New stealth destroyer turned over to U.S. Navy, Capt. James Kirk

[Hooked]

I can see thick ceramic plates (or whatever is the newest hard substance) being installed on ships once the rail gun comes out. If it isn't an explosive round that means it will be treated like a bullet, hard plate to break up the projectile then a woven material to stop the fragments.

[Skroe]

A militarized civilian-spec ship for "show the flag" missions and support ops where no one can shoot back is indeed not inherently a terrible idea, but instead we have the LCS (excuse me, "Small Surface Combatant" - which it is not and will never be, save as an overpriced coffin for its unfortunate crews) which is in fact a terrible idea from start to finish.

It was started as the proverbial "horse designed by committee" - it was going to do everything, cheaply, and be amazing and revolutionary even though the Navy had no concept of operations that called for an LCS; in reality it quite literally does nothing, has no prospect of doing anything, and is a rather expensive and over-budget nothing at that. In practice, the LCS is a terrible implementation for a whole host of reasons: the Navy won't actually come out and admit that its purpose is "show the flag against people who can't fight back" and instead keeps trying to cram it into the fleet (where it is truly worse than useless), it probably can't even do that (show the flag) job (in either version) because its so badly designed and non-functional, and their cost is high ($150 million per hull at last count) and going higher. And that last is a huge opportunity cost - we could have bought or built a great many useful frigates or corvettes with the money that we are instead pouring into LCS-shaped holes in the water.

tl;dr - the LCS makes the F-35 look good by comparison.

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For anyone interested in the South China Sea, this (hour-long) speech by Admiral McDevitt is quite good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...9aF4roGI#t=270

I think it's worth restating that unlike the F-35 and DDG-1000 class, which both point the way forward in their respective areas (combat aircraft and surface warships), the LCS is a big fat zero in regards to pointing the way to the future. In fact, as far as I can tell, the Freedom-class variant only exists because Lockheed Martin decided that dominating the aerospace segement of the budget pie wasn't enough for them, so they decided to move into shipbuilding (just like with their failed bid for the JLTV competition, Lockheed decided they started to want to make trucks).

To be fair though, this country fucking deserves the LCS. Why do I say that? At risk of pointing a random figure, we need to stop listening to people like the New York Times Editorial Board who say "we should only pay for what we need now" (or in this instance "we should only buy weapons that we need for the wars actually being fought!" or some variation thereof. Of course, in reality, the country has to do both. It can't just buy AirLand Scorpions (even though it REALLY SHOULD). It needs to buy those AND F-35s.

The LCS came about in part as a scheme by the Navy to protect it's part of the budget pie and relevancy and move into "green water" operations after oversized and overkill blue-water destroyers proved unsuitable. But that's what happens when you tell the Navy "we really don't need to build carriers anymore".

This country needs to learn it's lesson with this crap once and for all. it needs to balance immediate needs AND long term investment. The F-22 never should have been canceled. Ever. Mistake of a fucking life time, just because it wasn't needed fighting Al Qaeda. It'll take years to reconstitute an advanced fighter assembly line. Restarting the Arleigh Burke line and reassembling the army of subcontractors and parts providers, was extremely expensive, extremely difficult, and ran about 6 months behind schedule. Congress is being very smart in doing everything to keep the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 lines open by drawing out orders (no thanks to Obama, sell them to Pakistan already ffs).

I've had this one thought in my head for like 10 years: what kind of a marathon runner in first place stops to take a nap?. Because when this country says "we're gonna do B because A is superfluous right now", that's exactly what it is doing. Leads have to be kept and the US did not keep it.

A quick way to avoid future LCSs or future "F/A-22s" (remember that) is never to force a service to explain its existential relevancy ever again. The US Navy is a blue water Navy with 11 carriers and 100+ large surface combat ships. It doesn't need to justify its existence on it's relevancy killing terrorists. It's job is to make sure that China's new toys remain relatively at the level of the harbor patrol boat.

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I can see thick ceramic plates (or whatever is the newest hard substance) being installed on ships once the rail gun comes out. If it isn't an explosive round that means it will be treated like a bullet, hard plate to break up the projectile then a woven material to stop the fragments.

There are different ways to detonate to penetrate armor like that. Certain tank shells use that. they physically penetrate and THEN detonate to cause more damage.

Also you couldn't cover an entire ship in plates, such as the top of the deck.

In any event, the purpose of a rail gun is mostly land attack and point defense. As an alternative to $1.8 million cruise missiles and ESSMs.

Anti-Ship missiles are likely to remain the surface warfare weapon of choice.

[Kellhound]

I can see thick ceramic plates (or whatever is the newest hard substance) being installed on ships once the rail gun comes out. If it isn't an explosive round that means it will be treated like a bullet, hard plate to break up the projectile then a woven material to stop the fragments.

Armored warships died with the battleships. It is too heavy and does not provide enough protection.

[Skroe]

What Skroe was referring to was that the entire economy of the Romans depended on them conquering an enemy, looting and pillaging their country and then expanding their borders to include said looted and plundered country. Problem is, you need to obtain more gold to keep the system working, hence you look for yet another target to invade and so on and so forth. Rome never learned to raid properly. Everytime they raided, they went "Oh, actually... I kinda like it here, let's just plant the flag, build a few cities and pay for it all, too!"

