# US Navy Hopes stealth ship answers a rising China



## JohnnyBoyUSMC (Jun 4, 2012)

http://news.yahoo.com/us-navy-hopes-stealth-ship-answers-rising-china-065329046.html


*SINGAPORE (AP) — A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.*
*But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.*
*With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history — a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world — Asia and the Pacific.*
*Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.*
*"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements — this is our future," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.*
*On a visit to a major regional security conference in Singapore that ended Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 percent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.*
*The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers — but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.*
*Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.*
*But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defense experts wondering if the whole endeavor was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.*
*They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in Defense Department history.*
*"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."*
*The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.*
*But the destroyers' $3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.*
*Now, just three are in the works.*
*"Costs spiraled — surprise, surprise — and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."*
*The U.S. Defense Department is concerned that China is modernizing its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying U.S. intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.*
*China is now working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.*
*The U.S. has a big advantage on the high seas, but improvements in China's navy could make it harder for U.S. ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.*
*Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.*
*But Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defense University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilized some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, he said.*
*"It would be a goner," he said recently on state broadcaster CCTV's military channel.*
*___*
*AP writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report from Beijing.*





I for one agree, WHY are we spending a billion a pop on a boat that a few fish trawlers loaded down with explosives could sink when we SHOULD be beefing up conventional forces with the same amount of cash. Also, the irony of Vietnam now being one of our closest allies in the region doesn't escape me as I hope it doesn't escape others.


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## Scotth (Jun 4, 2012)

$7 Billion a pop, after adding in all the R&D cost, is going to be a hard thing to sell in today's world. It was $1 billion when they were going to buy 30 ships instead of the current 7 they want to procure. Then when you add the inevitable cost over runs it will probably be closer to $10 billion per.

I hope they were smart like the plane manufactures and acquired parts and do some assembly work in a bunch of states because that is the only way they are going to generate enough support to pass this big dollar behemoth.


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## JBS (Jun 7, 2012)

This is what happens when the country is being run by activists and community organizers who never even ran a lemonade stand, much less a business.

Between this and all the other moronic wastes of cash like the $50 + billion (and counting) burned through on bankrupt green energy/friends of Obama, and the rest of the White Shoe boys club just milking the hell out of us, it's no wonder America's debt has nearly doubled since Obama took office.


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## DA SWO (Jun 7, 2012)

They need to stop putting R&D costs into the purchase price.


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## AWP (Jun 7, 2012)

Our defense acquisitions are killing us.


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## TH15 (Jun 7, 2012)

JBS said:


> it's no wonder America's debt has nearly doubled since Obama took office.


But wait! Federal spending is at an all time low under Obama! ;)


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## Salt USMC (Jun 8, 2012)

Why is everyone so quick to blame Obama?  The original plan was approved in *1995*, reworked in *2001*, and then re-funded in *2005*.  It'd be more appropriate to blame the Clinton and Bush administrations, in this case.  These things aren't just funded by fiat.  The money is set aside YEARS prior to final development.


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## AWP (Jun 8, 2012)

7 ships? The price tag is bad enough, but to only build SEVEN? That alone should kill the program.


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## Scotth (Jun 8, 2012)

TH15 said:


> But wait! Federal spending is at an all time low under Obama! ;)


A few fun facts:



http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22


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## JBS (Jun 8, 2012)

Scotth said:


> A few fun facts:
> View attachment 6163
> View attachment 6164
> 
> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22


Gimmick numbers.

It doesn't matter what spending is, if the revenue isn't there. As soon as we hit a brick wall with our recession, spending should have tightened along with it. The fact that Obama continued to spend more than Bush, even though revenue went down, is what has allowed him to rack up debt like America has never seen before.

This is why your graph is a dishonest gimmick. If the maker of that chart gave a crap about America they wouldn't bother making up bullshit charts that do not reflect the reality of our situation. Who cares what Bush spent - or Clinton spent- if the country had the REVENUE to support it? Spending like Bush or Clinton without their jobs numbers, and without their revenue, is the thing that is killing this nation. Just like you and I do not continue spending at the exact same level if we get a pay cut, the nation should not continue to bleed out if we hit a massive recession/depression. And by the way, I agree with you, the past 5 Presidents are to share in the blame.

Here's the number we care about: Actual Accumulated Deficits

The rest is just paper pushing and Washington shell games designed to keep those loyal to "the Party" to continue to have rationale and defend the insanity inside the beltway*. We are screwed as a nation* unless we wake up and start demanding radical reform.  And ours is the generation that will see it come tumbling down unless things change soon.


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## JBS (Jun 8, 2012)

Deathy McDeath said:


> Why is everyone so quick to blame Obama? The original plan was approved in *1995*, reworked in *2001*, and then re-funded in *2005*. It'd be more appropriate to blame the Clinton and Bush administrations, in this case. These things aren't just funded by fiat. The money is set aside YEARS prior to final development.


