USS Zumwalt - Are they worth it?

Greebo

Greebo

Greebo

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I Know some people say Trident isnt worth it in the uk but the Zumwalt class of ships are even more eyewatering!

This ship cost $4 billion to design and make and although its guided shells can fire 63 miles with pinpoint accuracy, each shell costs $800,000 and its gun can fire 10 per minute so blows $8m in one minute.

The ship carries 600 shells so to arm it they cost $480m

Originally they were going to make 32 of these but now just 3 due to the cost.

Surely the US could spend there money on healthcare or job creation?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ammo-is-too-pricey-to-fire/?wpisrc=nl_az_most
 
JSF programme grossly over budget at $1.8tn and the Pentagon ask for another $500m. They can't guarantee clean water to all but shiny new military-industrial-complex toys? Hells to the yeah!

I understand things like this go over budget and time but how do they consistently get it so wrong?

Lockheed Martin initially estimated that the projectiles would cost about $50,000 each. As Ars Technica noted, the current $800,000 price tag is closer to that of a $1 million-per-shot Tomahawk cruise missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and traveling more than 1,000 miles. The LRLAP costs an order of magnitude more than other GPS- or laser-guided rounds, and far more than the shells fired by standard 5-inch artillery guns.
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I just hope R̶u̶p̶e̶r̶t̶ ̶M̶u̶r̶d̶o̶c̶h̶ Elliot Carver doesn't buy one!
 
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To be fair, the shells are only $800,000 because of how few they bought... its typical with military spending and design. Ask for something that does A, B C, get a fair quote from contractors. Military then wants it to also do D, E, F and G and the price sky rockets... then they cut the # they want to keep the total cost the same, but the per unit costs goes way up.

Considering this thing carry's Tomahawks, that have a range of 1,000 miles and cost not much more I'm left wondering why this thing needs homing shells that shoot 60 miles.

They do look pretty damned awesome though, and the fire power they have is incredible. I wouldn't mind one.
 
Imagine what these minds could achieve if not tasked with designing more effective ways of killing each other :(.

Rather impressive tech despite the cost.

I imagine prices would drop if they were mass produced though.
 
Navies need ships, those ships have to be able to take on and survive modern threats, that means they have to use new technology that costs money.

A lot of the money spent on the design and development with those ships will likely also end up benefiting other US ships, sales to friendly countries and the like.

It's also worth remembering that a lot of the bombs the likes of the airforce drop cost 100-300k (or more) a time, a cruise missile might cost nearly 1.5 million, so the shells for it's guns are expensive, but probably not so bad in comparison to other modern military munitions.

A quick look suggests that part of the reason for the expense of the rounds is that they are very long range (for shells), accurate and guided, in which case if they can fire them instead of cruise missiles for some jobs they're going to be a lot cheaper for the same sort of effect within it's range.
Not to mention at 10 rounds per minute you can potentially saturate active defences that are designed to deal with missiles.


As has been said, if they make more of them the cost per unit would drop, I remember the fuss about the new routemasters being "hugely expensive" because people kept getting fixated on the cost of the first small batch, which included all the R&D and testing for the design, and the moment they started making them in larger numbers the average cost dropped rapidly.
 
It looks menacing

zumwalt1.jpg
 
Collateral damage isn't as acceptable as it used to be due to how media operates in this day and age, and the kind of technology that's needed to deliver shells accurately is very expensive. Admirals and US Congress have also demanded, since they scrapped the last of the Iowa Class Battleships, close Naval fire support. Those two requirements have lead to this.
 
Mynight said:
Imagine what these minds could achieve if not tasked with designing more effective ways of killing each other :(.
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Having the biggest gun is't always about having an effective way of killing one another.

These huge costs do trickle down though and military research has gone ad done an awful lot for humanity over the last 100 years. When these Zumwalts eventually do get the railguns they are designed for, the tech that goes into building a reactor that can power them will have civilian applications eventually.
 
gradyhawks said:
Having the biggest gun is't always about having an effective way of killing one another.
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True.

I'll rephrase. "Imagine what these minds could achieve if not tasked with designing more effective ways of threatening to killing each other :(."


Weird looking ship. I assume that's some kind of radar avoiding designing rather than designed to ram other ships with right? :D
 
I'm fairly sure I read a while ago that the Zumwalt program was cancelled because of costs, so there won't be any more coming soon.
 
Mynight said:
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Weird looking ship. I assume that's some kind of radar avoiding designing rather than designed to ram other ships with right? :D
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Yup it's meant to be stealthy, there are a few "stealthy" warships either in testing or production and they all have similar looks due to the physics required for that ability, and the need to still be stable in the water and able to make decent speeds (I think there is a catamaran style twin hull stealth ship that one of the European navies is working on).

That alone adds to the cost as it's relatively new and yet increasingly important as long gone are the days when eyes were the main way of spotting ships, or radar was a big bulky thing that had limited range and required large ships to mount it.
 
gradyhawks said:
To be fair, the shells are only $800,000 because of how few they bought... its typical with military spending and design. Ask for something that does A, B C, get a fair quote from contractors. Military then wants it to also do D, E, F and G and the price sky rockets... then they cut the # they want to keep the total cost the same, but the per unit costs goes way up.
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this

there were no doubt substantial R&D costs involved here and these shells would have represented a cost effective alternative to cruise missiles at the original quantities

it isn't like those fixed R&D costs go away just because the military decides to buy fewer shells thanks to deciding upon fewer ships. It isn't as though there are other customers who can essentially share those fixed costs.
 
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