
New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets - protomyth
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-have-no-bullets
======
georgeecollins
The absurdity of this is not explained very well in the article because of a
lack of context. The Zumwalt is not meant to be an "anti-air" ship, it was
meant to be a replacement for battleships in the role of shelling land targets
from sea. One of the reasons why it is meant to be stealthy is so that it can
go close to the shore.

The program has been cut down because of problems, though not with the guns.
Except that now there are much fewer ships and the rounds will be so expensive
the navy won't buy them. They can use old rounds but they won't work better
then the cheaper old rounds on the cheaper old ships using cheaper guns.

And the point of the ship is .. what?

If you are a US taxpayer you should weep.

~~~
ryandrake
Only the US would use a $10B aircraft carrier to launch a $100M aircraft to
drop a $100K bomb on a kid hiding in a hole with a $100 AK-47.

~~~
toomanybeersies
The original quote you're thinking of is this one, I presume:

"Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it’s fired by a guy who
doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is
somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”

~~~
cmdkeen
A scrimmage in a Border Station- A canter down some dark defile Two thousand
pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

As Kipling put it the last time we were in that part of the world. The Western
militarys spend the $80,000 because whilst the soldier firing it may not make
$80,000 in a year the cost to recruit and train, as well as the future
economic worth of the citizen, is far greater.

------
ChuckMcM
It's always interesting to think about what is going on in the world versus
what people are writing about. It would be a shame to have this ship be
basically unarmed (although in time of war the government could just order the
delivery of the rounds and figure out fair compensation later) But for me the
really interesting question is "What if this is a ruse?"

The gun that is supposed to be on the Zumwalt class cruisers is a railgun
([http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21174/navy...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21174/navy-
electromagnetic-railgun/)) which we last heard about in June of this year.
Since that time there hasn't been a whole lot of news, except we did get the
Zumwalt commissioned. We also saw some discussion about the Navy's 150kilowatt
laser
([http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post...](http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2233))
which would also be an excellent fit for the electrical capacity of the
Zumwalt class.

So what is the chance that LRPS was there to throw others off the scent of
what the real ordinance load of the Zumwalt might be? I agree its pretty low
but the Zumwalt is one heck of a power plant to be driving around with guns
powered by explosives.

~~~
jonathankoren
Sadly, I doubt there's any subterfuge going on. The simplest reason is the
must common reason today, the Pentagon has been captured by the defense
contractors. Today, the damning word is "concurrency."

The F-35 can't fight. No matter what the Pentagon says, it simply is not
combat operational today. It can't fire its gun. It can't track objects. And
it's a dog in the air. Good thing that we put all our eggs in that basket, and
the convinced all our allies to join us in this hand basket.

The USS Ford is $13 billion dollars, and has problems with it's
electromagnetic catapults, it's dual-band radar (so bad, that the radar has
been dropped on follow-on ships), and is way over budget, and full of
preventable errors.

The Littoral Combat Ships are jokes. Made of aluminum with a modular bay that
the Navy has recently dropped after deciding that this flagship feature was in
the end impractical. The ships are underarmed, and in the official description
of the Navy, "not survivable." Oh did I forget to mention that the LCS came
out of a competition where the Navy decided to buy both competing designs, and
both designs suck?

Then there's the Osprey that has notorious accident record, and then in
deployment in actual combat it was discovered that it actually can't defend
itself. (Shoot it from the front or the sides, because the only gun it might
be carrying is in the back.)

Finally, the weirdest of all is the announced conversion of the UCLASS
unmanned combat vehicle into a tanker.[1] Yes tankers, are important, but its
at the expense of a next genertion combat platform in order support legacy
Super Hornets, and the craptastic F-35. Maybe, just maybe, this is a ruse. But
who knows?

[1] [https://news.usni.org/2016/02/01/pentagon-to-navy-convert-
uc...](https://news.usni.org/2016/02/01/pentagon-to-navy-convert-uclass-
program-into-unmanned-aerial-tanker-accelerate-f-35-development-buy-more-
super-hornets)

~~~
gozur88
>The F-35 can't fight. No matter what the Pentagon says, it simply is not
combat operational today. It can't fire its gun.

I wish people would stop going on about the gun. The gun doesn't matter. It
shouldn't be there at all. Eventually they'll fix the software, and the gun
will work, and it still won't matter.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not sure why you were downvoted, but for a reference on why fighter aircraft
need guns, this story about the F-8 might be informative:
[http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-
flight/11_on2015-f8-cr...](http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-
flight/11_on2015-f8-crusader-at-60-180956611/?no-ist)

~~~
gozur88
Yes, that was true sixty years ago.

