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I don't think the Zumwalt was so powerful they couldn't build anymore. It was such a powerful failure they couldn't build anymore. It was massively expensive and none of it's systems worked. How can you consider something a _"technical marvel"_ when none of the technology worked? That's not marvelous, that's a disaster.
I disagree. They took a chance to create something way out of the box, and they learned a ton from doing this, and many technical details that are probably going to other newer ships. There is always a cost to evolution even through failure. I agree it is not meant for this time based on the report half of the systems were not capable enough because we basically do not have the technology currently. Agree or disagree sometimes you have to push the boundaries and this one is probably 50 years out due to technology.
@@rg20322 I would normally agree with you on the points you have made. But normally you would make one test bed prototype to learn and gain experience for the new technologies. But instead they built a hole class of ships. This is either to much money in there budget, that they have money to waste. Or not enough oversight. Which usually gets wrapped up in politics. Either way this thing is in the very least a disappointment.
It was massively expensive because they decided to only build three, this meant that all the R&D and engineering costs were spread across three ships rather than 30. The per unit cost of 30 would have been way lower.
@@Mal101M Basically she’s so advanced most of her systems are completely inoperable and needs constant refits. Her guns have no ammo and her last ship of the class had to get a cheaper hull because of budget concerns
@@Mal101M the ship is a false bill of goods. It was supposed to have all these advanced (expensive) weapon systems that never materialized. Eventually being replaced with more conventional systems. Pretty much the only thing useful that came from this program is the propulsion and powerplant. Monstrosities like these get sold to the government as a magic bean to solve all issues past and future. They're more welfare for the military industrial complex than anything else
I worked with Captain Zumwalt (RET), during his civilian career. He was the son of admiral Zumwalt. He got invited to the commissioning of the first Zumwalt class ship. Great guy too.
So great a guy, I keep hearing stories of corruption and micro management, almost on level with the guys who wrote the Aussie white paper. Such a great guy.
@@erikreddington461 the micromanagement problem comes from a combination of loss of experience and a need to cover your ass. We are too concerned with punishing the mistake rather than learning from it. All the lessons learned are piled on top of a mountain of procedures that take years to learn. When an accident happens, everyone trys to find a procedure to pin to the idiot who made a mistake. On paper it makes sense and in practice.the result is we suck at building ships now. I worked for general dynamics for 8 years.
After retiring from the Navy in '82 (7 years as Chief of Staff at Naval Research Labs), my uncle worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab where he helped define some of the characteristics of what became the Next Gen Destroyer. I never got a chance to talk with him about what he did and saw in his R&D years. I know he couldn't talk about the things that are IN the Zumwalt, but I would have loved to hear about some of the blue-sky ideas that DIDN'T pan out. RIP, Leigh... you were a helluva pilot and engineer.
@mmkucharczyk81 "they all got scrap because..." 1) WHAT got scrap ? His friend Leigh ? Or the ideas he talked about ? What exactly are YOU replying to ? 2) don't try to debate, in a language you don't know how to use.
Ignore the a$$h*les below. People today think their opinion is fact. When it ISNT ? They Try to mould the argument around their opinion. I too would have loved to hear the stories told by R+D guys. The things - as you said - that DIDNT pan out, would be more Interesting.
I currently think that they should consider adding naval drones and smaller air drones to the ship's toolset. Because they already carry some of the larger helicopter drones they have the required maintenance workshops. I think serving almost as a drone carrier would be a great way to use these ships. Drone technology has progressed so much that I think it is going to play a larger part in naval warfare in the future.
had the same idea. I've seen drones being used in Ukraine like tanks in WW2. Mass supplying these ships with drones and a possible retrofit could modernize the navy entirely.
Well on a happy note I would point to the Seawolf, a far overly expensive sub which was also cancelled due to changing world event and the horrific price tag. Yet the Seawolf served as the test bed for technologies which would decades later be incorporated into the far more reasonable Virginia class which makes up the modern sub force. So perhaps the Zumwalts will likewise be a valuable experience for future ship building decades from now.
The problem with all weapons systems is the "cost plus" arrangement between the Pentagon and its contractors. Congress should request a set in concrete price per unit, and a set in concrete delivery time. Every penny in excess will be swallowed by the contractor, and a 1 million per day of delay fine will be assessed on the contractor. Furthermore, anyone working at the Pentagon will be banned from working from any company that does business with the Pentagon for a period of 20 years. Failure to comply will mean the worker will have a permanent residence at Ft. Leavenworth.
Your idea has some merit. The 20 years might be just as effective at 10 years, but yes, a good idea. Now, if we could require the "commander in chief of the armed forces" (the President) to lead the troops into battle in any significant military conflict, that might result in fewer military actions by the U.S. Of course, we couldn't actually let him lead anything; he doesn't know shit about conducting a war. However, I think that it would increase troop morale tremendously to have the president up front, leading the way; and think of the media coverage! He would be extensively protected, so the likelihood of injury or death to himself would be minimal. However, having the president out in the field would mean no political campaigning, and no living the high life for the duration of the operation. I think that this would be of positive benefit to the American people. Too extreme? Probably.
As "Just Fun" stated - bankrupting defense contractors because of cost overruns is not the solution. Besides, I used to think the US military had serious problems - then I started watching a Russian clown show that started in February. Lately I'm feeling pretty good about our military :)
@@jamesweir2943 they have been talking about cheaper artillery rounds that can go 1100 miles or so. I wish this pushed them to move forward and load up some navy ships like these.
@@jamesweir2943 Even without the guns it is still a stealth platform with lots of electrical power for whatever electronics you want, which the Arleigh's can't provide. Simply doing what they already are right now, which is yanking the guns out in exchange for more vertical launch tubes makes it as effective as you want in modern warfare being a stealth destroyer with long range munitions delivery. It's just using missiles instead of shells.
@@shauny2285 x-plane with full operational tax funded order for more then 20 ships? Glad they got canceled before they made more. Can you ask them for volunteers like you to pay for them and leave my taxes out of it?
This is the most advanced ship I've ever been honored to board. I toured top decks, below decks and bridge. She is an advanced, high speed warrior without a mission, currently, but things could change in a way that would make her invaluable. Zumwalt!
personally i see a role as a recon/spy ship but replacing the BB-new jersey no the armor and gun fire power isn't there to do heavy shore bombardment or go toe to toe with other heavy handed ship's
He said it's being fitted with supersonic missiles. That would make it like an above sea submarine given its stealth. Is 30 knots faster than a nuclear or attack sub?
I have not had the honor for seeing one of these in person but.....the AAW capability just started testing....for a ship that's been around for over 10 years these things have been sailing without any real armaments.
I feel it was optimistic to view these ships as operational vessels when it seems more appropriate to classify them as technology test beds. With this in mind protracted development, cost over runs and abandoned features are to be expected.
Cost over-runs are what killed it. The overwhelming number of uncorrectable issues with them was just icing on the cake. Congress had enacted new restrictions on procurement of new weapon systems that automatically cancel any contract if it goes over-budget by a certain percent, and this system hit that before they had even managed to build all the ships that were ordered.
Wrong - The Deep State Gen. POTUS Eisenhower & Kennedy Warned us about- ⚔ Military Industrial 🏭 Complex at work - The Stealth Ship So Powerful They Couldn't Build Any More - Capt. James A. Kirk...LOL 😂 😂
Was on Michael Monsoor. The 2017 sea trial wasn't a complete failure. Something just failed to work that was vital to the testing and we couldn't complete them. The Navy just labeled it as a 'failure'. Everything up until that point was working better than the Zumwalt. It was just a very unfortunate thing. Hey, shit happens. *Shrugs*
@@rydplrs71 Only if you dont learn from your mistakes. Unfortunately the Military Industrial Complex projects are designed to fail so the Contractors can milk more money above and beyond the agreed price to fix "problems". The Zumwalt class was built by Bath Shipyards...who also build the Arleigh Burke. They dont care if the Navy cancels the Zumwalt because will just switch to building more flight 3 Burke's.
Shouldn't one of the primary purposes of our taxes in funding the government be R&D, pushing technology and keeping ahead of all the bad guys out there, including most of our so-called allies? We do need to be smart about this and maybe some of this tech was a bit of a stretch, but also why there are the sea trials and a chance to learn and correct, and change course if we need to. When one is pushing cutting edge tech, it is expensive and failures are to be expected. What is most sad and dangerous is when we don't recognize our failures and opportunities and then people die. An example of this might be the donked up Navy torpedo development in WWII that cost lives and wartime failures.
@@ridethecurve55 We all know the "pay the crew too much" portion is incorrect. This entire project felt rushed, completed out of order, and the contracting companies made 3000% overhead profits. If only the requirements for the build were completed correctly by business analysts, engineers were given the time to flush out the details of the details, cost projections were checked and then double-checked, realistic time schedules were given; but instead almost all business units were axed multiple times and they had to do what they could with what they had and just get it off their billets. This is my take anyway from what I know and what I assume based on the obvious gaps in this program.
I think the issue there though was that they wanted to "future-proof" the ship to a considerable degree in order to integrate systems that were still in R&D or didn't even exist yet (i.e. lasers, railguns, future SPY and other sensor systems, etc.)
@@ridethecurve55 hahahahahaha Is $2.50 an hour overpaying the crew? This POS was a failure because the design sucked And since it sucked, it was scrapped
@@qk-tb2df I hear about problems with materials. Aluminum bulkheads cracking, the rail-gun not being able to survive the heat of more than a few shots, to name the few I can think of. I wonder if material science, and research makes some strides, we will see a successful successor to this ship? I am not happy with the incredible amount of money dumped into the ocean with this. But I can hope that enough lessons were learned throughout it, that at least some of those advancements might be integrated into a future program.
Just because they "drastically reduced the cross section" doesn't mean anything. Even small fishing boats are GIANT targets on open water. It's not a friggin submarine. What a rip off of taxpayer dollars...
