The Zumwalt class is a shadow of what it was originally envisioned to be.
 

Looks like the US Navy is having trouble with their budget. Cannot fully fund the advanced weapons systems. No surprise, even a prosperous nation like USA must have some limits on how much they can spend for weapons and systems that will most likely never be used in anger. Look out, Iran, we need some fresh reasons to level up over here :doh:

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26531/navys-first-stealthy-zumwalt-class-destroyer-photographed-with-30mm-guns-fitted

http://imagesvc.timeincapp.com/v3/fo...46-gun-010.jpg

I should imagine Israel is eagerly chomping at the bit :yep:

It is a little unsettling with long range cannon shells costing 700,000 dollars each :o

Here it is I just read it a couple of weeks ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/navy...rounds-2016-11

The story seems to be true, but that picture is of an LCS, not a Zumwalt.

Neal was just testing you Mike :up:

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If a single round costs about $1,000,000 each, what is the probability that we would be able to inflict $1,000,000 of damage with that one round?

The Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) has a 11kg bursting charge and an estimated CEP of 50 meters with a range of 154km

That is not a lot of boomage considering that you lose about 50% of your blast force in rupturing the hard case.

For comparison, a TLAM (Tomahawk) costs about the same per round as the LRLAP but with the TLAM you get 450kg of boomage with 80m CEP and a range of 1300-2500km depending on the model.

Cruise Missiles can be shot down, artillery rounds - still - not. Or am I mistaken already?



However. The costs of these modern hitech toys are insane, and they are unlikely to be set up against an equal enemy. Because seeing them getting lost or seriously damages simply is hard to afford.



I never hid my sympathy for having less advanced toys and gadgets, but in much greater numbers and with a massive price discount. The Zumwalt was a design philosophy that I did not like since I red the first article about it somewhere. I saw the numbers and just laughed, thinking: you really think it will stay this "cheap"?


And then, it is the ugliest ship I have ever seen. It deserves to run aground and sink while leaving port, that ugly it is. :haha:


Does anyone think the Sowjets used "inferior" SABOT ammunition in their tanks, based on steel instead of Tungsten or Uranium, because they did not know how to handle these altenrtaive ammunitions? They did it because they had to supply such a huge tank force and havign to cover such a long border. Just the latest ammunition available, but due to ther hgiher cost in dratsically redcued qntities,. would not have run well with their military needs. Steel penetrators were not as expensive as Western ones. And still they could crack the Western tanks of their time, the Leopard-1 and early Leopard-2s, the early Abrams and Chieftains and M60s.



And I still rem,ember the words of some british fighte rpilot from the cold war era, whose book I once have redm, who said he had douzbts until the time he wrote the book that the superior tehcnology of the Western air forces and their maiontenance advanatges could really compensate for the much higher numbers of Warsaw Pact aircraft being able to get thrown up against Nato.



All this best-of-the-best-technology-only is all nice and well- but only as long as its price does not limit the number of platforms you can afford to a degree that you can no longer sustain losses or take on operaitosn with risks involved. An armed force that is unable to digest losses and cannot sustain these, already is a defeated force. The idea of having a war against an enemy on same eye level and having that war clean and surgical and without losses and without him striking back, is hilarious. Its like with a boxer. Its all nice and well if a boxer can swing and hit- but what really decides it is whether he can stand up again after gettign sent down, and can digest blows he takes and is not immedioately out of breath when the opponent drums on his chest two or three times.



I do not like this enormous, immense technological sensitivity in modern forces. And I wonder what their vlaue is anyway when I see Afghan farmers and shepards delivering two superpowers with superior weaponry two strategic defeats within two generations only. Mind you, the Sowjets lost Afghanistan, and the US and the west lost it too. We have messed up that place, but we have achieved nothing, have not reached the objectives, have not defeated and sent away forever the enemy. After almost forty years of war that is a bit thin and no result that really impresses. Even more so since it even did not stop Afghjansitan to be the world's biggest drug-raising farmhouse.


To fight such an enemy, you need not state of the art technology, but overwhelming numbers that can be maintained for a damn long time.

Haha, nice, well, it was one of the pics from the article. :Kaleun_Wink: Good catch!

That's a really clever way of analyzing it. Maybe, the $1,000,000 single round is worth it if it can prevent the enemy from returning fire and causing $1,000,000 damage to ownship? Heck, if the enemy manages to hit the magazine with all the $1,000,000 rounds, game over, we're broke :)