In this the Romans conducted the purest and truest form of expansionism. Something the US is not doing. You can say what you want, but they really show no interest in expanding anywhere. Except economically, and that's something Rome never figured out. That you can actually trade with people, make a bigger profit and still be awesome instead of going in and outright owning everyone and the land they live in when you like something.

Yep pretty much this. Rome's economy was a continuous mess by modern standards. Slavery undermined the labor pool and growth of any kind of real middle class / consumer class. Hyperinflation and currency debasement was a recurring terror (and of course, reliance on precious metals). Property rights were extremely complicated.

(for the benefit of others) Rome was pre-industrial, so it traded in agricultural products (almost all) and artisan products. Because Rome had conquered nearly everything within it's ease of geographic reach (to put it another way,without going deep in Asia, it conquered everything worth conquering after a certai point), that meant "trade" was largely internal regional trade along the road network. The Italian Penninsula would trade with Anatolia (Turkey). Something like that.


But the biggest "stimulus" the Roman economy got was through plunder from conquest. As soon as that stopped, coupled with the collapse of most major historic precious mineral mines (which lead to debasement), the Roman economy flat lined for decades, and then began a long decline.



This lead of course to the predictable credit crises and what not as well.

Rome didn't record modern metrics like GDP (it probably had no concept of such a thing). But one way we can tell economic activity is through shipwrecks, the thought being, the more shipwrecks, the more boats at see for trade, and thus more economic activity.



Not a pretty picture.

Let's compare that to Roman Territorial Expansion.


Yeah. Rome basically had no more world's left to conquer in it's own way.

Rome's interesting, but it really provides no good, cautionary examples applicable to the modern world. It's far too different. I think there is an interesting contrast in how Rome expanded, plundered, subjugated and "grew" it's economy, and that of the Spanish Empire during the age of discovery, and then compare that to the British Empire. Of the three, the British did it by far in the most intrinsically sustainable fashion and their economy exploded into the largest the world had seen up to that point.

America for it's part... we do lots of things. But you can't exactly call any war or invasion since World War II an economic winner for us. America got rich first off agriculture and industrialization, and then a voracious consumer culture (simplifying greatly here).

[Theodarzna]

You build things like this in the hopes that they won't have to be used.

How long until the cost is too great for a piece of hardware that is unlikely to ever see any practical military application?

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What Skroe was referring to was that the entire economy of the Romans depended on them conquering an enemy, looting and pillaging their country and then expanding their borders to include said looted and plundered country. Problem is, you need to obtain more gold to keep the system working, hence you look for yet another target to invade and so on and so forth. Rome never learned to raid properly. Everytime they raided, they went "Oh, actually... I kinda like it here, let's just plant the flag, build a few cities and pay for it all, too!"

In this the Romans conducted the purest and truest form of expansionism. Something the US is not doing. You can say what you want, but they really show no interest in expanding anywhere. Except economically, and that's something Rome never figured out. That you can actually trade with people, make a bigger profit and still be awesome instead of going in and outright owning everyone and the land they live in when you like something.

The mechanics are still the same, once you run out of profitable markets to expand into its the same general deal. Capitalism on some level does require growth and expansion to keep going. Historically it doesn't do steady state or simply "sustain," itself. What does a market Empire do when its running out of profitable places to sell things?

Perhaps its best to compare the US to a more recent Empire, the Soviet Union in the respect that I am talking about. Mainly a ever growing complex system facing a conflagration of problems and filled with such entrenched interests in maintaining things as they are that reform becomes impossible until either collapse or the back is to the wall.

[Tierbook]

How long until the cost is too great for a piece of hardware that is unlikely to ever see any practical military application?

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The mechanics are still the same, once you run out of profitable markets to expand into its the same general deal. Capitalism on some level does require growth and expansion to keep going. Historically it doesn't do steady state or simply "sustain," itself. What does a market Empire do when its running out of profitable places to sell things?

Perhaps its best to compare the US to a more recent Empire, the Soviet Union in the respect that I am talking about. Mainly a ever growing complex system facing a conflagration of problems and filled with such entrenched interests in maintaining things as they are that reform becomes impossible until either collapse or the back is to the wall.

I'm going to say the price will be rather high once it get's to the point our ships cost more than the GDP of Iceland at 16-17 billion, we are nearly there but meh. To put it in perspective the IMF has the US's GDP at just under 18 trillion, that's 1.7 trillion higher than the entire EU's.

[Theodarzna]

I'm going to say the price will be rather high once it get's to the point our ships cost more than the GDP of Iceland at 16-17 billion, we are nearly there but meh.

To quote Norman Augustine "In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for the leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day."

[Budong]

How long until the cost is too great for a piece of hardware that is unlikely to ever see any practical military application?

You completely missed the point of my post. You make weapons that are powerful enough to act as a deterrent to prevent wars from ever happening. If China knows we have the capability to erase their little man made islands they may be less likely to risk a conflict.