The whole design philosophy of modern aircraft and ships is to not get hit in the first place, modern systems are simply too lethal for "tanking a hit" to be considered a viable option
The other way of protecting ships is not to put two redundant systems in the same place. That includes engines now. The other alternative is to build expendable unmanned systems and swarm your opponents.
I agree about damage control being sacrificed with reduced manning. If a ship is hit DC is crucial to it's survival while staying in the fight or at least staying afloat.
I love the plexiglass with grease pencil writing like the old WWII Bogie Tote Board shown at 12:30…and I busted a gut reading “DCPO Spotcheck”. Ships routines never change.
5:11 what I found most interesting is that this ship is under the command of Captain James Kirk. I guess it is not for another few centuries that he takes the helm of the Enterprise.
I think the reverse bow or the "X-Bow" is one of the coolest marine devolving evolution (oxymoron there) we've seen recently. By devolving I'm referring back to "outdated" technology. Vikings and Egypt used that technology to cross oceans, transporting large amounts of cargo in humans on waterways, and all ships before WW2 had the Atlantic bow or "Clipper" bow. The Atlantic bow has a better wet floor rating (meaning the deck is dry longer or not as wet in rough seas) making it better for war time activities.
@@coshyno I didn't say it look good but functionally it's far more efficient than the Atlantic bow seeing it cuts through waves not bouncing and floating over them. But like I said and Atlantic bow maintains a dry deck so it's better for fighting. But if they can ever figure out this technology they could have massive ships that would maintain level posture to launch planes VTOL aircraft or just all-around steady platform to release Munitions and weapons from. Anybody comes to protecting troops and Military assets the way it appears visually doesn't really matter if it's aesthetically pleasing or the ugliest thing in the world they're going to go function over form every time as they should.
This ship was built on the basis that the rail gun would be available by the time the ship was completed. That’s known as putting the cart before the horse. A ship is one thing but a weapons system is a whole other ball of wax! In short the Navy screwed the pooch on Zumwalt.
They did have rail guns in mind when they designed the electrical system, because you cannot simply modify a boat to run those things, but the video did talk about the failed weapon system that the Navy settled on. It's a pity that the companies working on rail runs were simply taking the taxpayer for a ride. It's possible that the whole purpose of continuing to fund the project was just a ploy to get the Chinese to throw their money down the same rabbit hole, thinking we were onto something.
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U Yeah the cannons were a horrible waste of resources. Given they were too expensive to actually use. Although replacing them with hypersonic missles is quite impressive.
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U Trying to con the Chinese into wasting their money is the stupidest excuse ever. Practically every cost they have is lower than Americas. The strange thing is there is footage around of super slow mo cameras that appear to show rail guns working. It makes you wonder just how close they got, and is the program shut forever?
@@tsubadaikhan6332 Trying to develop the weapon, just to fool the Chinese would be stupid. Pretending to develop the weapon, after determining that it doesn't work means just making announcement and releasing test footage of money you have already wasted. Why give the Chinese the advantage of already knowing it doesn't work?
In one regard the Rail guns were a sucess and functioned admirably. The high power costs would be mitagated by having a nuclear power plant on the ship. There was talk about retrofitting BBs giving them extended life this way. The problem? What happens to metal when you pass current through it, especially with very temporary contact. The more current, the affect is amplified. With the incredible amount of current to fire the shells at the intended velocity to reach target ranges, it would create slag along the barrel. After "so many" uses, the barrel would need to be completely replaced. It was never divulged how many times "so many" referred to. DC Motors and Generators use graphite brushes to mitigate/prevent this problem, and while I would like to believe this was already considered putting a coating of graphite an the parts of the casing, or using brushes where it came in contact with the barrel, i found no evidence that it was ever used, let alone considered. It'd be so ignomenious if the reason the program failed is because they forgot to put in what is put between all moving electrical contacts in DC applications.
Did the navy fix that cracking that was occurring on some main part of the hull (from stress) ?? I heard about it once in a news snippet, then nothing more.
My brother-in-law was an electrician in the Navy, and he worked on the Zumwalt when it was in Maine at the Bath Ironworks. He told me when it was going through its testing phase, it had done so well that local Maine lobstermen and women couldn't see the vessel until it was nearly on top of them. The navy ended up having the line the Zumwalt with red flags so that the local fisherman could see the damn thing.
I was in a thirty foot sloop off Daytona Beach, on the home stretch of a two week sail from Cape Cod to Fort Lauderdale. The weather was sunny, the wind was light, and we were close to shore on a beam reach with the spinnaker flying, trying to cheat upwind as much as possible. Out of nowhere, an atomic submarine appeared a couple of hundred yards away at the most. Didn't make a sound.
There were a lot of technical issues with many of the systems it was too bad the problems with the class weren't elaborated on in a more detailed manner.
That said, the stealth technology alone could lend itself to several roles. Landing group fire support being only one of them. As a forward passive EW and sonar picket, the class would excel. A nasty surprise for anything that wanders within it's detection and missile range. Replacing those unusable 155 mm guns is sad but an absolute must. They were a good idea but there are other off the shelf autoloading 155 mm options available. Some with ranges in excess of 50Km. Even one of them with a large magazine would be worth it. Considering the vast amount of NATO ammunition choices available and research still ongoing. Including barrel launched UAV's and loiter rounds.
@@gusgone4527 You just aren't going to make a ship stealthy enough as you can't control aspect to target as well as you can in the air as you will likely be getting pinged from multiple directions. Also you aren't moving fast enough to be difficult to track once detected. Stealth just doesn't translate from airplanes and subs to surface vessels very well. Dynamics of the fight are just fundamentally different. That said it isn't useless to reduce detectiibility, it just doesn't open up fundamentally new capabilities like it does with different platforms. Passive detection is for the work of deployables and subs. Project was ultimately a boondoggle along with the even worsely conceived LCS.
@@AmericanDiscord funny how no one is ever held accountable for the sheer volume of waste on these boondoggles. I have no problem with developing one of these ships and dumping money into a platform to get it all sorted then moving on to a class of ships but this and the LCS especially are examples of how not to move forward.
They keep asking a ship to do too many tasks. The littoral combat ship has the same probems. Too few crew, and isn't good at any particular mission. So the number built gets cut. Dedicated purpose built ships are allways more useful. Another example is the F-111 that was supposed to be a fighter but was a pig in the air.
The biggest problem is that the US Navy has absolutely no need for littoral combat capability. It is a complete canard. What happens to big boats inshore? They get annihilated. That the Navy then and now continues to blind itself to the fatal vulnerabilities of these stupid boats is astonishing.
You're figuring out that multi role is a scam. F16 was built as a bad ass clear weather fighter but turned into a multi role bad ass. Same with the f15. Build good products and you'll find the roles they fit. Build "multirole" products and welcome to development hell
Yea, big boys, bigger budget & dreams of the perfect big annihilating toys. The good thing, as others mentioned, is the tech & advancements spawned from the testbed aspects of the boat. Not cheap R& D though…
I had to stop from doing a spit take - the Captain, *James* A. *Kirk!?* Love it. It’s ironic because the Zumwalt was an experimental craft that didn’t really deliver and was refitted and rolled into regular fleet service - like the Excelsior. 😎
After the cold war the Navy wanted to make ships that required a much smaller crew, and have less maintenance to do. Lots of time was wasted on removing rust, prep, prime, and repainting the exterior. And we had to do lots of preventative maintenance. The Arleigh Burke Class destroyer has some built in stealth in the design, and some radar absorbing techniques. The Zumwalt was supposed to be stealth on a whole new level. And most of the time the actual top speed is not given. You can expect 5-10% faster speeds than listed without trying very hard.
It is a beautiful ship and highly capable. The problem is it’s too sophisticated for its own good. Remember, wether a cheap destroyer or an expensive Zumwalt, it only take one torpedo to sink it. The ship is too expensive to lose it and too expensive to keep it. 🤷🏻♂️🇺🇸
@@zer0bre The tip-off to this truth was the statement 'parts of the ship came from all 50 States'....yep, a floating pork project. They make large proposals that get Congress all excited for the pork coming to their States...but then have to cut back to less than 10% because of the cost over-runs that should have been predicted, but if an honest proposal had been offered they'd never have approved it.
With a price tag that large & 14 years to finally satisfy everything i doubt a torpedo will take out that destroyer, its was originally intended to have laser weapons, & hyper technology to combat a war with china!
I remember seeing these ships from the bridge on Rt. 1 when they were being built at BIW. They looked incredible; like something out of a Terminator movie. Often technological "orphans" like this wind up finding alternate roles that they excel at even more than the ones they were originally designed for; hopefully we'll see something like that here.
"often technological 'orphans' like this wind up...", no stop. this is unprecedented... this is thing has weapons systems that arent even fully operational and might one day replace older tech once costs become more reseaonable. this is like building the fuselage of a starship for intersteller travel while the propulsion system is still centuries away. its too early to be effective in combat with the state of these weapon systems and not worth retrofitting it with more current tech and risking it in deployment. simply put, this was an expensive mistake. there was no point in wasting money on what amounts to a glorified prototype that will sitting on the shelf until the weapons system tech catches up with it. there should have been more testing of viability, before this project was green lit. absolutely put the horse infront of the carriage on this one, if ever it has been done on any military project, and now everything they do from this point forward over the next 30 years, will just be attempts to justify this mistake and show sone semblance of a silver lining.
I live close to Bath Iron Works where these were built. First time i saw Zumwalt sitting in the kennebec river I was thinking WTH is that?? Strange ship indeed. Many acquaintances and friends i know have worked on this project and have said the same basic things: It was a failure the Navy isn't really sure what to do with. The concept is cool, but it has been marred with cost overruns, system failures and weapons issues.
Navy originally planned to buy 30 of these things. Never could get the rail gun to work. No others will be built. Navy will stick with the Burkes, they are excellent ships. That gigantic superstructure reminds me of the Albany class cruisers after modification. One hell of a big target there...must look like an island on radar.