You are flat out mistaken.

Funding has been continuously INCREASED after a *4-year hiatus that ended in 2010.*

So the project was RE-STARTED in 2010 after sitting on the back burner throughout the past 4 years. Putting it on the back burner from 2005 to 2009 was the correct thing to do. Whatever happened before that, and during Clinton- again completely irrelevant.

A spending increase was approved TWICE in FY 2011, and then ANOTHER increase in 2012.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tx78LeaBiZoJ:www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32109.pdf DDG-1000 destroyer, funding&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiPn6lZ6AYV8F7Ye-jPwOTyuLbG8G3_8x7pTeJ5nbuoJ4OpUzYp511VAL2pY9szBzinajfuS5eRV5ziQyNZlRN2mbA6BthHuROXVdojd7MJWWCLFDe7mcT0nwp5Idzjs-mGYhQ9&sig=AHIEtbS_Z_pGpgFVsodRBMjhyT8XCkvZgw






And regarding DDG 1000:


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## Scotth (Jun 8, 2012)

JBS said:


> Gimmick numbers.
> 
> It doesn't matter what spending is, if the revenue isn't there. As soon as we hit a brick wall with our recession, spending should have tightened along with it. The fact that Obama continued to spend more than Bush, even though revenue went down, is what has allowed him to rack up debt like America has never seen before.
> 
> ...


 
Your talking apples and oranges. I quoted TH15's post


> But wait! Federal spending is at an all time low under Obama! ;)


 
My numbers are not dishonest or a gimmick they directly an accurately refute his point. It accurately refutes the points that conservatives have tried to inaccurately portray on almost a daily basis. Government spending hasn't soared under Obama and each time a Republican moves into the White House they spend more then the Democrats. Government has also gotten drastically smaller under Obama.


http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=7yD

Yes the debt has exploded again and we can debate that issue if you would like but that wasn't what I responded to. My point was to inject some facts into what are otherwise inaccurate statements that regularly get perpetrated as facts.


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## JBS (Jun 8, 2012)

Scotth said:


> Your talking apples and oranges. I quoted TH15's post
> 
> 
> My numbers are not dishonest or a gimmick they directly an accurately refute his point. It accurately refutes the points that conservatives have tried to inaccurately portray on almost a daily basis. Government spending hasn't soared under Obama and each time a Republican moves into the White House they spend more then the Democrats. Government has also gotten drastically smaller under Obama.
> ...


Your numbers ARE a gimmick and you are not refuting his point, or even disputing it.

His statement was that SPENDING was at an all time low- obvious sarcasm.

In fact, (Obama) spending is at an all time HIGH.

You responded by showing that the_ RATE OF GROWTH_ of spending is at an all time low.








This is dishonest.  It's even printed in smaller print to mislead the reader.  RATE OF GROWTH OF SPENDING? This simply means that, although Obama is spending more than Bush, he hasn't increased his spending by as big a percentage as previous presidents have.



In simple numbers:


Year 1 spent $100
Year 2 spent $200
Year 3 spent $300
Year 4 spent $400
_Year 5 spent $490 <-----_
OMG!In year 5, Obama was elected and he didn't increase spending as much as years 1 through 4 (the Bush years), therefore he's set some kind of all time low record!

This ignores that there is STILL an increase in spending over previous years, and this in no way addresses the point that although spending has STILL increased (albeit at a slightly slower rate) our revenue has dropped tremendously.


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## Scotth (Jun 8, 2012)

Factor in inflation and his spending hasn't increased.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

With inflation averaging over 2% but spending only increasing at 1.4%, spending has decreased.


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## JBS (Jun 8, 2012)

Scotth said:


> Factor in inflation and his spending hasn't increased.
> View attachment 6166
> http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
> 
> With inflation averaging over 2% but spending only increasing at 1.4% spending has decreased.


 

Scott at this point you're going to hate me.


The chart you posted uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to calculate inflation, and guess what? It's also a gimmick. The BLS does something insane to calculate inflation for their own purposes.

They exclude the price of food and energy.



> (*proof*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index)


 

Of course, we all know if you exclude the skyrocketing average price of gasoline, and the average price of food, the numbers would look great for Obama. This is why those numbers were seized upon by defenders of the Administration. If you ignore that Americans are paying more for food and gas and electricity, then yep, other than sky high unemployment, and a record high national debt, things are pretty damn awesome.

But the truth is, down where we live, gas is near an all time SUSTAINED record high, and food prices are through the roof. If you factored that into your inflation numbers, you'd see Obama is spending us into a ditch.

And our precious Bureaus are all printing numbers and charts and graphs that are utterly worthless, at the behest of the politicians that fund and staff them.


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## Scotth (Jun 8, 2012)

JBS said:


> Scott at this point you're going to hate me.