The gun on the A version has three seconds worth of ammo, and that's only true
because it takes a second to spin up. It's an anachronism.

------
pjc50
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of
its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The
cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30
cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles
of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels
of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed
more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true
sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross
of iron."

\-- President Eisenhower,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech)

(Adjust for inflation; insert your own cost substitute for the $800,000
artillery shells. Eight Teslas? Solar panels for 160 homes?)

One of the paradoxes of the Cold War was that it led to talk of disarmament,
multilateral or otherwise. It seems that will to talk has been lost.

One of the paradoxes of the Iraq War was not only the spending of multi-
million-dollar munitions to destroy civilian buildings occupied by enemy
infantry, but the need to spend the same money again to rebuild the buildings
in an attempt to rebuild the peace.

(I don't know whether there's any building which was rebuilt by the coalition
only to be blown up by the coalition again, but perhaps there's such an
example in Mosul.)

~~~
roryisok
> Eight Teslas?

That makes it seem like less money than it is. Try:

\- 4 Modern Homes in the USA

\- 50 Ford Fiestas.

\- 333 new 15" Macbook Pros

\- 16,000 Kindle Fire Tablets (!)

\- 80,000 Acres of Rainforest (or, y'know, a days worth -
[https://www.rainforesttrust.org/10-for-1/](https://www.rainforesttrust.org/10-for-1/))

\- 800,000 lbs of potatoes

\- Bread to feed one person for 1,900 years (or I guess, 1,900 people for 1
year each)

~~~
rahkiin
But that is for 1 shell.

------
sndean
I work in an adjacent building to where they developed the Laser Weapon System
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE)).
It seems like the Navy and military in general is moving toward no bullets.

Though I have no idea how expensive it is to fire a massive laser compared to
older weapons.

~~~
roryisok
If they just cover it in Elon Musk's roof tiles it'll pay for itself!

------
jessaustin
From the title, I was expecting a gun that shoots e.g. puffs of compressed
air.

~~~
ntelson1s
target hit, cap'n [http://giphy.com/gifs/air-cannon-
giant-14dv2oYsh8eyze](http://giphy.com/gifs/air-cannon-giant-14dv2oYsh8eyze)

------
nradov
See also Tyler Rogoway's excellent article on the numerous other design flaws
in the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers.

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5343/the-navys-new-
stea...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/5343/the-navys-new-stealth-
destroyer-has-watered-down-capabilities-questionable-future)

It was designed to operate close to hostile shores, yet its stealth features
were compromised, and it has no long-range air defense or CIWS.

------
_audakel
first thought:

    
    
      "hit targets 80 miles away at $800,000 / round."
    

$10k/mile.... move the ships closer and get less expensive ammo?

second:

    
    
      "The official added that there was no sense the contractor was overcharging or anything.”
    

Really?

~~~
hangonhn
The whole point of the Zumwalt and her sister ships is that they are stealthy
and can do pinpoint strikes, especially in support of special forces. They're
suppose to operate alone. Getting them closer to shore makes it that much
easier to detect and fire on. If the rounds are as precise as they claim, then
$800,000 / round is a bargain. For reference, a Tomahawk costs $1.4 million
and has a much slower reaction time.

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
I dunno if it's that much of a bargain. A Tomahawk carries a 1000 lbs.
warhead. These shells weigh a total of like 225 lbs., of which 25 lbs. or so
is explosives.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
This is a precision weapon (take out a building or a bunker) so a massive
warhead is not the point. Its for Marine support

~~~
M_Grey
You can take out a bunker or a building with precision, without naval assets,
or a railgun.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Are there any alternatives with the same reaction time though?

~~~
M_Grey
It would be cheaper to just have drones or manned craft nearby, waiting to
fire. It would be cheaper to just have a missile boat ready to fire a
tomahawk. It's not as though we're short on options of ways to deliver
ordinance on a target. What we're short of are good reasons to do so, that
aren't concocted for the worst possible reasons.

Think about it... what was the last war we actually _needed_ to be involved
in?

~~~
ryanx435
world war 2, also korea. I guess you could count vietnam if you think of it as
a proxy war between the US and russia (same with us supporting the afghans
back in the 70s). Oh, also the iraq war in 1991. The second one not so much.
Afghanistan post 9/11 was probably needed, although we messed it up.

but overall warfare isn't really about the price of the tools used, especially
when the US spends more than the next 5 countries combined. Our strategy is
and has been to outspend our enemies and maintain military advantage through
sheer economic attrition.

~~~
M_Grey
Korea, I'd say was the last, and frankly that was pretty murky. Iraq in '91 I
disagree with, but I can see the argument for it. '91 Iraq though showed the
kind of adversary we faced though... and that was no adversary at all.
Afghanistan sure as hell didn't require our failed invasion, and hopefully has
shown us that outspending people with surplus AK's, in caves, is a bad idea.

As for outspending, we're doing that, and as a result we're basically killing
our economy. How many trillions can we flush down the desert before we start
to look like Russia after economic collapse?