This Is What You’re Told. No One Can Prove Anything The Ship, Is Really Capable. I Can Assure You, That You Would Be Shocked To Know, The Ship Can Submerge Into The Sea. There Is An Aerial Version As Well. Unprovable
Interesting that this popped in my feed. I was a sub contractor on the dd21 project, software principal architect on the system that handled all the spec and designs for the program. The first proof of concept was released in 3 weeks and took over 2100 man hours. Which won Northrop Grumman a 5 mil bonus. I didnt see any of that lol. But it was interesting times. Was onsite for quite a while as well and went to Virginia a couple of times.
I think that eventually, we will get a Zumwalt II, when the technologies mature. It was a case of too many brand cutting edge systems that didn't play nicely. We'll get it, but probably not for a solid 45-90 years.
Agreed. Too many advances and every one loses their shit over the bill. But the following next gen usally prove cheap (ish). And what is getting replaced next are the Arleigh Burke's - so a few billion to prove concepts is not the end of the world. Plus no body else can afford to do that. Relax America, you are safe...............
The Burke class DDG’s are at their limits for supporting electronics. The hull of the Zumwalt class is stealthy and has enormous electrical generation. Along with that AEGIS and more missile capacity than other warships. Failures are the gun system and new complex systems need debugging. A failure? Maybe… but clearly it offers lessons.
The gun didn't fail, it was the ammunition. When they cancelled 27 of the ships, they also cut back the ammunition order and thus the cost per round also went up significantly. The problem was they didn't start with simply navalizing a pair of 155mm guns with conventional shells as used by the USMC and US Army M109 SP Guns and 155mm towed howitzers, prove the gun and ammunition worked at sea, and then develop the LR shells so that they could be used by all services 155mm guns.
For a while now I've wondered why the military doesn't go to a modular form factor. Design all new/future ships to be modular in their kit. Systems designed from the start to be swappable with minimal down time due to a unified base set. Have a destroyer that you need to change out from one role to another for a mission/deployment? Pull up to the dock, gantry crane pulls out the missle banks and drops in a multi-helicopter pad or a large diameter gun turret. All within a day or two and the ship is back under way.
Modularity requires way more engineering work up front. What goes from we'll just weld it in there during construction becomes we need to figure out where to place these bolts, how to access them and how to make these 3 other parts removeable also.
In theory this would be a great idea, it may work one day when we can start 3-D printing ships in their dry docks so the margins between ships of the same class are a lot tighter. Shipbuilding is still a hand built bespoke affair like it was a hundred years ago, we would need a company like Tesla or Apple to re-imagine the industry practices from design all the way to construction and maintenance for this to work.
I heard it was cancelled because it failed its stability tests and was unstable at high turning speeds It was also designed for the new railgun system which has never been finished and seems to be abandoned for now It was from all accounts a failed folly of a ship with good intentions when it was designed but took to long to build putting it beyond the capabilities it was designed for
@@rockpadstudios well to be fair, in the case of the military they DO learn from these failed things they now know what works and what doesn't in relation to the Zumwalt. now you may argue its a waste of money but it's better to describe it as an investment so future ships do not fail the same way and have them lose even MORE money.
incorrect on stability and turning speeds. it was easily the most stable ship i have ever been on. It was so smooth/stable it actually made some of the fun maneuvers boring
A pity that the class hasn't worked out. I really like the look of the ships - that tumblehome bow is very reminiscent of early 20th-century warships! It's often said that "you can learn more from mistakes than from successes", so given that a few mistakes seem to have been made with this class, that sounds like a really good "learning opportunity" for the U.S. Navy!
$12 billion dollars is a bloody expensive 'Learning Opportunity'. I'm Australian. That would be practically our entire defence budget for a year. Or what the American taxpayer gave Ukraine last weekend...
@@doughesson i forget, but its something like 100k i think per shaft. don't hold me to it. 4 shafts (2 per reactor). still going to be a LOT more than a Zumwalt.
I was on the nimitz reactor power is 550MW each, but electrical is 8x8MW gens, and not even total engine room power because of constantly making steam for the catapult accumulators. So yea 78MW is a lot.
I stood watch on Nimitz class SSTG/CTG's. There are only 8 of them at 8MW each with another 8MW of Diesel backup, total 72MW. The four CTG's are dedicated solely to powering the reactor coolant pumps. Your 1100MW is the total power output of both reactors, the vast majority of which goes to the four main engines, totaling 260k shaft HP(194MW), which I also stood watch on. The Carnot steam cycle has a theoretical max efficiency of approx 35%. So 65% of that 1.1GW is waste heat dumped into the ocean. And in a Pressurized Water Reactor design, only 1% of the Uranium fuel is actually burned over the core's 25 year life.
The way I see it, we need to fail before we can learn from our failures. The Zumwalt class was a failure, but by our next destroyer or the one after that, you’ll see what we learned.
Building subs when you have never built them before is folly. The Collins boats are pretty good these days but still have significant limitations. The scary thing is that the much mooted nuclear powered future Australian boats will just be a lengthened Collins class with a reactor shoehorned in.. Australian won't be getting LA/Virginia/Trafalgar/Astute boats sadly; just a poor relation.
It was cutting the number of vessels in the class which forced up the price of the 155mm ammunition. The rounds were costed on 2 guns per ship, 32 ships, and 750 rounds per gun. That's 48,000 rounds, with development costs built into the price of each one. So when the class was cut to 3 ships, with just 4,500 rounds, even an overly simplistic 48k/4.5k=10.7 calculation can show you how and why the ammunition cost exploded.
Your analysis is incorrect. The Navy already paid to develop the gun and ammunition so the development costs should not be added back to the cost of the shell. The Navy should only pay for the cost of producing the shell. I am sure there would be some economies of scale but not enough to reduce it to the original estimate which was $68K per shell. The cost exploded because the Navy and the supplier were overly optimistic about the costs. This is typical of Pentagon procurement because generals and admirals don't get punished for screwing up purchasing decisions.
@@andrews.9286 FALSE.. BAe expected to ammortize the costs to develop the shells over the entire production run of them when they quoted a price to the Navy for them.
Projectile and propelling charge unit costs, already high, skyrocketed when the number of ships, and the amount of projectiles, were decreased - losing the lower unit cost benefits of large production runs. The original intent of the ship wax to provide replacement for the fire support abilities of the battleships. However the projectile was merely a fragmentation round. It was certainly useful to some degree, but the effects on the enemy would have not been close to equivalent to a 16" shell, even given the high precision of the guided round. Basically, it seems that no one at the highest levels of the Navy reviewed the progress of these ships and considered the changing environment it was to work in, or the effects of the cost reductions on the capability of the ship, and hence its viability. It is a waste that no one has taken responsibility for. More adult thinking was desperately needed.
Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all. I'm confident we learned a lot from this experience and will put that knowledge to great use in the future.
Over priced and not worth the time and resources put into it. They found out it wasn't worth anything but it sure looked pretty even if it falls apart and is not able to do what the navy planned for.
It seems to me as most of the problems with all of these new military machines is the rushing of the technology and The Cutting of the funding at the same time while expecting world class results
I think the three Zumwalts we have will still be highly valuable, not just as R&D test beds for future tech, but as special operations platforms for missions, such as reconnaissance, deployment of SEAL teams, and as first strike weapons. Kind of a wild card we can hold to for a rainy day.
I think they are badass, do they even need weapons? Can you imagine being a captain on an enemy ship and seeing three of these things coming at you, I would high tail it right out of there full throttle
Yup, what if a missile or guided bomb penetrated the hull or super structure? That design to me would contain the blast wave withing the ship structure, and with all of those fancy computers and such running everything, a loss of significant power would be a very bad thing...
It wont, modern ships are not designed to resist hits, not really armor or enough redundancy, they are relying on active defense and electronics, on the words of a sci-fi writer, those ships are eggshells armed with sledgehammers
Considering the modern tank can't shrug off attacks, I imagine there is little hope for modern warships. Blame the lack of innovation, that armoring has not been keeping up with weaponry.
@@elizabethlestrad5282 Modern warships, not this thing though, are made to withstand multiple strikes. It's called "damage control" and the best navies are the ones who practice it constantly. This ship lacked the crew to properly address any form of damage done to it. The rest of the US fleet, including support ships are built so that damaged areas can be sealed off and repairs effected to prevent them from sinking even if they are blown in half.
this is what happens when the govt provides a very loose spec and let the contractors loose to put it together. this class and the LCS were contractor-led projects (vs the Arliegh Burkes which were driven by the navy's design departments)
I think aspects of the ship are salvageable. We know that the hull design works as intended, so I'd start a project that takes the design, shrinks the size by 1/3 to 1/2, utilize mature technologies for power and systems and utilize drop in modules for power, propulsion and weapons. This way they can have specialized versions that use the same basic hull. Think AR-15 ship.
You’re wrong, the hull is very unstable in moderate to heavy seas plus many other problems… it’s a Turd, a giant Navy Goat F*ck. Just a little research will tell you of the multitude of shortcomings, most revolving around immature technologies, massive cost overruns and armament that is way too expensive.
a large part of ship design is the hull shape. ships have that V so when they roll they can hopefully spring back up. They probably found out that the zumwalt is too tippy in rough seas. I would figure it would capsize.
Captain Kirk :) There were also some significant basic mechanical design flaws in that the ship started showing severe cracks all along the beam within weeks. These ships are not permitted to sail in rough seas as a result. Another huge waste of taxpayer money
A bit about my opinion of the sponsor, Babbel, I like Rosettastone, I've a lifetime subscription to it and it offers 20 languages. Including Arabic, Japanese , Chinese (Mandarin) Russian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Gaelic, English, Italian, French, just to name a few.
The ammo for those guns was enormously expensive it was inconceivable... $800000 per round The ship was ultimately a failure because if it. they'll retire it cuz it doesn't meet any of the current requirements for any designated ship. It cant fit enough missiles to be anything. The engines were another problem if my mind serves me right....
