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Title: US Navy cost increases are worse than the US healthcare system
Source:
Nextbigfuture
URL Source: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/ ... -the-us-healthcare-system.html
Published: Jul 13, 2018
Author: brian wang
Post Date: 2018-07-13 17:01:56 by Hondo68
Keywords: Navy procurement badly, broken for decades, massive technical flaws
Views: 3532
Comments: 22
In 2006, the RAND corporation found that from 1965-2005 the US Navy had 7-11% annual inflation for its ships which is worse than the inflation for US college tuition and US healthcare. This was before the Zumwalt destroyers (aka DDX) came in at $7.5 billion each compared to the previous destroyer at $1-2 billion each. Only 3 Zumwalts will be built and they have loads of technical and operational problems. Those were the high function and high cost end of the high-low mix of ships planned in 2006. The low-end was the LCS (Littoral Combat Ship). The LCS will be a $20+ billion failure. The inexpensive ships are coming at over $600 million each. They can barely operate 30 days before a major systems failure. The LCS has aluminum hulls and are lightly armed with virtually no useful weapons. One LCS tested a Harpoon anti-ship missile, but wider use among the LCS will probably not happen. The ships are armed with Hellfire missiles that don’t have enough range or a large enough warhead to win battles. The Navy was going to build 52 LCS and now will build 40. The LCS was going to deliver special operation forces for anti-terrorism. It would then change a mission module and hunt for mines or submarines. The modules were a huge disappointment. The LCS was supposed to be more automated and have smaller crews. Crew sizes have been increased because the automation was a disappointment. The GAO also found that both designs were overweight and under performing. Both the high-end and low-end ships did not work and ended up costing double already high costs. The US Navy will try to start building twenty new guided missile frigates starting in 2020. The Navy wants to keep costs below $950 million each. Two of the bidders are the US companies (Lockheed and Austal) behind two versions of the LCS. The first ship is to be delivered in 2020 and then two per year from 2021-2030. There will be no new technology in the FFX ships. The US DDG 51 (Burke) destroyers cost $1.75 billion each. China is building about 32 Type 054A or Type 054A+ frigates. China is claiming a cost of about $200 million each, but The Diplomat estimates the cost at $348 million. The follow up Chinese frigate will be the Type 054B and it will have a full electric propulsion system. There has been no automation of ship construction. since the 1960s it has taken about 700 hours of labor per ton of ship. This has not been improved and salaries have skyrocketed. $1.8 billion Arleigh Burkes are now the reliable low-end and the $2.7 billion Virginia class attack submarines. The high-end are $10 billion Columbia submarines and $13-15 billion aircraft carriers and $3.7 billion mini-aircraft carriers (aka amphibious attack ships). Other European countries can build ships at 2-5 times lower cost than the US is able. Those European ships have modern electronics, systems and weapons. The Navy procurement has been badly broken for decades but it has become a farce in the last 15 years. It is also a tragedy for the American taxpayer. We have talked by the Air Force, Navy and Marine F35 problem before and will again as that $1-2 trillion joke continues.
Poster Comment: They probably need a budget increase. /s
High costs and massive technical flaws and under-performance
Chinese ships are about 5 times lower cost than comparable US ships
Navy talks about lacking numbers of ships but cannot fix their cost disaster
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#6. To: hondo68 (#0)
Navy's D5 Missile, Most Powerful U.S. Weapon, To Provide Backbone Of Nuclear Deterrent Through 2040 The U.S. Navy announced on May 26 that it was awarding Lockheed Martin a $43.9 million contract for work supporting production and sustainment of the Trident II D5 missile. It was a relatively modest award as these things go, so the announcement went largely unnoticed outside the defense community. You would never guess from reading the news release that the D5 is the most powerful, reliable weapon in the U.S. military arsenal -- a system so potent that it is the centerpiece of U.S. efforts to prevent nuclear war. Nor would it be apparent that Lockheed Martin, prime contractor on the missile, has been performing similar services for the Navy since 1955. In fact, it has built all six generations of the Navy's Fleet Ballistic Missile in one of the longest continuous relationships any company has ever had with the world's premier sea service. Lockheed Martin has been a contributor to my think thank and a consulting client for nearly a third of that time, and even I seldom hear anything about the D5. The reason why is that unlike just about any other major weapon system you can mention, there never seems to be a problem with the missile. The Navy runs a very tight ship when it comes to nuclear deterrence, and it keeps Lockheed Martin on board because its three-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile is the most reliable such vehicle ever built, bar none. A D5 missile first-stage engine ignites after clearing the water's surface in a 2014 flight test. A burst of steam expels the missile from the sub and into the air prior to engine ignition. The D5 has been tested successfully 165 times. A D5 missile first-stage engine ignites after clearing the water's surface in a 2014 flight test. A burst of steam expels the missile from the sub and into the air prior to engine ignition. The D5 has been tested successfully 165 times.WIKIMEDIA How reliable? Since its design was completed in 1989, the D5 has executed 165 successful test flights -- a record unmatched by any other large ballistic missile or launch vehicle. As for its potency, a single D5 equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles carrying nuclear warheads can destroy a small country such as North Korea. A handful of D5s could collapse the entire electrical grid, transportation network and information infrastructure of even the largest countries. And the Navy has hundreds of D5 missiles. So why would the United States need such a fearsome weapon? The answer comes down to this: if you can't defend your homeland against a large-scale nuclear attack then the next-best option is to threaten adversaries with devastating retaliation if they launch one. In other words, you have to convince the enemy that attacking America would be suicidal. The strategy is called deterrence, and it is the main reason why no foreign nation has seriously threatened the U.S. with nuclear aggression since the Navy built out its undersea missile force.
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