 
Never happen, always love our debates even if we rarely find common ground.  Never a bad time exchanging view points and having your own perceptions challenged.



JBS said:


> The chart you posted uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to calculate inflation, and guess what? It's also a gimmick. The BLS does something insane to calculate inflation for their own purposes.
> 
> They exclude the price of food and energy.
> 
> ...


 
Food and gas prices are excluded because they're very volatile.  Similarly unemployment numbers are adjusted to remove seasonal and farm labor so that the statics they produce more accurately measure the overall conditions and make them more comparable with previous numbers.

In Minnesota gas prices have been dropping and aren't really any different then they have been for the last couple years.  We are bouncing around the $3.40-$3.60 a gallon range.  But even if we factored higher prices for gas and food into the CPI that would drive inflation even higher making my point that spending under Obama hasn't increased and thereby making my argument stronger.

Nobody is arguing things are great, they are far from it.  I could say a lot about each parties ideas for "reducing the debt" but that is a whole different thread.


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## JBS (Jun 8, 2012)

I agree we've hijacked the thread.

I also agree that if we did adjust average food and gas prices, it would exacerbate the inflation numbers trending them toward even more pronounced inflation, and - as you argued- make Obama's spending flatten out. I can't argue with that. I didn't do the math all the way through, but I can accept your numbers.

I also wouldn't say that that's a position of strength- to say that Obama is presiding over an inflationary period that makes his spending increases tolerable.

To put it another way, if Bernanke decided tomorrow to print -_ some wild number_, say $50 Trillion. Obama could then spend $25 Trillion (an obviously ridiculous number) and then 'bury' the spending once inflation catches up to us. Because they were the creators of the currency, they could spend it using today's valuation. Tomorrow, we'd all be hit by the surplus of currency and the buying power of our dollar would drop dramatically. Bread would be $8 / loaf, and gasoline would be $10/gallon at the pump. That's the way it works with fiat currency; the issuing agency gets to spend it at it's maximum valuation, and then once the currency dilutes into the population, everyone's valuation is depressed, while goods and services inflate. This is just one of the reasons the Secret Service will put the smack down on anyone who thinks they are going to print money.

This, in effect is what they're doing, but even that inflationary burying of debt cannot last forever.


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## pardus (Jun 9, 2012)

So, are we fucked or not?


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## yankfan (Jun 9, 2012)

http://news.yahoo.com/us-navy-hopes-stealth-ship-answers-rising-china-065329046.html

Just saw this and it seems a bit ridiculous. Like something out of that new Battleship movie. A railgun? What the hell is that? And it seems a bit on the pricey side as well... :-/


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## yankfan (Jun 9, 2012)

"Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound." Whoops skipped over that, guess that answers my question..


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## Etype (Jun 9, 2012)

Rail guns are old news.  They've been talking about them for at least a decade.  I think it falls into the same category as the OICW and the Comanche- it fills a void that only the defense contractors want to see filled.


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## JBS (Jun 10, 2012)

Etype said:


> Rail guns are old news. They've been talking about them for at least a decade. I think it falls into the same category as the OICW and the Comanche- it fills a void that only the defense contractors want to see filled.


Try more than 100 years- with lots of interest during both WW1 & WW2. The idea has been around a long, long time, but the technology was never there- particularly the ability to generate enough power to make these feasible.

Of all the stupid spending going on, the creation of rail guns lies among the few actually worth-while ideas.

Creating these guns now means that in 20 years we will probably develop the ability to miniaturize them, as well as increase the accuracy to levels unthinkable today. These rails guns -along with LASER development- will eventually serve important functions in the area that needs the most work: defense.

A working rail gun will be able to take down incoming cruise missiles - even at extremely high velocities. Rail guns can also take out targets that are LASER resistant. So, for instance, an incoming nuke traveling at hyper-velocity (above Mach 5) that was built to reflect away LASER energy weapons would be a serious threat to our national security. Building rail guns (which have ranges over 250 miles) that can fire tiny projectiles up to Mach 25 (about 9 kilometers per second) ...or even faster... means we would have the ability to deploy a sci-fi-like curtain of defense all along the entire perimeter of our nation. No incoming threat- no matter how fast or how many countermeasures- would be able to escape these. Also, the ability to quickly reload and fire these inherently stable weapons means platforms that could fire at unimaginable cyclic rates (perhaps a million rounds per second) for incredible distances with accuracy that is only slightly lower than energy beam weapons. Eventually, we're talking a massive impenetrable curtain of defense... and all at speeds, distances and cyclic-rates-of-fire that boggle the mind.

Like it or not, the threats of the future will require this kind of technology.