A lot of that has to do with economies of scale. Because they scrapped the plans to build the rest of the Zumwalt ships, the ammunition orders were reduced, and cost per unit went up. Now, there are plenty of reasons why that class was canceled, not the least of which was the privatized maintenance contracts, but I believe the ammo cost issues were a result of the cancellation, not the cause of it.
It needs 3 tugs to accompany her wherever she goes in case she breaks down which is often. All the enemy has to do is spot the non stealth radar returns of the tugs to know where she is. The admirals in the pentagon got rich off the kickbacks procuring this lemon.
I love how he says it’s so powerful but I remember at the beginning of this year watching a video by the dark series saying the opposite and how terrible it really is
The Navy canceled the Seahawk attack submarine class for being too expensive. Instead they took the most cost effective features and incorporated them in the Virginia class submarines. The Navy is doing the same with the new successor of the Arleigh Burke destroyer class, a very successful class copied by many western navies. The Zumwalt's were canceled for being to expensive as a fleet destroyer class for the USN. The most cost effective features will be incorporated in the new class. A personal and professional observation, I have found the "Dark" seas-sky vlogs to be extremely unreliable in observations and conclusions.
Granted the Zumwalt-class are closer to cruisers than destroyers. Although it was more politically acceptable to label them as destroyers, despite their overall displacement.
no the shells wouldn't have cost that much. They cost that much because only a handful were built before congress axed the whole money pit. So the price of tooling and R&D was piled on a few munitions, not batches of 1000s.
The funny part is the navy was looking for something significantly cheaper than a Tomahawk cruise missile and in the end each shell cost almost as much as one.
Conspiracy Theory: The Navy always planned to use it as a hypersonic missile platform, but they knew that technology would take a lot longer to develop. They also wanted to test out railguns but just to understand them to know their economic requirements and what forms of defense would be required. Like the Sea Wolf, everyone kinda knew they would be overpriced but they only wanted a small number in the first place...so the dominoes were set and congress followed their predictable path. So now we have a small number of stealth warships a little ahead of hypersonic missiles finishing development. Clearly the hypersonics took a few years longer than expected. Or...I'm wrong and someone was creative in repurposing them for hypersonics.
We have working Lasers on ships aircraft. My believe is that's what we were working on when the rest were doing there hypersonic trials. We actually caught up in that area as well at this point in time.
Just down the river is the Maine Maritime Museum ( Well worth your time to visit, plan half a day there) and I jumped on the harbor tour boat for an extra $7, Zumwalt was in the finishing stages and there were 2 patrol boats with a 50 on the bow. With 50 tourists snapping pictures of it LOL. Anyway the deck gun costs 100K to fire, it's a smart round, bottm line, there isn't much live fire target practice happening.
I dig the multi-compartmental individual shipping container like assembly visually melding into one. Which would think has got to be better able to isolate breeches while remaining water tight Sections retain buoyancy. As to why some sections made out of different materials, must be something specific to type of operations carried out. Requiring something in between unlike materials made out of different properties to prevent reactive corrosion.
The method you see in this video has been in use for 40 years, its not new or novel. Typically all naval vessels are aluminum main deck and above to reduce weight.
Fredenburg went on to detail problems relating to the skyrocketing costs, lack of accountability, unrealistic goals, a flawed concept of operations, the perils of designing a warship around stealth, and the failure of the Advanced Gun System. He concludes: The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster.
It wasn't explained in the video, but those 800k dollar artillery shells are so expensive because their production line was not scaled up to meet the needs of 32 ships. Just three ships meant it stayed in the hand-made initial production phase, which is much more expensive, per shell. Also, the gun was a stop-gap until railguns would be ready, and this thought was part of the reason that so much electrical energy was made available for the ship. Also, because it uses less sailors, it's cheaper to operate. The savings will make up for its doubling of cost compared to an Arleigh Burke class over the lifetime of the ship. Also not mentioned in the video, the low crew size made many have doubts about the crew's ability to perform damage control. But also, the vertical launch missile cells are on the outside of the ship, instead of clustered together near the middle, precisely to make the ship more survivable once hit. Something tells me we will be needing this ship sooner or later, and it's a mistake not to field them.
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Ich denke ich kann schon genug Deutsch. Aber sonst ist Babel super. Wir sehen uns in der App
Fuck RUclips!!!!!
Thanks, I already speak 7 languages fluent and 3 at least understandable.
I want to learn Klingon
I don't think the Zumwalt was so powerful they couldn't build anymore. It was such a powerful failure they couldn't build anymore. It was massively expensive and none of it's systems worked. How can you consider something a _"technical marvel"_ when none of the technology worked? That's not marvelous, that's a disaster.
I disagree. They took a chance to create something way out of the box, and they learned a ton from doing this, and many technical details that are probably going to other newer ships.
There is always a cost to evolution even through failure. I agree it is not meant for this time based on the report half of the systems were not capable enough because we basically do not have the technology currently. Agree or disagree sometimes you have to push the boundaries and this one is probably 50 years out due to technology.
@@rg20322 I would normally agree with you on the points you have made. But normally you would make one test bed prototype to learn and gain experience for the new technologies. But instead they built a hole class of ships. This is either to much money in there budget, that they have money to waste. Or not enough oversight. Which usually gets wrapped up in politics. Either way this thing is in the very least a disappointment.
It was it's structure that failed it the thing was riping apart right in it's metal Hall.
It was massively expensive because they decided to only build three, this meant that all the R&D and engineering costs were spread across three ships rather than 30. The per unit cost of 30 would have been way lower.
Biggest plinking popcan known to man. Garbage ship.
That's one hell of a misleading title lmfao
@@Mal101M
Basically she’s so advanced most of her systems are completely inoperable and needs constant refits. Her guns have no ammo and her last ship of the class had to get a cheaper hull because of budget concerns
@@Mal101M the ship is a false bill of goods. It was supposed to have all these advanced (expensive) weapon systems that never materialized. Eventually being replaced with more conventional systems. Pretty much the only thing useful that came from this program is the propulsion and powerplant. Monstrosities like these get sold to the government as a magic bean to solve all issues past and future. They're more welfare for the military industrial complex than anything else
Seriously lol, I saw the zumwalt but remembered the propulsion fuckery and thought wtf
@@Mal101M because having 2 arleigh Burke’s is better
@@Mal101M that and they just didn't work
I worked with Captain Zumwalt (RET), during his civilian career. He was the son of admiral Zumwalt. He got invited to the commissioning of the first Zumwalt class ship. Great guy too.
Well the things Hull is weak to be a long term blue water ship! Type of thing you keep in Port till you attack, not Patrol with it.
@@randyross5630 Jesus can you both spell
So great a guy, I keep hearing stories of corruption and micro management, almost on level with the guys who wrote the Aussie white paper. Such a great guy.
@@erikreddington461 the micromanagement problem comes from a combination of loss of experience and a need to cover your ass. We are too concerned with punishing the mistake rather than learning from it. All the lessons learned are piled on top of a mountain of procedures that take years to learn. When an accident happens, everyone trys to find a procedure to pin to the idiot who made a mistake. On paper it makes sense and in practice.the result is we suck at building ships now. I worked for general dynamics for 8 years.
Admiral Zimwalt, was a disaster for the Navy. I was there.
After retiring from the Navy in '82 (7 years as Chief of Staff at Naval Research Labs), my uncle worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab where he helped define some of the characteristics of what became the Next Gen Destroyer.
I never got a chance to talk with him about what he did and saw in his R&D years.
I know he couldn't talk about the things that are IN the Zumwalt, but I would have loved to hear about some of the blue-sky ideas that DIDN'T pan out.
RIP, Leigh... you were a helluva pilot and engineer.
they all got scrap becouse they could figure out the drive system it was junk from the start
Now he has to register with local sheriffs office every time he moves😸
@mmkucharczyk81 "they all got scrap because..."
1) WHAT got scrap ? His friend Leigh ?
Or the ideas he talked about ?
What exactly are YOU replying to ?
2) don't try to debate, in a language you don't know how to use.
Ignore the a$$h*les below. People today think their opinion is fact. When it ISNT ? They Try to mould the argument around their opinion.
I too would have loved to hear the stories told by R+D guys. The things - as you said - that DIDNT pan out, would be more Interesting.
I currently think that they should consider adding naval drones and smaller air drones to the ship's toolset. Because they already carry some of the larger helicopter drones they have the required maintenance workshops. I think serving almost as a drone carrier would be a great way to use these ships. Drone technology has progressed so much that I think it is going to play a larger part in naval warfare in the future.
Good thinking Brian
had the same idea. I've seen drones being used in Ukraine like tanks in WW2. Mass supplying these ships with drones and a possible retrofit could modernize the navy entirely.
Well on a happy note I would point to the Seawolf, a far overly expensive sub which was also cancelled due to changing world event and the horrific price tag. Yet the Seawolf served as the test bed for technologies which would decades later be incorporated into the far more reasonable Virginia class which makes up the modern sub force. So perhaps the Zumwalts will likewise be a valuable experience for future ship building decades from now.
The Seawolf ran into something while at sea in October, about ten sailors were hurt. There was damage. Apparently, near Taiwan?
Actually, the Connecticut, the captain and others were relieved of duty. The Connecticut is of the Sea wolf Class... How many did we build?
Virginia class came out BEFORE Seawolf
Exactly.....the Virginia class subs are really good platforms......and a lot of the tech came from Seawolf.
God dam someone how gets it.
The problem with all weapons systems is the "cost plus" arrangement between the Pentagon and its contractors. Congress should request a set in concrete price per unit, and a set in concrete delivery time. Every penny in excess will be swallowed by the contractor, and a 1 million per day of delay fine will be assessed on the contractor. Furthermore, anyone working at the Pentagon will be banned from working from any company that does business with the Pentagon for a period of 20 years. Failure to comply will mean the worker will have a permanent residence at Ft. Leavenworth.
