4/13/2021 0 Comments Destroyer Journal
The Pentagons latest estimate for the cost of the three ships is 23,492,500,000which works out to 7,830,833,333.33 each.The ships represent an object lesson in the risk of trying to cram nearly a dozen new technologies into a warship, most of which failed to get out of port.
The bottom line: American taxpayers have bought a fleet of three warshipsat a cost of 8 billion eachthat are still looking for a mission. Not only that: the ships are missing their key weapon, and Congresswhich rarely rebukes the Navyrecently ordered the service to strike the two that have been delivered to the fleet from its roster of combat-ready ships. The vessels represent a case study of a program run without adult leadership. They just started putting all sorts of requirements on the ship without really understanding the cost implications, argues Robert Work, who served as a Marine officer for 27 years before serving as the number-two civilian in both the Navy and the entire Pentagon during the Obama Administration. Too often, the Pentagon argues that a programs fate is too early to tell before it becomes too late to stop. But the DDG-1000 is now all but finished and we need to think of it as a warship frozen in amber that we can study to avoid similar problems in the future. Unfortunately, the condition is contagious, and future U.S. Cramming a lot of new technologies into one platform was just crazyit was doomed from the start, says John Lehman, who served as President Ronald Reagans Navy secretary for six years. Lehman, a naval aviator, led the charge to build a 600-ship Navy, and came close when the fleet crested at 594 vessels in 1987. But the number has plunged since then, falling to 359 in 2007 and 287 today, up from its nadir of 271 in 2015.). The Navy, its contractors, and Congresslargely lawmakers with shipyards and Navy bases in their states and districtshave to demand realistic projections when it comes to costs, capabilities, and production schedules. This is particularly vital given the decades it takes to design, develop, and deploy a new class of ships. By the time the rose-colored glasses have been fogged up by reality, those responsible for the snafus are long gone and not around to be called on the carpet for the malfeasance that is salted throughout Navy shipbuilding. Because the Navy has been biting off more than it can chew, budget-wise, that leads to rising price tags for each ship it does end up buying. That, in turn, leads to fewer ships in the fleet, but no concomitant reduction in their missions. That overwork has led to sailors working 100 hours a week, and a pair of at-sea collisions in 2017 that claimed the lives of 17 sailors. As costs spiraled out of control, the number of ships to be bought fell from 32, to 24, to 16, to 7, to 3. In 2008, when the Navy threw in the towel and decided it would only buy three of the ships, it also had to spread the huge cost of multiple new technologies over the trio, driving the cost-per-ship through the roof. Their crews affectionately called them tin cans back then because of their thin hulls. Since then, the Navy has launched eight classes of destroyers, the latest of which is the USS Zumwalt and her two sister ships. But theyre not tin cans so much as over-larded, cruiser-sized, titanium canisters.
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