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## JBS (Jun 10, 2012)

I read one article where the author envisioned a rail gun that could fire a million rounds-per-second (already there are electric gun prototypes that can fire a million rounds per minute). In the article, the defensive gun fired rounds at mach 25, and the projectiles were actually made of industrial diamond- cheap and easy to make even today, to the point where drill bits and saws are studded with thousands of them.

At that speed and cyclic rate of fire, your almost talking a beam-like weapon that can cut through just about anything inside of it's 250-mile radius.   And that is all with technology that is perfectly conceivable even today.


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## Etype (Jun 10, 2012)

I'm still not convinced on the accuracy portion of the argument.  I'm sure most of it has to do with me trying to apply conventional internal ballistics to the equation and my complete lack of understanding.

Having them on ships off-shore would be pretty slick- preventing incoming nukes from becoming dirty bombs over the continental US when they are destroyed.


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## JBS (Jun 10, 2012)

The thing that is changing accuracy is computers.

At these extreme hypervelocities, ballistics, temperature, and everything else we think of is totally different and requires different material science. And computers will make it possible to do things that we can't begin to do now. For instance, just one or two nano-seconds before firing, a rail gun platform could fire a series of lasers to "measure" the atmosphere between the rail gun and the target. In another nano second, the computer could calculate precisely how the round is going to behave, depending on the density of the air, altitudes involved, rotation of the earth, plus a million million other variables, and fire at the perfect trajectory- and all in a millionth of a second. We're talking accuracy that just 25 years ago would have been total sci-fi.


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## Etype (Jun 10, 2012)

I understand the atmospherics, but it's the actual internal and external ballistics of the projectiles themselves that is hard to fathom.


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## JBS (Jun 10, 2012)

The step between where we are now and miniaturized rail guns is what will be interesting to watch- at least the declass portions of it, whatever we can get our hands on.

Right now, we're starting to get really good at doing things like shooting down incoming mortar rounds with LASER energy weapons- but these are slow by comparison to the threats of the future. There's video on it, showing the energy weapon heating the incoming round for a second or two before it is destroyed. Pretty cool stuff.


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## Ranger Psych (Jun 10, 2012)

Etype said:


> I understand the atmospherics, but it's the actual internal and external ballistics of the projectiles themselves that is hard to fathom.


 
Ballistics start to stop mattering so much when there's not really a trajectory to speak of. Conventional weapons beat issues with accuracy through "make it go faster longer" so you don't have to make something that's stable through the trans-sonic speed barrier.

As long as it's symmetrical in prrojectile design.... 1" group at 100 yards. Double the speed, and you just brought the 1/2" group from 50 yards out to 100, as an example.


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## Ranger Psych (Jun 10, 2012)




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## DA SWO (Jun 11, 2012)

Etype said:


> I'm still not convinced on the accuracy portion of the argument. I'm sure most of it has to do with me trying to apply conventional internal ballistics to the equation and my complete lack of understanding.
> 
> Having them on ships off-shore would be pretty slick- *preventing incoming nukes from becoming dirty bombs over the continental US when they are destroyed*.


 
Just hit the warhead high enough and the matter will burn up.


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## JBS (Jun 13, 2012)

pardus said:


> So, are we fucked or not?


Very much so, unless people across America wake up and begin voting for values rather than party.


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## Marauder06 (Jun 13, 2012)

pardus said:


> So, are we fucked or not?


 
It depends whether you ask Scott or JBS


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## pardus (Jun 14, 2012)

JBS said:


> Very much so, unless people across America wake up and begin voting for values rather than party.


 
   I think things are going to have to get alot worse before they get better.


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## DA SWO (Jun 14, 2012)

pardus said:


> I think things are going to have to get alot worse before they get better.


They will, soon.
Regardless of who wins in November, we are fucked.


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## RetPara (Jun 14, 2012)

SOWT said:


> Regardless of who wins in November, we are fucked.


 
As it was said in Rome.................


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## pardus (Jun 14, 2012)

Ive been stocking up on ammo.


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## ThunderHorse (Jun 16, 2012)

When you only buy three of them they can't be the answer to anything.


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## ThunderHorse (Jun 16, 2012)

Thought I wrote this earlier...but how do we counter a threat with only  three of these?


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## SpitfireV (Jun 16, 2012)

What do you mean?


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## ThunderHorse (Jun 16, 2012)

We have a big Navy...and to be on top we have to continuously buy newer kit...and we only have three funded.


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## SpitfireV (Jun 16, 2012)

I was more interested in "a threat" since it's such a vague statement. I'd assume that with three they'd not be operating on their own but rather as part of a CBG or a taskforce.


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## DA SWO (Jun 17, 2012)

ThunderHorse said:


> We have a big Navy...and to be on top we have to continuously buy newer kit...and we only have three funded.


You generally fund 1-2 builds at a time, as one gets built you buy the next one.


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## SkrewzLoose (Jun 17, 2012)

Mods, same subject is being discussed here.


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