Do you want to bankrupt every defense company in the US? I understand the frustration at companies for development overruns but this is far to harsh.
Your idea has some merit. The 20 years might be just as effective at 10 years, but yes, a good idea.
Now, if we could require the "commander in chief of the armed forces" (the President) to lead the troops into battle in any significant military conflict, that might result in fewer military actions by the U.S. Of course, we couldn't actually let him lead anything; he doesn't know shit about conducting a war.
However, I think that it would increase troop morale tremendously to have the president up front, leading the way; and think of the media coverage! He would be extensively protected, so the likelihood of injury or death to himself would be minimal. However, having the president out in the field would mean no political campaigning, and no living the high life for the duration of the operation. I think that this would be of positive benefit to the American people.
Too extreme? Probably.
As "Just Fun" stated - bankrupting defense contractors because of cost overruns is not the solution.
Besides, I used to think the US military had serious problems - then I started watching a Russian clown show that started in February. Lately I'm feeling pretty good about our military :)
We can only dream.
@@Quidisi We have issues like any other but unlike the Russians the US military really is professional.
The only destroyer sunk by her own guns.
agreed, this was a huge failure now they’re trying to make it look like it’s ahead of its time lol
@@jamesweir2943 they have been talking about cheaper artillery rounds that can go 1100 miles or so. I wish this pushed them to move forward and load up some navy ships like these.
@@jamesweir2943 Even without the guns it is still a stealth platform with lots of electrical power for whatever electronics you want, which the Arleigh's can't provide. Simply doing what they already are right now, which is yanking the guns out in exchange for more vertical launch tubes makes it as effective as you want in modern warfare being a stealth destroyer with long range munitions delivery. It's just using missiles instead of shells.
I view her more like a X-plane; trying out new ideas to see what does and what doesn't work.
@@shauny2285 x-plane with full operational tax funded order for more then 20 ships? Glad they got canceled before they made more. Can you ask them for volunteers like you to pay for them and leave my taxes out of it?
Love how you had to specify the captain of THIS ship is James A. Kirk, so as to not be confused with James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise.
He got Promoted to the Rank of Rear Admiral IIRC...I want him to take USS Enterprise CVN-80 out on her Maiden Voyage lol
What kind of ribbing did " Captain James Kirk " have to go through? What a name to have and then join the Navy. WOW!
This is the most advanced ship I've ever been honored to board. I toured top decks, below decks and bridge. She is an advanced, high speed warrior without a mission, currently, but things could change in a way that would make her invaluable. Zumwalt!
personally i see a role as a recon/spy ship but replacing the BB-new jersey no the armor and gun fire power isn't there to do heavy shore bombardment or go toe to toe with other heavy handed ship's
Lord yes. It's like walking into the starship enterprise.
He said it's being fitted with supersonic missiles. That would make it like an above sea submarine given its stealth. Is 30 knots faster than a nuclear or attack sub?
She is sitting in dry dock from the comments due to electrical problems. So much for reliability
I have not had the honor for seeing one of these in person but.....the AAW capability just started testing....for a ship that's been around for over 10 years these things have been sailing without any real armaments.
I feel it was optimistic to view these ships as operational vessels when it seems more appropriate to classify them as technology test beds. With this in mind protracted development, cost over runs and abandoned features are to be expected.
Cost over-runs are what killed it. The overwhelming number of uncorrectable issues with them was just icing on the cake. Congress had enacted new restrictions on procurement of new weapon systems that automatically cancel any contract if it goes over-budget by a certain percent, and this system hit that before they had even managed to build all the ships that were ordered.
My thoughts exactly. It costs to be the boss.
Wrong - The Deep State Gen. POTUS Eisenhower & Kennedy Warned us about- ⚔ Military Industrial 🏭 Complex at work - The Stealth Ship So Powerful They Couldn't Build Any More - Capt. James A. Kirk...LOL 😂 😂
4.4 billion sounds like a lot until you hear about the Biden administration sending over 40 billion to every other country in the world.
@@jason4130 The Zumwalt was never built with aluminum though, I think you are referring to the independence class.
Was on Michael Monsoor. The 2017 sea trial wasn't a complete failure. Something just failed to work that was vital to the testing and we couldn't complete them. The Navy just labeled it as a 'failure'. Everything up until that point was working better than the Zumwalt. It was just a very unfortunate thing. Hey, shit happens. *Shrugs*
A failure is a failure…….
@@rydplrs71 is a failure
@@rydplrs71 and that failure is where we learn not to repeat it. They ain't stopping to build another type of zumwalt class
@@rydplrs71 Only if you dont learn from your mistakes. Unfortunately the Military Industrial Complex projects are designed to fail so the Contractors can milk more money above and beyond the agreed price to fix "problems".
The Zumwalt class was built by Bath Shipyards...who also build the Arleigh Burke. They dont care if the Navy cancels the Zumwalt because will just switch to building more flight 3 Burke's.
Shouldn't one of the primary purposes of our taxes in funding the government be R&D, pushing technology and keeping ahead of all the bad guys out there, including most of our so-called allies? We do need to be smart about this and maybe some of this tech was a bit of a stretch, but also why there are the sea trials and a chance to learn and correct, and change course if we need to. When one is pushing cutting edge tech, it is expensive and failures are to be expected. What is most sad and dangerous is when we don't recognize our failures and opportunities and then people die. An example of this might be the donked up Navy torpedo development in WWII that cost lives and wartime failures.
I’m no engineer, but seems like the problem is trying to build the systems to fit the ship , instead of building the ship to fit the systems.
But the Navy DID successfully build a fine Destroyer. A Destroyer of Resources, that is. Perhaps they pay the crew too much.
@@ridethecurve55 We all know the "pay the crew too much" portion is incorrect. This entire project felt rushed, completed out of order, and the contracting companies made 3000% overhead profits. If only the requirements for the build were completed correctly by business analysts, engineers were given the time to flush out the details of the details, cost projections were checked and then double-checked, realistic time schedules were given; but instead almost all business units were axed multiple times and they had to do what they could with what they had and just get it off their billets.
This is my take anyway from what I know and what I assume based on the obvious gaps in this program.
I think the issue there though was that they wanted to "future-proof" the ship to a considerable degree in order to integrate systems that were still in R&D or didn't even exist yet (i.e. lasers, railguns, future SPY and other sensor systems, etc.)
@@ridethecurve55 hahahahahaha
Is $2.50 an hour overpaying the crew?
This POS was a failure because the design sucked
And since it sucked, it was scrapped
@@qk-tb2df I hear about problems with materials. Aluminum bulkheads cracking, the rail-gun not being able to survive the heat of more than a few shots, to name the few I can think of. I wonder if material science, and research makes some strides, we will see a successful successor to this ship? I am not happy with the incredible amount of money dumped into the ocean with this. But I can hope that enough lessons were learned throughout it, that at least some of those advancements might be integrated into a future program.
Hats off to the boys in the orange bandannas. They helped develop & design the XForbit3Z2 System.
The government built an overpriced, underachieving stealth ship. Unlike the ship's radar signature, it was easy to see this coming.
Just because they "drastically reduced the cross section" doesn't mean anything. Even small fishing boats are GIANT targets on open water. It's not a friggin submarine. What a rip off of taxpayer dollars...
It was built by the navy, a branch with expertise in milking the government.
Wasn't stealth, it failed, that's why they scrapped it.
@@tylerdurden4006 no such thing as stealth on top of the water.......
@@Mr._Infamous there is 🤦♂️
Damage control may be compromised with the skeleton crew. A “lucky” hit could take out the entire operational computing systems.
Hey, a luck hit sunk the HMS Hood.
The whole design philosophy of modern aircraft and ships is to not get hit in the first place, modern systems are simply too lethal for "tanking a hit" to be considered a viable option
The other way of protecting ships is not to put two redundant systems in the same place. That includes engines now.
The other alternative is to build expendable unmanned systems and swarm your opponents.
@@mattstorm360 Thanks for supporting my very point.
I agree about damage control being sacrificed with reduced manning. If a ship is hit DC is crucial to it's survival while staying in the fight or at least staying afloat.
I love the plexiglass with grease pencil writing like the old WWII Bogie Tote Board shown at 12:30…and I busted a gut reading “DCPO Spotcheck”. Ships routines never change.
Simple and reliable, and works even if there is no power to the ship. So there is little reason to change it.
5:11 what I found most interesting is that this ship is under the command of Captain James Kirk. I guess it is not for another few centuries that he takes the helm of the Enterprise.
I enjoy all of your channels! Thank for your time and hard work
My Dad worked on that ship before he passed away. He was a Foreman at Bath Iron works in Maine
I think the reverse bow or the "X-Bow" is one of the coolest marine devolving evolution (oxymoron there) we've seen recently. By devolving I'm referring back to "outdated" technology. Vikings and Egypt used that technology to cross oceans, transporting large amounts of cargo in humans on waterways, and all ships before WW2 had the Atlantic bow or "Clipper" bow. The Atlantic bow has a better wet floor rating (meaning the deck is dry longer or not as wet in rough seas) making it better for war time activities.
@Yuck Foutube auto corrected "and" to "in" between cargo (ship) and people (cruise ship) is that better?
@@fredrik5407 it has many names that is why I made a reference...
its the ugliest thing ive ever seen.
@@coshyno I didn't say it look good but functionally it's far more efficient than the Atlantic bow seeing it cuts through waves not bouncing and floating over them. But like I said and Atlantic bow maintains a dry deck so it's better for fighting. But if they can ever figure out this technology they could have massive ships that would maintain level posture to launch planes VTOL aircraft or just all-around steady platform to release Munitions and weapons from. Anybody comes to protecting troops and Military assets the way it appears visually doesn't really matter if it's aesthetically pleasing or the ugliest thing in the world they're going to go function over form every time as they should.
