The destroyer USS Zumwalt was commissioned about three weeks ago. It is the latest and greatest, most high tech destroyer in the fleet. At a cost of around $4 billion dollars, it is also the most expensive destroyer ever built. The ship has two primary guns, 155 mm Advanced Gun System howitzers, intended to support ground forces in land attacks. These guns fire a Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), a GPS guided round with a range of 60 nautical miles.
The only problem is that the Navy just announced that they are cancelling the high-tech ammunition because each LRLAP is simply too expensive to fire. Each LRLAP costs around $800,000, and quite possibly more. According to Popular Mechanics: The two Advanced Gun System howitzers are fed by a magazine containing 600 rounds of ammunition, making it capable destroying hundreds of targets at a rate of up to ten per minute.
If you do the math the numbers get scary. If the guns fire 10 LRLAP rounds per minute from a 600 round magazine, the ammunition alone would cost $480,000,000 per hour, or almost a half billion dollars. One source suggests that the ship could carry up to 1,500 rounds, which would represent roughly 30% of the construction cost of the ship itself, just for ammunition.
The Navy blames this exorbitant cost on the earlier budget cuts. Originally, the Navy planned on building 32 Zumwalt class destroyers, a number that they have now cut to 3. The smaller ship order also meant fewer LRLAPs on order and presumably dramatically decreased economies of scale. Even so, the cost appear to have escalated extremely rapidly. In 2001, the director of Lockheed’s guided projectiles division claimed the LRLAP would cost “less than $50,000 each.”
So the new ship has big guns, but no bullets. The Navy is now looking for new ammunition.
Defense News reports: “We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems.
“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.
But the likelihood is that there will be no LRLAP replacement before the Zumwalt enters operational service.
Heh, I thought about notifying the skipper here about this but as I thought, not necessary. 🙂
I think we should be happy that weapons system constipation will ultimately see us all safe. On an extrapolated graph it should now be a simple matter to predict when producing a single bullet will require multiple entire annual defense budgets and too many years to maintain program stability as the money for the bullet is divided between various parasites into tiny fractions, with vendors frequently suing their only customer, etc.
That is, assuming the average level of constipation is mirrored more or less globally. Right now that does not seem to be the case.
The decision making process and its execution by the Obama Administration and the Navy has been deplorable. As a review of that entire process will now by made under the Administration of the 45th. President one hopes the future holds better things for our country.
Good Watch
Looking through half-closed eyes it could be CSS Virginia and 1862.
154 years and little change.
My old man worked for Hughes Aircraft during the cold war. As an engineer working for the premier smart weapon defense contractor of the time, he said there was such a thing as over engineering and a cost benefit ratio.
I think it’s a totally neat system, from my oh wow cool gun POV. But I think they need a bit of KISS in procurement and development.
Just so we stay on the chart of facts:
“In late December 2005, the House and Senate agreed to continue funding the program. The U.S. House of Representatives allotted the Navy only enough money to begin construction on one destroyer, as a “technology demonstrator”
It does not seem to the be the case that the confusion and mess of this program was instantiated in 2008.
Yes Captain, everything is Obama’s fault included programs originated and funded before he took office. Heard it all before.
True but he did have the opportunity to review the programme as he did so many others and created masses of regulations. Well he’s finished now and can be blamed for everything as he did to Bush !!
Good Watch.
We can blame Iraq on Bush. As far as review every project the military is involved in, that’s called micro managing, that’s a stretch. You have to delegate, if something sticks out like a sore thumb the president might take an interest. I think Bush Jr. passed over a lot of opportunities to cut military waste and misdirection but of course he was involved in marshalling a useless war. It would have been nice if he paid attention to the F-35 which qualifies as an over engineered money hole. The president does not design military equipment he depends on the military to make wise decisions.
I have heard comments about carrier groups being vulnerable and outdated maybe the next president might evaluate that. Oh, wait, he’s an narcissistic idiot!! Dangerous to boot.