US Navy Hopes stealth ship answers a rising China

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

fifty-year-history-of-federal-governmentaccumulated-result-of-total-deficit-spending1962-2012.jpg


hrwmjd.jpg
 
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

n1q88y.jpg


And regarding DDG 1000:
sqqhyp.jpg
 
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.

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

fifty-year-history-of-federal-governmentaccumulated-result-of-total-deficit-spending1962-2012.jpg

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.

fredgraph.png
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.
 
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.

View attachment 6165
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 the issue I responded to. My point was to inject some facts into what are otherwise inaccurate statements that regularly get perpetrated as facts.
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.


2qamnwz.jpg



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.
 
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.



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.
 
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.

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.

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.

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.:p

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.
 
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.
 
"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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