This ship was built on the basis that the rail gun would be available by the time the ship was completed. That’s known as putting the cart before the horse. A ship is one thing but a weapons system is a whole other ball of wax! In short the Navy screwed the pooch on Zumwalt.
They did have rail guns in mind when they designed the electrical system, because you cannot simply modify a boat to run those things, but the video did talk about the failed weapon system that the Navy settled on.
It's a pity that the companies working on rail runs were simply taking the taxpayer for a ride. It's possible that the whole purpose of continuing to fund the project was just a ploy to get the Chinese to throw their money down the same rabbit hole, thinking we were onto something.
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U Yeah the cannons were a horrible waste of resources. Given they were too expensive to actually use. Although replacing them with hypersonic missles is quite impressive.
@@ThatsMrPencilneck2U Trying to con the Chinese into wasting their money is the stupidest excuse ever. Practically every cost they have is lower than Americas. The strange thing is there is footage around of super slow mo cameras that appear to show rail guns working. It makes you wonder just how close they got, and is the program shut forever?
@@tsubadaikhan6332 Trying to develop the weapon, just to fool the Chinese would be stupid. Pretending to develop the weapon, after determining that it doesn't work means just making announcement and releasing test footage of money you have already wasted. Why give the Chinese the advantage of already knowing it doesn't work?
In one regard the Rail guns were a sucess and functioned admirably. The high power costs would be mitagated by having a nuclear power plant on the ship. There was talk about retrofitting BBs giving them extended life this way.
The problem? What happens to metal when you pass current through it, especially with very temporary contact. The more current, the affect is amplified. With the incredible amount of current to fire the shells at the intended velocity to reach target ranges, it would create slag along the barrel. After "so many" uses, the barrel would need to be completely replaced. It was never divulged how many times "so many" referred to. DC Motors and Generators use graphite brushes to mitigate/prevent this problem, and while I would like to believe this was already considered putting a coating of graphite an the parts of the casing, or using brushes where it came in contact with the barrel, i found no evidence that it was ever used, let alone considered. It'd be so ignomenious if the reason the program failed is because they forgot to put in what is put between all moving electrical contacts in DC applications.
Did the navy fix that cracking that was occurring on some main part of the hull (from stress) ?? I heard about it once in a news snippet, then nothing more.
Can't believe we couldn't make cannon shells cheaper than that are freedom is priceless and nothing is to good for the people who fight for us
My brother-in-law was an electrician in the Navy, and he worked on the Zumwalt when it was in Maine at the Bath Ironworks. He told me when it was going through its testing phase, it had done so well that local Maine lobstermen and women couldn't see the vessel until it was nearly on top of them. The navy ended up having the line the Zumwalt with red flags so that the local fisherman could see the damn thing.
That isn't how stealth works, take your meds.
@@v4skunk739 I know right, I use to live above Bath (horrible people around that area) and it was incredibly visible at the Dock.
@@randyross5630 This just in: Boats visible at dock where there are no waves and no water horizon. Got the mind of a Mainer, no doubt...
@@v4skunk739 I believe he is talking about not seeing the vessel on the radar display there sparky
I was in a thirty foot sloop off Daytona Beach, on the home stretch of a two week sail from Cape Cod to Fort Lauderdale.
The weather was sunny, the wind was light, and we were close to shore on a beam reach with the spinnaker flying, trying to cheat upwind as much as possible.
Out of nowhere, an atomic submarine appeared a couple of hundred yards away at the most.
Didn't make a sound.
There were a lot of technical issues with many of the systems it was too bad the problems with the class weren't elaborated on in a more detailed manner.
That said, the stealth technology alone could lend itself to several roles. Landing group fire support being only one of them. As a forward passive EW and sonar picket, the class would excel. A nasty surprise for anything that wanders within it's detection and missile range. Replacing those unusable 155 mm guns is sad but an absolute must. They were a good idea but there are other off the shelf autoloading 155 mm options available. Some with ranges in excess of 50Km. Even one of them with a large magazine would be worth it. Considering the vast amount of NATO ammunition choices available and research still ongoing. Including barrel launched UAV's and loiter rounds.
@@gusgone4527 You just aren't going to make a ship stealthy enough as you can't control aspect to target as well as you can in the air as you will likely be getting pinged from multiple directions. Also you aren't moving fast enough to be difficult to track once detected. Stealth just doesn't translate from airplanes and subs to surface vessels very well. Dynamics of the fight are just fundamentally different. That said it isn't useless to reduce detectiibility, it just doesn't open up fundamentally new capabilities like it does with different platforms. Passive detection is for the work of deployables and subs. Project was ultimately a boondoggle along with the even worsely conceived LCS.
@@AmericanDiscord funny how no one is ever held accountable for the sheer volume of waste on these boondoggles. I have no problem with developing one of these ships and dumping money into a platform to get it all sorted then moving on to a class of ships but this and the LCS especially are examples of how not to move forward.
They keep asking a ship to do too many tasks. The littoral combat ship has the same probems. Too few crew, and isn't good at any particular mission. So the number built gets cut. Dedicated purpose built ships are allways more useful. Another example is the F-111 that was supposed to be a fighter but was a pig in the air.
F-35 TOO.
The biggest problem is that the US Navy has absolutely no need for littoral combat capability. It is a complete canard. What happens to big boats inshore? They get annihilated. That the Navy then and now continues to blind itself to the fatal vulnerabilities of these stupid boats is astonishing.
You're figuring out that multi role is a scam. F16 was built as a bad ass clear weather fighter but turned into a multi role bad ass. Same with the f15. Build good products and you'll find the roles they fit. Build "multirole" products and welcome to development hell
@Dennis Boulais truer words were never spoken.
Yea, big boys, bigger budget & dreams of the perfect big annihilating toys. The good thing, as others mentioned, is the tech & advancements spawned from the testbed aspects of the boat. Not cheap R& D though…
This ship is my new spirit animal.
I had to stop from doing a spit take - the Captain, *James* A. *Kirk!?* Love it. It’s ironic because the Zumwalt was an experimental craft that didn’t really deliver and was refitted and rolled into regular fleet service - like the Excelsior. 😎
Yeah i caught that too...can't go wrong having a Captain Kirk commanding your ship 👍
@@andrewsardina9404 That novelty would never wear off if i served under him, ha.
I would make sure that if deployed on April fools, that any crew who wanted to participate, wear StarTrek uniforms on the bridge.
After the cold war the Navy wanted to make ships that required a much smaller crew, and have less maintenance to do. Lots of time was wasted on removing rust, prep, prime, and repainting the exterior. And we had to do lots of preventative maintenance. The Arleigh Burke Class destroyer has some built in stealth in the design, and some radar absorbing techniques. The Zumwalt was supposed to be stealth on a whole new level. And most of the time the actual top speed is not given. You can expect 5-10% faster speeds than listed without trying very hard.
It is a beautiful ship and highly capable. The problem is it’s too sophisticated for its own good. Remember, wether a cheap destroyer or an expensive Zumwalt, it only take one torpedo to sink it. The ship is too expensive to lose it and too expensive to keep it. 🤷🏻♂️🇺🇸
The whole purpose of building something as expensive is to make money off of it. They couldn't care less about it's practicality.
@@zer0bre The tip-off to this truth was the statement 'parts of the ship came from all 50 States'....yep, a floating pork project. They make large proposals that get Congress all excited for the pork coming to their States...but then have to cut back to less than 10% because of the cost over-runs that should have been predicted, but if an honest proposal had been offered they'd never have approved it.
@@recoilrob324 The bottom line is a 10-million-dollar missile can take out any of these dinosaurs and that's the best investment
With a price tag that large & 14 years to finally satisfy everything i doubt a torpedo will take out that destroyer, its was originally intended to have laser weapons, & hyper technology to combat a war with china!
Yeah !!
I remember seeing these ships from the bridge on Rt. 1 when they were being built at BIW. They looked incredible; like something out of a Terminator movie. Often technological "orphans" like this wind up finding alternate roles that they excel at even more than the ones they were originally designed for; hopefully we'll see something like that here.
Perhaps they could convert it to a cruise ship.
"often technological 'orphans' like this wind up...", no stop. this is unprecedented... this is thing has weapons systems that arent even fully operational and might one day replace older tech once costs become more reseaonable. this is like building the fuselage of a starship for intersteller travel while the propulsion system is still centuries away. its too early to be effective in combat with the state of these weapon systems and not worth retrofitting it with more current tech and risking it in deployment. simply put, this was an expensive mistake. there was no point in wasting money on what amounts to a glorified prototype that will sitting on the shelf until the weapons system tech catches up with it. there should have been more testing of viability, before this project was green lit. absolutely put the horse infront of the carriage on this one, if ever it has been done on any military project, and now everything they do from this point forward over the next 30 years, will just be attempts to justify this mistake and show sone semblance of a silver lining.
Love driving over the bridge in Bath -
you think these ships look good ? The older ones always look better.
The only defining feature this turdball has: "it looks cool."
I live close to Bath Iron Works where these were built. First time i saw Zumwalt sitting in the kennebec river I was thinking WTH is that?? Strange ship indeed. Many acquaintances and friends i know have worked on this project and have said the same basic things: It was a failure the Navy isn't really sure what to do with. The concept is cool, but it has been marred with cost overruns, system failures and weapons issues.
The ammo is way too expensive too, right? Will these just sail on their own? No need to have a stealth ship floating around in a battlegroup.
It's called a propaganda meme to make weak minded people think that america actually has "stealth destroyers" 🤦♂️🤣
Navy originally planned to buy 30 of these things. Never could get the rail gun to work. No others will be built. Navy will stick with the Burkes, they are excellent ships. That gigantic superstructure reminds me of the Albany class cruisers after modification. One hell of a big target there...must look like an island on radar.
This Is What You’re Told. No One Can Prove Anything The Ship, Is Really Capable.
I Can Assure You, That You Would Be Shocked To Know, The Ship Can Submerge Into The Sea. There Is An Aerial Version As Well.