What cost is too great to prevent the massive loss of life in a war?

[Tierbook]

To quote Norman Augustine "In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for the leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day."

Funny, but rather odd seeing as the US economy is unlikely to fall such an amount even in the coming years, also acquisition is paid for already for the next few years.

[Theodarzna]

You completely missed the point of my post. You make weapons that are powerful enough to act as a deterrent to prevent wars from ever happening. If China knows we have the capability to erase their little man made islands they may be less likely to risk a conflict.

What cost is too great to prevent the massive loss of life in a war?

Or they can make more knowing we could never get away with using them, China still has the ultimate weapon, nuclear weapons essentially can be used anywhere, even detonated in meaningless areas enough fired would be devastating globally. We won't risk war with China, we can't and they know we can't.

[PragmaticGamer]

Major Major Major Major.

Still one of my favorite novels.

Bastard. I was going to mention that. :-)

(The novel is "Catch-22," if anyone is interested.)

[Deleted]

$22.5 billion worth of scrap metal in a couple of years.

[judgementofantonidas]

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/20/po...alt/index.html

would have been way cooler if they named it the enterprise.

[Tierbook]

Or they can make more knowing we could never get away with using them, China still has the ultimate weapon, nuclear weapons essentially can be used anywhere, even detonated in meaningless areas enough fired would be devastating globally. We won't risk war with China, we can't and they know we can't.

The issue is that China doesn't have sufficient numbers of nukes attached to ICBM's to make it much past Guam.... the US has a few more nukes than China and beyond that we have a blue water navy.

[judgementofantonidas]

Or they can make more knowing we could never get away with using them, China still has the ultimate weapon, nuclear weapons essentially can be used anywhere, even detonated in meaningless areas enough fired would be devastating globally. We won't risk war with China, we can't and they know we can't.

sure we can. we just cannot do it conventionally for fear of having our ass handed to us, nor through use of nuclear weapons for risk of having the world destroyed through retaliatory strikes. there is always a way however.

[Elim Garak]

Funny, but rather odd seeing as the US economy is unlikely to fall such an amount even in the coming years, also acquisition is paid for already for the next few years.

I think it's not about the defense budget... but about the price of that one aircraft.

[looorg]

Why aren't ships driven with jet pumps instead of propellers?

http://saab.com/naval/Submarines-and...lass-Corvette/

Some are. For various reasons as mentioned it just isn't as popular. It's more complex if something goes wrong but if you are mostly just going to do coast patrolling etc it seems like a fine idea.

[Budong]

Or they can make more knowing we could never get away with using them, China still has the ultimate weapon, nuclear weapons essentially can be used anywhere, even detonated in meaningless areas enough fired would be devastating globally. We won't risk war with China, we can't and they know we can't.

You are very naive if you believe the U.S. wouldn't enter a conflict with China if they started shutting down trade routes through the South China Sea or began to seriously threaten our allies in the region.

China also has a strict policy regarding nukes. Here's a quote from a translated copy of their military strategy doctrine. "China will not use nuclear weapons to attack or threaten non-nuclear states; that China will not use nuclear weapons in response to any conventional (non-nuclear) attack; and that China will only use nuclear weapons after confirming an incoming nuclear attack."

China knows it can't win a nuclear war with the U.S. They can do extensive damage but their arsenal is very small and a minor part of their overall defense strategy. France has more nuclear weapons than China. The U.S. has almost 7,000 warheads, China has 260.

[Theodarzna]

Funny, but rather odd seeing as the US economy is unlikely to fall such an amount even in the coming years, also acquisition is paid for already for the next few years.

Augustine's point is more or less that in science we are involved in a technological arms race; with every victory over nature the difficulty of achieving the breakthroughs that lie ahead is increased. Norman Augustine described this as the "Death Spiral." mainly that complexity and cost continues to rise.

So for example the number of B52 bombers we produced and their cost compared to say the B2 Stealth bomber were we produced an excellent, technically magnificent device, but we only could make 21 of them, so great we have this wo gee wiz amazeballs death machine but fuck, it can only be at 21 places on the planet at once. This is the result of growth in complexity.

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sure we can. we just cannot do it conventionally for fear of having our ass handed to us, nor through use of nuclear weapons for risk of having the world destroyed through retaliatory strikes. there is always a way however.

So we could never actually use this device?

[judgementofantonidas]

Augustine's point is more or less that in science we are involved in a technological arms race; with every victory over nature the difficulty of achieving the breakthroughs that lie ahead is increased. Norman Augustine described this as the "Death Spiral." mainly that complexity and cost continues to rise.

So for example the number of B52 bombers we produced and their cost compared to say the B2 Stealth bomber were we produced an excellent, technically magnificent device, but we only could make 21 of them, so great we have this wo gee wiz amazeballs death machine but fuck, it can only be at 21 places on the planet at once. This is the result of growth in complexity.

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So we could never actually use this device?

not what I said. I said that we cannot use current means that are openly at our disposal. to state that we could NEVER go toe to toe with China because of current deterrents is just silly.