Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire US Navy ongoing fiasco with new Zumwalt destroyers

Quoting from Military.com's synopsis of GAO report

The Navy is still trying to figure out what to do about the two 155mm deck guns that had been planned for the three Zumwalt-class destroyers, the GAO report said. In development, the Navy found that the cost for a single round for the guns was roughly $800,000.
"Following an evaluation of five other munition options, the Navy determined that no viable replacement, guided or unguided, was feasible," the report said. "As a result, the guns will remain inoperable on the ships for the foreseeable future."
In January 2018, the Navy changed the primary mission for the Zumwalt class from land attack to offensive surface strike.
"According to Navy officials, the Navy's planned modifications to support the new mission will cost about $1 billion," the report said.


What a waste of taxpayer money. Navy now spending another billion to try to make use of Zumwalt destroyers.]

fake news



are these some type of programmable artillery rounds? I know a little bit about the technology, but $800 large per round sounds pretty steep.

for 800k a pop they oughtta at least call it a 155 Creedmore

Fake News, No! Old News, Yes! News about the new Long Range guns being Useless has been known for a few years now, News of them was pretty much overshadowed by the failures of their propulsion systems and continual major break downs.

Phil

So, how is it different from a 155mm howitzer?

The Navy hasn't gotten it right since we built the Tomcat....

Gun power gun vs. a rail gun.

So they design a gun that only works with a rocket assisted GPS guided projectile made specially for the gun, and then they build about six of them. Yep, sounds about right.

And course, the subtext on this is that they probably can’t just design a more conventional round with a shorter range because the Zumwalts need to be a reaaaaaaaaaaaallllly long way from anything that might shoot back.

Looong Range:

Caliber
155 mm (6.1 inch)
Elevation
+70 / −5 degrees
Rate of fire
10 rounds per minute (rpm)
Effective firing range
83 nautical miles with Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP)


Link


AGS can only use ammunition designed specifically for the system. Only one ammunition type was designed, and the Navy halted its procurement in November 2016 due to cost ($800,000 to $1 million per round), so the AGS has no ammunition and cannot be used


Phil

There’s two of those POS ships at the Atlantic Marine yard in Jacksonville. They’ve been there for at least a year now. They’re doing major rebuilding on brand new ships. One I hear left the yard where it was built and went straight to the Atlantic Marine dry dock.

Go Grumman!

Cancel the order for the ships, so that there's so few guns ammo is too expensive making it prohibitive, well hell even with the full 32 ship order what would that have done, bring the cost down from $800k-$1mil apiece, to maybe 250k each? Hell, might just as well switch over completely to surface to surface guided missile's period.

That or retrofit a couple dozen of our mothballed cruisers, and fit them out with a dozen of these new guns each (in twin mounts). That might bring the cost down a little.

If and when they get us involved in another major conflict we're going to need some multi role escort ships for all those transports that we don't have.


Phil

Zumwalt rolling in his grave.

Perfect!

In the meantime our countries infrastructure is crumbling.

He was as big a POS as these eponymous ships are.

Yet again the Navy built to a requirement that likely started as an idea in a vendor’s PowerPoint brief. Uniformed personnel saw the idea and declared it a “requirement.” Of course the “idea” consisted of PowerPoint deep engineering and the vendor then had to spend millions or billions to try and actually make it work. And the acquisition cycle goes round and round...

800K a round for ammo for this pig? The Navy should take up hand loading! Save some money on components, errr, or at least shoot more for the same money?