Unprovable
Where exactly is the costs coming from? We Swedes have had stealthy corvettes for 20+ years so it can't be only the stealth technology.
I like the new Zumwalt stealth destroyer, a lot! This is a project the US needs to keep working on to reach its goal.
Interesting that this popped in my feed. I was a sub contractor on the dd21 project, software principal architect on the system that handled all the spec and designs for the program. The first proof of concept was released in 3 weeks and took over 2100 man hours. Which won Northrop Grumman a 5 mil bonus. I didnt see any of that lol. But it was interesting times. Was onsite for quite a while as well and went to Virginia a couple of times.
I think that eventually, we will get a Zumwalt II, when the technologies mature. It was a case of too many brand cutting edge systems that didn't play nicely. We'll get it, but probably not for a solid 45-90 years.
Agreed. Too many advances and every one loses their shit over the bill. But the following next gen usally prove cheap (ish). And what is getting replaced next are the Arleigh Burke's - so a few billion to prove concepts is not the end of the world. Plus no body else can afford to do that. Relax America, you are safe...............
as long as they put captain kirk in charge, im ok with that! :)
Nah- I thinking we'll get it by '45 maybe '50. A good 2-3 decades, especially with AI input, will yield a Zumwalt II.
God help this country if that happens!.
Like Windows when it first came out. Patch after patch needed to keep it afloat. None played well together. Crashes and freezes.
The Burke class DDG’s are at their limits for supporting electronics. The hull of the Zumwalt class is stealthy and has enormous electrical generation. Along with that AEGIS and more missile capacity than other warships. Failures are the gun system and new complex systems need debugging. A failure? Maybe… but clearly it offers lessons.
Don’t forget the coating degrades quickly, and as soon as that starts it loses stealth. And that the combining gears are far from reliable.
@@rydplrs71 … clearly the navy was overreaching with new technologies.
@@rydplrs71 Not to mention the corrosion issues from the 2 types of metal.
The gun didn't fail, it was the ammunition. When they cancelled 27 of the ships, they also cut back the ammunition order and thus the cost per round also went up significantly. The problem was they didn't start with simply navalizing a pair of 155mm guns with conventional shells as used by the USMC and US Army M109 SP Guns and 155mm towed howitzers, prove the gun and ammunition worked at sea, and then develop the LR shells so that they could be used by all services 155mm guns.
@@DeeEight … the navy went about it in the most expensive way possible. I wonder if remodeling the two guns for standard 155mm is an option?
For a while now I've wondered why the military doesn't go to a modular form factor. Design all new/future ships to be modular in their kit. Systems designed from the start to be swappable with minimal down time due to a unified base set. Have a destroyer that you need to change out from one role to another for a mission/deployment? Pull up to the dock, gantry crane pulls out the missle banks and drops in a multi-helicopter pad or a large diameter gun turret. All within a day or two and the ship is back under way.
Ya they tried that. Look up the smoking dumpster fire that is the LCS program.
Modularity requires way more engineering work up front. What goes from we'll just weld it in there during construction becomes we need to figure out where to place these bolts, how to access them and how to make these 3 other parts removeable also.
Never worked in a shipyard or even seen how a warship is built, have you?
The tried it with the littoral combat ships. It didn't work and was too expensive.
In theory this would be a great idea, it may work one day when we can start 3-D printing ships in their dry docks so the margins between ships of the same class are a lot tighter. Shipbuilding is still a hand built bespoke affair like it was a hundred years ago, we would need a company like Tesla or Apple to re-imagine the industry practices from design all the way to construction and maintenance for this to work.
"The stealth ship so BAD, they couldn't build any more" there, helped you with that title.
Crazy how much it resembles the Monitor and Merrimack from the civil war era
I heard it was cancelled because it failed its stability tests and was unstable at high turning speeds
It was also designed for the new railgun system which has never been finished and seems to be abandoned for now
It was from all accounts a failed folly of a ship with good intentions when it was designed but took to long to build putting it beyond the capabilities it was designed for
You know the Internet stopped charging for periods many years ago.
@@riproar11 Hahahaha........
Yeah - complete failures are success stories now.
@@rockpadstudios well to be fair, in the case of the military they DO learn from these failed things they now know what works and what doesn't in relation to the Zumwalt. now you may argue its a waste of money but it's better to describe it as an investment so future ships do not fail the same way and have them lose even MORE money.
incorrect on stability and turning speeds. it was easily the most stable ship i have ever been on. It was so smooth/stable it actually made some of the fun maneuvers boring
A pity that the class hasn't worked out. I really like the look of the ships - that tumblehome bow is very reminiscent of early 20th-century warships!
It's often said that "you can learn more from mistakes than from successes", so given that a few mistakes seem to have been made with this class, that sounds like a really good "learning opportunity" for the U.S. Navy!
$12 billion dollars is a bloody expensive 'Learning Opportunity'. I'm Australian. That would be practically our entire defence budget for a year. Or what the American taxpayer gave Ukraine last weekend...
So you’re happy to pay a couple of hundred billion in taxes for these peace time experiments?
ugliest piece of junk ive ever seen.
78 megawatts is about 1/12th of what Aircraft carriers have (1100 megawatts on the Nimitz, 1300 on the Ford).
What's that in shaft horsepower?
This ain't the Royal Navy where you can grow a beard & drink off watch.
@@doughesson i forget, but its something like 100k i think per shaft. don't hold me to it. 4 shafts (2 per reactor). still going to be a LOT more than a Zumwalt.
@@plbmck798 Thanks.converting kilowatts to horsepower wasn't part of even the Propulsion Engineering Basics class I took in the Navy.
I was on the nimitz reactor power is 550MW each, but electrical is 8x8MW gens, and not even total engine room power because of constantly making steam for the catapult accumulators. So yea 78MW is a lot.
I stood watch on Nimitz class SSTG/CTG's. There are only 8 of them at 8MW each with another 8MW of Diesel backup, total 72MW. The four CTG's are dedicated solely to powering the reactor coolant pumps. Your 1100MW is the total power output of both reactors, the vast majority of which goes to the four main engines, totaling 260k shaft HP(194MW), which I also stood watch on. The Carnot steam cycle has a theoretical max efficiency of approx 35%. So 65% of that 1.1GW is waste heat dumped into the ocean. And in a Pressurized Water Reactor design, only 1% of the Uranium fuel is actually burned over the core's 25 year life.
This here is the DeLorean of the seas. Looks a hell of a lot cooler than it performs.
The way I see it, we need to fail before we can learn from our failures. The Zumwalt class was a failure, but by our next destroyer or the one after that, you’ll see what we learned.
The Australian Collins class submarine also suffered from ambitious planning during the contract writing stage. It was also a disaster initially
Building subs when you have never built them before is folly.
The Collins boats are pretty good these days but still have significant limitations.
The scary thing is that the much mooted nuclear powered future Australian boats will just be a lengthened Collins class with a reactor shoehorned in..
Australian won't be getting LA/Virginia/Trafalgar/Astute boats sadly; just a poor relation.
It was cutting the number of vessels in the class which forced up the price of the 155mm ammunition. The rounds were costed on 2 guns per ship, 32 ships, and 750 rounds per gun. That's 48,000 rounds, with development costs built into the price of each one. So when the class was cut to 3 ships, with just 4,500 rounds, even an overly simplistic 48k/4.5k=10.7 calculation can show you how and why the ammunition cost exploded.
Your analysis is incorrect. The Navy already paid to develop the gun and ammunition so the development costs should not be added back to the cost of the shell. The Navy should only pay for the cost of producing the shell. I am sure there would be some economies of scale but not enough to reduce it to the original estimate which was $68K per shell. The cost exploded because the Navy and the supplier were overly optimistic about the costs. This is typical of Pentagon procurement because generals and admirals don't get punished for screwing up purchasing decisions.
@@andrews.9286 FALSE.. BAe expected to ammortize the costs to develop the shells over the entire production run of them when they quoted a price to the Navy for them.
As a sailor I've always considered the z a joke. I'd hate to be stationed on that ship.
I love seeing the ship in my city. It's a shame it wasn't successful, its a beautiful ship.
From Dark Skies to Dark Seas - You are the best!
Proudly built in maine. Super cool to drive by the shipyard and see these and the older models being built.
I live in Maine BIW kicks Ass
And corrected in Jacksonville Florida at Atlantic Shipyards
When the ship you draw in 2nd grade becomes reality 🤷♂️🤷♂️
I don't see stick figures with labels like"Me!" wearing an ornate hat as everyone kowtows to you.
Projectile and propelling charge unit costs, already high, skyrocketed when the number of ships, and the amount of projectiles, were decreased - losing the lower unit cost benefits of large production runs.
The original intent of the ship wax to provide replacement for the fire support abilities of the battleships. However the projectile was merely a fragmentation round. It was certainly useful to some degree, but the effects on the enemy would have not been close to equivalent to a 16" shell, even given the high precision of the guided round.
Basically, it seems that no one at the highest levels of the Navy reviewed the progress of these ships and considered the changing environment it was to work in, or the effects of the cost reductions on the capability of the ship, and hence its viability. It is a waste that no one has taken responsibility for. More adult thinking was desperately needed.
Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all. I'm confident we learned a lot from this experience and will put that knowledge to great use in the future.
"A single computing system that can be controlled by any crew member from anywhere on the ship." Eh. They make rouge agent movies like this.
Over priced and not worth the time and resources put into it. They found out it wasn't worth anything but it sure looked pretty even if it falls apart and is not able to do what the navy planned for.
It seems to me as most of the problems with all of these new military machines is the rushing of the technology and The Cutting of the funding at the same time while expecting world class results
Same with trying to turn the west into buying all electric cars. Not ready yet.
What you just described is the story of the STS Space Shuttle. To a "T".
I agree,and add the military/Government wants a "does everything in one " ship, fighter plane,tank , whatever.