~~~
ryanx435
there is a very strong argument to be made that the US's complete domination
of the iraqi's in 1991 directly led to the fall of the soviet union because it
showed how strong the US had become since the end of the vietnam war and made
it very clear to the russian people that the US would win any non-nuclear
confrontation with them.

Iraq was considered a top-tier military force at the time and we went through
them like a knife through butter. This is especially important because just 2
years earlier the soviets had finished their withdrawal from afghanistan after
suffering a humiliating and demoralizing defeat.

------
trhway
$800K per round seems a bit off - that would be half the current price of a
Tomahawk cruise missile. This
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur)
would be a good comparison and it costs about $80K.

I remember when i first learned about these guns it looked to me like somebody
decided to go for a money saving trade-off - land attack with weaker round at
shorted distance at supposedly cheaper price per round than a cruise missile.
Looking at that one, i can't help to remember another trade-off - to save
money F-35 engines aren't made stealth ...

~~~
teuobk
The article you linked to cites a price of about $250k per round, not $80k/rd,
and the government is apparently buying over 7000 rounds. Given the lower
purchase quantity and similar technology, a 3x increase for the new round
seems believable.

I mean, it's still crazy to be spending so much per round, but it's
believable.

~~~
Retric
It's probably all tooling costs. We are spending X + 80k/rd, and the counting
looks different even if the cost's don't really change.

------
alphapapa
> There was no requirement for the AGS to strike seagoing targets, and the
> system does not have the programming to do so. But the big guns could be
> adapted to target ships if necessary, the Navy official said. “We would have
> to do the software modifications to make that work.”

The new gun can't shoot at other ships....

------
outworlder
Well, this is not absurd after all. Less ships, less ammo, ammo cost per unit
is higher.

If the ships and weapons are performing as specified and there were no
significant delays, that's a successful program.

------
ramblenode
> Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher.

Lockheed Martin, no surprise there.

I wonder what it would cost China or Russia to produce something similar.

~~~
M_Grey
A lot less, since we just did their R&D for them.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That depends on how much of our designs they manage to steal.

------
coldcode
A 4B warship but you can't afford 800K per shell. If we built stuff like that
in WW2 we'd all be speaking Japanese.

~~~
caf
It'd probably be more cost-effective to pay 80 enemy combatants a $10k signing
bonus to switch sides!

~~~
bobsil1
Always true in recent wars. $100B/yr in Afghanistan, could pay off almost
every combatant for a fraction.

~~~
gscott
Most of the combatants are doing it for the money. Plenty of articles on dads
planting roadside bombs for a payoff. I don't believe these folks care where
the payoff comes from. So we could easily just pay it but we will never do so
because it makes too much sense.

------
tomohawk
I wonder how much of the Zumwalt reduction is due to diverting money to the
F-35.

~~~
Avshalom
To be fair: as much of a debacle as the 35 is, the Zumwalt has a range of 0-35
km while the f-35 has a range of 0-(what like 1000km).

~~~
desdiv
Zumwalt can fire the Tomahawk (ironically enough) which has a range of 2,500
km.

~~~
enkid
So can a destroyer from the 60s

~~~
fnj
And so can a barge in principle.

------
Taniwha
$800k a round what are they smoking?

~~~
chrisseaton
How much do you think munitions usually costs? The Javelin missile already
cost a tenth of that, and that's a weapon carried and used by a single soldier
(well pair I think usually) with a range of just a couple of km. This is a
weapon used on a ship of 140 people with a range of tens of km.

------
supernintendo
The United States government pissing our money away as usual.

~~~
M_Grey
Not pissing it, funneling it. Pissing implies waste, while this is all about
some people making profits, and others retaining political power.

------
ha8o8le
Misleading headline

------
h4nkoslo
Lacking in this conversation so far is the absurdity of yet another "precision
ground attack" platform, when there are already ship / submarine / air land
launched cruise missiles, air launched guided bombs from (supposedly) stealthy
fighters, and in a pinch short-range SLBMs or SRBMs. They might have cost
disadvantages compared to the theoretical marginal cost of the Zumwalt rounds,
but I get the sense that the DoD is not exactly optimizing for cost.

