In russia businesses are given a small tax relief if they sponsour ships in the navy, this is the big reason why they have now got borey alexander nevisky st petersburg and another one building plus another borey in build and a few other surface ships.

Ship building in russia and churning out numbers like these right now means its close to cold war builds, buisness contribute about 1/3rd of the navies buget which means the russians have 1/3rd more money to play with each year.

Last year they navy spent $4.3 billion its projected this year to have spend at least $5 billion, figures the USA can ill afford at the moment, with china ruining the american economy with its cheap and nasty imports the only two countries set to win here are russia with her oil and gas, and china with her plastic crappy products.

I do believe that earlier this year putin did annouce plans to regenerate the submarine base at gremikha, this would be a cost of what ive seen (i have been to gremikha and its really the PITS !) it would cost a good $50 million.

Inside 10 years russia has plans to out every cold war piece of equipment it has and re build, and its replaceing stuff at the rate of 2 to 1.

To compair america is building at the rate of 1 to 3, so is it no wonder why america asked for the 1000 ship navy, from its allies?

The current USN is a fleet of around 500 ships and submarines in total, current russian fleet is 366 in total, and the chinese fleet is around 300, us brits can just about manage our 140 ship navy.

One reason the USN transformed the 4 ohio class SSBN's is because the cost of maintaining thiem in thier SSBN role, they could have easily kept on and re modeld a few newer 688i's but what they have now in the new SSGN is a very good platform, that costs less.

The americans are second in SSBN count something they have not been since 1995, russia maintains 17 SSBN's and all are ready for sea (inc ones in refit), america has just 14.(incl ones in refit)

as it stands our enemy is not russia, its our own spending habbits last week the stock market too a huge slump the dollar finnished at $2.06 to £1 ive never seen it that high ever, the lowest i have ever seen was $1.48 to £1 to have that turn out in about 10 years is really shocking.

But why is the economy failing?

the west enforces a thing called healthy and safty, in england we cant take a ****e without confirming it with 3 managers and having the proper safty gear to make sure it plops down the pan correctly.
Now your wearing all that gear it will slow you down simple.

The government here says well you must have 4 weeks paid holiday a year minimum
Workers time off ! and paid !!!!!

We have a minimum wage system to make sure no one lives in or under the red line.
This can cause inflation as it has to rise each year.

so why are those things a problem?

China does not enforce safty gear for thier workers, which means they are not wearing body armour and safty helmets just to moniter computers, which means they will work a little faster.

They dont get paid holidays if anything most chinese will work a 16 hour day, the most any of us is 12 (unless your truck driving they maybe more)

china doesnt have the minimum wage system the worker is paid what the employer wants, it keeps inflation down productivity up and cheap labour means also cheaper goods at a faster rate.

Again that is very true why spend $100 million when you can spend just $1 ? if a 688i armed up with adcaps and TASM whats the need for a large battery?

Thats where the soviets went wrong they spent and spent and spent on multiple platforms, which ment there had to be experts in all platforms just to maintain them which ment cost.

if you notice the americans have one frigate class perry class, one destroyer class the burke class, one cruiser class: tico class, and they have numbers in each and they all are capible of doing either ASW ASuW or AAW missions.

The russians have the sovvys for ASM and AAW the uddys For ASW now for example if they put both designes together in a cruiser form, they would have one ship thats capible of doing everything rather than 2 ships capible of only bits and pieces.

It would cut down on the number of techs needed, the number of specialist dry docks, training costs would be down, and also less cost can mean a few more ships.

Actually, the main reason was because of the SALT treaty limited the number of Ohio class boats by four, and then the Clinton administration decided to limit it by four more boats and wanted to give them a new mission instead of scrapping them completely.

And as a result we have shoddy goods from China with high-lead content paints and fatal submarine accidents from Russia during routine peace-time operations. I really don't think this is the way to go. There must be a balance between quality and quantity.

This is true ... :yep:

The new SSGN's will be a weapon of choice someday. Controlled from deep in the mountains of Colorado by the way. I wonder who gives the final command to launch when the missiles aren't armed with nukes?

The president?

Actually the US Navy had many classes of ship only recenlty has it cut down to one for each ship type. It was called High-Low, we had both High Capablity/High Cost ships and Low Capablity/Low Cost ships of each class. We had two Frigate Classes the Knox (High) and the OHP (Low), We had two Destroyer Classes Spruance (Low) and Burke (High), and numorous Cruiser class (Virginia, Californa, Truxtun, Belknap, Bainbridge, Leahy, and Longbeach). Bainbridge was a High Leahy, Belknap and Californa was a High Truxtun. With the Virginia they started to become a High only force.