The navy just pissed away 4.4 Billion dollars on this ship they had no apparent use for. Now it doesn’t even work! It will require even more of our money to repair. I just did some math, and found that the money spent building the Zumwalt could have instead given free tuition for all students in every school in the University of Maine system for 14 years.
Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex. We need to invest in our own citizens instead of building expensive toys for the benefit of defense contractors.
There are plenty of issues in our own nation that these billions of dollars could have solved. Instead we wasted the money on a shiny boat that will accomplish nothing.
You realize thst funding for the Navy comes from federal funds while funding for state unis comes from state funds? Right? Do you?
Well, it’s bit late to stop this one, innit? Any shiny boats we can stop funding that are still in the planning stages?
Also, given that our Most Excellent new President ran in part on a promise of a massive military buildup (“peace through strength”, yadda yadda), I’m not optimistic there’s going to be a receptive ear in Washington.
But the federal funds come from the citizens of the states.
The federal government has long ago stopped considering that the money they spend is earned by the sweat of those working for a living. It’s just numbers to those who vote to spend money on shit like this, not real money.
Besides, what do they expect when they build a ship that looks like it’s floating upside down.
OK, I didn’t know much about this vessel, so I’ve read up a bit.
Firstly, what’s your justification for the claim that the Navy has ‘no apparent use for’ this vessel? She’s a state-of-the-art guided missile destroyer with stealth technology. The supervillain in me can think of plenty of uses for something like that, and I bet the Navy has too.
Secondly, it had a mechanical failure while transiting the Panama Canal, which apparently will take about ten days (sez Navy) to repair. It’s got a propulsion system with some novel features, some of which may be problematic. Let 'em sort the bugs out; if it’s still breaking down every couple weeks a few years from now, then we can talk.
If the whole point of this thread is only “we spend too much on the military”, I’m somewhat sympathetic with that viewpoint, but I think we knew that already.
Good news! This is totally wrong.
The Zumwalt class ships really cost around $7 billion a pop. With another $20 billion or so in R&D before the ships were even built.
Even more good news - this is pretty much bargain bin pricing compared to the $1.5 trillion boondoggle (if the full order of planes are purchased) that is the F-35.
How many Dacia Sandeos is that?
This is a repeated theme: Person who supports Cause X but opposes Cause Y, complains, “If we cancelled Cause Y, so much more money could be diverted to Cause X!”
I can’t wait until the OP gets out of college so we can read posts that don’t compare everything to his educational status.
Today: “$4.4 billion would pay tuition for every University of Maine student for 14 years!”
Hopefully soon: “$4.4 billion would pay for sixtyflorp jillion reams of copier paper and eleventy kilolifts of toner!”
Today: “There’s a million soldiers in the Army - it would take garbledy floop dorms to house all of them!”
Hopefully soon: “There’s a million people in the Army - we would need to make arglebargle hundred thousand pounds of French fries to feed them all!”
Today: “A Tesla costs more than $80,000: that’s the cost of six textbooks!”
Hopefully soon: “A Tesla costs more than $80,000: that’s the annual salary of me and five of my coworkers!”
The worst part of the ship is that the name isn’t even giggle worthy like the LCS.
Would it help if you knew that the Captain’s name (really) is James A. Kirk?
I actually started to try and figure out how old he is. Then sanity returned, and I decided I didn’t give a fuck.
My first mistake was opening a boffking thread in the first place. That’s on me.
If that pisses you off, consider the fact that the navy can’t afford to meaningfully arm it.
All emphasis mine.
Maybe we should divert the OP’s financial aid to buying one of those projectiles. Or a tenth of one. Or just a big mound of expensive carbon rods that don’t do anything. I’m really just looking for something else to spend that money on. Seriously, anything.
So, target practice would seem to be a mite expensive. $800K each round, you say? Warhead made of cocaine?
It was a pretty big boon to Maine’s economy. Bath Iron Works is one of the largest employers in the state. If you want to kill a Federally funded jobs program by all means, I have no interest in stopping you but don’t fool yourself thinking it will help Maine’s state funded colleges.
If you want to help out your own state at the expense of the rest of the countries tax payers you should be encouraging us to make more destroyers.
Based on his posting history, you are likely to be waiting a very long time.
Just 20 more upgrades to go!
Is there any particular reason why jobs created by congress have to be created for military purposes? Expanding rail service would create jobs and improve our nation. So would research into alternative energy or medical issues. They also would leave us with much more to show for it than a broken ship. What percentage of existing destroyers have even seen combat?
Companies like BIW need to diversify. Last time I checked, there were private industries that bought ships.