I think the three Zumwalts we have will still be highly valuable, not just as R&D test beds for future tech, but as special operations platforms for missions, such as reconnaissance, deployment of SEAL teams, and as first strike weapons. Kind of a wild card we can hold to for a rainy day.
I think they are badass, do they even need weapons? Can you imagine being a captain on an enemy ship and seeing three of these things coming at you, I would high tail it right out of there full throttle
When you get older you dont have wet dreams and you often pay less taxes, which means the government doesnt get to waste your money
@7:45 thats right everyone; it creates enough power for itself 😂
That's some collaboration between some of the giants of military tech. How could it not be a success with companies like those involved?
Let me correct that title for you, "ship so overpriced it world bankrupt the U.S. Navy to buy any more"... There fixed it.
The sheer complexity of this ship and its systems makes me wonder how well it would function if it took a hit.
Yup, what if a missile or guided bomb penetrated the hull or super structure? That design to me would contain the blast wave withing the ship structure, and with all of those fancy computers and such running everything, a loss of significant power would be a very bad thing...
It wont, modern ships are not designed to resist hits, not really armor or enough redundancy, they are relying on active defense and electronics, on the words of a sci-fi writer, those ships are eggshells armed with sledgehammers
Considering the modern tank can't shrug off attacks, I imagine there is little hope for modern warships. Blame the lack of innovation, that armoring has not been keeping up with weaponry.
@@elizabethlestrad5282 Modern warships, not this thing though, are made to withstand multiple strikes. It's called "damage control" and the best navies are the ones who practice it constantly. This ship lacked the crew to properly address any form of damage done to it. The rest of the US fleet, including support ships are built so that damaged areas can be sealed off and repairs effected to prevent them from sinking even if they are blown in half.
this is what happens when the govt provides a very loose spec and let the contractors loose to put it together. this class and the LCS were contractor-led projects (vs the Arliegh Burkes which were driven by the navy's design departments)
It's power system generates 100% of the power it needs to operate, astonishing! I forgot the rest of the navy needs to run power cords from the shore.
Very informative thanks👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
I think aspects of the ship are salvageable. We know that the hull design works as intended, so I'd start a project that takes the design, shrinks the size by 1/3 to 1/2, utilize mature technologies for power and systems and utilize drop in modules for power, propulsion and weapons. This way they can have specialized versions that use the same basic hull. Think AR-15 ship.
You’re wrong, the hull is very unstable in moderate to heavy seas plus many other problems… it’s a Turd, a giant Navy Goat F*ck. Just a little research will tell you of the multitude of shortcomings, most revolving around immature technologies, massive cost overruns and armament that is way too expensive.
Yeah but that makes sense so it won't happen.
a large part of ship design is the hull shape. ships have that V so when they roll they can hopefully spring back up. They probably found out that the zumwalt is too tippy in rough seas. I would figure it would capsize.
Captain Kirk :)
There were also some significant basic mechanical design flaws in that the ship started showing severe cracks all along the beam within weeks. These ships are not permitted to sail in rough seas as a result. Another huge waste of taxpayer money
I hope James Kirk gets to command the Enterpise someday.
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
A bit about my opinion of the sponsor, Babbel, I like Rosettastone, I've a lifetime subscription to it and it offers 20 languages. Including Arabic, Japanese , Chinese (Mandarin) Russian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Gaelic, English, Italian, French, just to name a few.
The ammo for those guns was enormously expensive it was inconceivable... $800000 per round The ship was ultimately a failure because if it. they'll retire it cuz it doesn't meet any of the current requirements for any designated ship. It cant fit enough missiles to be anything. The engines were another problem if my mind serves me right....
A lot of that has to do with economies of scale.
Because they scrapped the plans to build the rest of the Zumwalt ships, the ammunition orders were reduced, and cost per unit went up.
Now, there are plenty of reasons why that class was canceled, not the least of which was the privatized maintenance contracts, but I believe the ammo cost issues were a result of the cancellation, not the cause of it.
And all the aluminum supports were showing stress fractures not to mention all that aluminum makes one hell of a blow torch .
It needs 3 tugs to accompany her wherever she goes in case she breaks down which is often. All the enemy has to do is spot the non stealth radar returns of the tugs to know where she is. The admirals in the pentagon got rich off the kickbacks procuring this lemon.
Sounds like ruskie aircraft carrier always shadowed by tugs. I'll give you the zumwalt isn't such a bag of shit.🇬🇧
I love how he says it’s so powerful but I remember at the beginning of this year watching a video by the dark series saying the opposite and how terrible it really is
Yep, gotta get those clicks in to pay the bills!
Hull fatigue cracking up.. limp 🏡
You just gotta love that military industrial complex/governmental relationship!
I was told that them 1,000 ship number's was connected to the X37b... thanks for sharing great stuff 👍
The Navy canceled the Seahawk attack submarine class for being too expensive. Instead they took the most cost effective features and incorporated them in the Virginia class submarines. The Navy is doing the same with the new successor of the Arleigh Burke destroyer class, a very successful class copied by many western navies. The Zumwalt's were canceled for being to expensive as a fleet destroyer class for the USN. The most cost effective features will be incorporated in the new class.
A personal and professional observation, I have found the "Dark" seas-sky vlogs to be extremely unreliable in observations and conclusions.
*Seawolf
Granted the Zumwalt-class are closer to cruisers than destroyers. Although it was more politically acceptable to label them as destroyers, despite their overall displacement.
"I have found the "Dark" seas-sky vlogs to be extremely unreliable in observations and conclusions." 100% agree...
Captain Kirk commands that ship.
The shells cost $800,000 each??? That's crazy
Indeed, but it is balances of what you intend to destroy. A missile cruiser? Or a pirate inflatable boat?
no the shells wouldn't have cost that much. They cost that much because only a handful were built before congress axed the whole money pit. So the price of tooling and R&D was piled on a few munitions, not batches of 1000s.
The funny part is the navy was looking for something significantly cheaper than a Tomahawk cruise missile and in the end each shell cost almost as much as one.
Conspiracy Theory: The Navy always planned to use it as a hypersonic missile platform, but they knew that technology would take a lot longer to develop. They also wanted to test out railguns but just to understand them to know their economic requirements and what forms of defense would be required. Like the Sea Wolf, everyone kinda knew they would be overpriced but they only wanted a small number in the first place...so the dominoes were set and congress followed their predictable path. So now we have a small number of stealth warships a little ahead of hypersonic missiles finishing development. Clearly the hypersonics took a few years longer than expected. Or...I'm wrong and someone was creative in repurposing them for hypersonics.
We have working Lasers on ships aircraft.
My believe is that's what we were working on when the rest were doing there hypersonic trials. We actually caught up in that area as well at this point in time.
*Enemy: Ready the EMP blasters*
Zumwalt: Crap!
My father helped design this ship. Very cool design, albeit insanely expensive.
Just started watching your videos an I love them. An I'm from Maine an it's cool to see Maine get some recognition lol
Just down the river is the Maine Maritime Museum ( Well worth your time to visit, plan half a day there) and I jumped on the harbor tour boat for an extra $7, Zumwalt was in the finishing stages and there were 2 patrol boats with a 50 on the bow. With 50 tourists snapping pictures of it LOL. Anyway the deck gun costs 100K to fire, it's a smart round, bottm line, there isn't much live fire target practice happening.
Seeing these floating around Sand Diego is really surreal.
The key to all language is expression and intensity. Focus your intent and not only all animals will understand but you can bend metal and ground
Hello from the Netherlands, learning A second language is good advice 😄
I dig the multi-compartmental individual shipping container like assembly visually melding into one.
Which would think has got to be better able to isolate breeches while remaining water tight Sections retain buoyancy.
As to why some sections made out of different materials, must be something specific to type of operations carried out. Requiring something in between unlike materials made out of different properties to prevent reactive corrosion.
The method you see in this video has been in use for 40 years, its not new or novel. Typically all naval vessels are aluminum main deck and above to reduce weight.
With that wide open aft deck she would be great for fishing expeditions. And don’t forget about that most advanced fish finder she has.
You mean expensive. So expensive they only built 3. If it was that powerful every American Navy ship would be that.
So, apparently a balloon can defeat all this? I want my money back!
The Zumwalt is one of the most expensive jokes ever played on the American taxpayer.
Is the limited production of Zumwalt destroyers based on “power” or cost / benefit analysis?
The interior shots of consoles and some equipment in the computer room are NOT DDG-1000 unless they pulled old equipment off of older ships.
Fredenburg went on to detail problems relating to the skyrocketing costs, lack of accountability, unrealistic goals, a flawed concept of operations, the perils of designing a warship around stealth, and the failure of the Advanced Gun System. He concludes: The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster.
It wasn't explained in the video, but those 800k dollar artillery shells are so expensive because their production line was not scaled up to meet the needs of 32 ships. Just three ships meant it stayed in the hand-made initial production phase, which is much more expensive, per shell. Also, the gun was a stop-gap until railguns would be ready, and this thought was part of the reason that so much electrical energy was made available for the ship. Also, because it uses less sailors, it's cheaper to operate. The savings will make up for its doubling of cost compared to an Arleigh Burke class over the lifetime of the ship. Also not mentioned in the video, the low crew size made many have doubts about the crew's ability to perform damage control. But also, the vertical launch missile cells are on the outside of the ship, instead of clustered together near the middle, precisely to make the ship more survivable once hit. Something tells me we will be needing this ship sooner or later, and it's a mistake not to field them.
The stealth ship that looks like it could be a submarine.
Did it have problems downgrading from (insert your favorite flavor of) Linux distro to Microsoft Windows on a subscription only basis?
Wonder if BAE will make a railgun that is like the guns on the zumwalt as that could be used on other ships
Rail guns were going to be put on but the barrel has to be swapped every few shots so it was scrapped
Abrams and Bradley were once considered grotesquely expensive failures too, as is the Gerald Ford.
Technological leaps are expensive and difficult.