“Here she comes, Miss America...”

[Jud - s/v Sputnik]

The USS Michael A. Monsoor in the ‘hood nearby today.  Your tax dollars hard at work.

Y’know, the $1.4bn (way over us get, naturally) US guided missile destroyer.  105,000 horsepower.  Fully radar evasive hull design.  600 ft long, 30 knots.  All mechanical gear separated from the hull to make it more silent above and below the water.  Air conditioned exhaust to avoid thermal imaging cameras. Radar-invisible hull, of course.

Your tax dollars at work

 

[Ishmael]

The USS Michael A. Monsoor in the ‘hood nearby today.  Your tax dollars hard at work.

Y’know, the $1.4bn US guided missile destroyer.  105,000 horsepower.  Fully radar evasive hull design.  600 ft long, 30 knots.  All mechanical gear separated from the hull to make it more silent above and below the water.  Air conditioned exhaust to avoid thermally imaging cameras. Radar-invisible hull, of course.

Your tax dollars at work

View attachment 468421

I think I prefer "A".

 

[accnick]

The USS Michael A. Monsoor in the ‘hood nearby today.  Your tax dollars hard at work.

Y’know, the $1.4bn (way over us get, naturally) US guided missile destroyer.  105,000 horsepower.  Fully radar evasive hull design.  600 ft long, 30 knots.  All mechanical gear separated from the hull to make it more silent above and below the water.  Air conditioned exhaust to avoid thermal imaging cameras. Radar-invisible hull, of course.

Your tax dollars at work

View attachment 468421

Personally, I think that is seriously cool.

 

[Crash]

The USS Michael A. Monsoor in the ‘hood nearby today.  Your tax dollars hard at work.

Y’know, the $1.4bn (way over us get, naturally) US guided missile destroyer.  105,000 horsepower.  Fully radar evasive hull design.  600 ft long, 30 knots.  All mechanical gear separated from the hull to make it more silent above and below the water.  Air conditioned exhaust to avoid thermal imaging cameras. Radar-invisible hull, of course.

Your tax dollars at work

View attachment 468421

Innovate or die…

these guys made wooden warships instantly obsolete….

 

[weightless]

Peak FUBAR?

I mean, stylish and all, amiright? However, I gather, from a quick scan of the wiki, that they canceled the ammo procurement for the super fancy guns that it was designed around and that are central to its mission. There is no other ammo that can work in those guns. So, these ships can't do the mission they were designed for at all. They gave up on the fancy stealth deck house and replaced it with a steel one. So, they're not really stealthy. The electronics that they need to navigate failed when they got less than perfect power. Are they really seaworthy much less ready to be in a war zone? Is there any what war-fighting mission they would be useful for?

 

[charisma94]

I think I prefer "A".

Or the other "A" is a closer look.

Same owner...

 

[toddster]

Is there any what war-fighting mission they would be useful for?

“Enhancing Shareholder Value.”

Anyhow, some Bond Villain will probably take if off their hands in a pinch.

 

[TwoLegged]

Is there any what war-fighting mission they would be useful for?

“Enhancing Shareholder Value.”

that, and providing a nice toy for the military classes.  This ship is as good as any other to maintain the pretence that there is some actual purpose to their existence.

 

[Zonker]

I can see it pretty easily in the photo. Give your missile a camera and some pretty low grade pattern recognition and it can see it too. 

 

[Crash]

Again, Sweet Mary, Joseph and Jesus!  Really?  The U.S. or British, or NATO, or name your western alliance here, are certainly not perfect, nor without fault in the world.  But really?  You'd rather a world run by Putin and/or Xi Jinping?   Or the Taliban, or ISIS?  Really?  The world still has some really bad actors out there.  Can you imagine life in Afganistan, TwoLegged, if you lived there now under the Taliban?

Again, we are far from perfect and are certainly not without fault.  But have you really drunk the cool aid that completely?

 

[Crash]

I can see it pretty easily in the photo. Give your missile a camera and some pretty low grade pattern recognition and it can see it too. 

Well, amongst other challenges, there is most definitely that issue!  They are trying to deny them long range targeting...but it sure is a standout ship design, hard to be confused with other classes of ship.  If you can see it, you can ID it...

As a young fighter guy in the back of an F-14, when everyone was all excited about the F-117, I used to ask the question...what does an F-117 look like in the daylight?

I used to tell folks "hopefully, the bad guys only want to fight at night!"

 

[Pertsa]

I think Swedes did this stealth thing properly

 

[loneshark64]

Are they really seaworthy much less ready to be in a war zone? Is there any what war-fighting mission they would be useful for?

I know squat about navy ships and I am not one of those guys that rattle off the model numbers of a bunch of military hardware thingys. But I drive by the bath iron works every day and know a bunch of guys that work there and pay attention because it is interesting. There is one of these zumwalt class destroyers still there. Here is what little I understand.

