious actual proposal".

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

[cwsumner]

There's something wrong with your display. Where I typed "joke" it's showing "serious actual proposal".

That's just the Internet, it does not have any way to indicate humor.

But paying "Danegeld" is known not to work. Since before either one of us was born. And "I was born about 10,000 years ago." ;-)