When they did the sea trial there was fog and they told everybody what was going to happen and radioed to stay the fuck away etc but still some of the lobstermen didn’t pay attention. Turns out the zumwalt had a radar profile about like a lobster boat, and then this thing came out of the fog. The lobstering competition just got real, yo.

The govt was originally going to build 30 of these but costs overran and they cut the number repeatedly and then built only 3. I believe the strategic context had also changed in the interim so the original plan for the main weapon system was somewhat obsolete. The boat is built around a special gun system that was supposed to shoot like 80 miles and be used for shooting at land (you can see I am not a military lingo guy) with the idea being the boat would scoot right in there under the radar and blast away. But with the number of boats going down to 3 this increased the cost per round to a million bucks a pop which is basically the cost of a tomahawk which goes a thousand miles. So they cancelled the ammo program and have been trying to figure out what to do with the damn thing ever since. The boat has other weapons but the main point of it was this advanced gun and the tubes for it are hard to repurpose. They have looked at rail guns but nixxed that. 

Now the plan is to put some sort of hypersonic weapon on them by like 2025. If they don’t get the budget for that they will sell it on Craigslist to Expedition Evans.

 

[loneshark64]

https://maineboats.com/print/issue-139/on-the-town-dock

 

[Ajax]

Again, Sweet Mary, Joseph and Jesus!  Really?  The U.S. or British, or NATO, or name your western alliance here, are certainly not perfect, nor without fault in the world.  But really?  You'd rather a world run by Putin and/or Xi Jinping?   Or the Taliban, or ISIS?  Really?  The world still has some really bad actors out there.  Can you imagine life in Afganistan, TwoLegged, if you lived there now under the Taliban?

Again, we are far from perfect and are certainly not without fault.  But have you really drunk the cool aid that completely?

Thank you for not quoting the troll.

The US Navy has had a run of poor development programs lately and the DDGX is one of them, unfortunately. Several useful technologies have come out of the program but as mentioned, the ammunition for the guns ended up being prohibitively expensive so the vessels are essentially "neutered."  They will serve as development platforms for other weapons technologies as they are developed. The whole class will end up being only 3 vessels.

The US Navy pursued an actual laser weapon for a time that enjoyed limited success. They were forced to abandon it because lasers do not work well down in the marine layer. Millions wasted trying to thwart the laws of physics.

The US Navy recently, finally canceled the rail gun project after 10 years and 500 million dollars. The weapon suffered from limited range, slow rate of fire and the barrel essentially destroyed itself after only two dozen shots instead of the advertised 600 shots.

I love Mother Navy but... (sigh). We must do better.

 

[Matagi]

 Can you imagine life in Afganistan, TwoLegged, if you lived there now under the Taliban?

Not only can I imagine life in Afghanistan without the Taliban, there are even pictures of such a place, not many months old.

It was far from a perfect place. But girls could go to school there, even to university...

But that was before this mighty, mighty force decided to drink all the 'cool aid' and call it a day. Or two decades.

Ceterum censeo: This thread should burn in PA and at best take that whole place with it.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Thank you for not quoting the troll.

The US Navy has had a run of poor development programs lately and the DDGX is one of them, unfortunately. Several useful technologies have come out of the program but as mentioned, the ammunition for the guns ended up being prohibitively expensive so the vessels are essentially "neutered."  They will serve as development platforms for other weapons technologies as they are developed. The whole class will end up being only 3 vessels.

The US Navy pursued an actual laser weapon for a time that enjoyed limited success. They were forced to abandon it because lasers do not work well down in the marine layer. Millions wasted trying to thwart the laws of physics.

The US Navy recently, finally canceled the rail gun project after 10 years and 500 million dollars. The weapon suffered from limited range, slow rate of fire and the barrel essentially destroyed itself after only two dozen shots instead of the advertised 600 shots.

I love Mother Navy but... (sigh). We must do better.

Trying to build bigger faster head-bashing rocks has been a frustrating and counter-productive game ever since Ogg the Caveman tied the first rock to the end of a stick so he could bash saber tooth tigers over the head and defend the cave better.

We're still trying to defend the cave. We're still spending huge amounts of time and money and the professional skills of smart young people on it. That effort would be FAR better spent on making life better, somehow or anyhow, than in destruction... UNLESS the other option is to have saber tooth tigers rampage thru our cave, which always remains a slightly fuzzy picture (but we know it -might- happen because it -has- happened to others).

The US military really has had some poor development lately. The littoral combat ship, which made me snort in derision at the very concept, turned out to be a predictable expensive disaster. But what if it had actually been an otherwise-unforseen quantum leap forward? Same for the DDGX. Same for the F35. Same for the Seawolf (which is awesome but too expensive).

The real problem I see is that we've expended the effort, at a drain on our economy, and the other world's militaries get a free lesson in how not to. At some point, we can't afford to keep teaching.

- DSK

 

[Elegua]

It's the same couple of shit-stirrers every time.  

 

[ProaSailor]