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Costs is a big factor but lack of training, experience, technical knowledge, and logistical capabilities are factors as well. Not to mention more complicated machinery/computers/technologies.
You're not getting it. You'd have to prove there was little to no waste to justify that sort of budget for you to be correct. Yet you're also saying there is a huge amount of waste in the military budget.
Just as there is massive waste in the spending on military hardware there is massive waste in the spending on military personnel. And no I don't mean Joe Six Pack's soldier wages or even the wages of a given general or colonel. Most of the spending waste is on the VA/benefits side which is done on purpose as a means of pork barrel spending. Healthcare in the US is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to expensive.
Everything you're talking about can either be done as well or better with existing ships or by upgrading existing ships with new weapon systems. The cost of dozens or (lol) hundreds of LCS's vs the cost of the upgrades just doesn't pan out. Especially since they can never seem to actually come anywhere near close to the budgeted LCS cost. LCS's are not cheap. To build or maintain. Or quick to build either apparently.
Did anyone even read the article?
Yeah, James Kirk.
except that he looks like Rob Riggle:
No they're not at complete odds: You can certainly have a situation where the budget is large due to both A) wasteful spending and B) some justification for that large budget. They're not mutually exclusive.
A few things:
While medical costs in the U.S is indeed way too expensive, they still have to be paid since our wounded soldiers need medical care. It's utterly fucked up to not pay their medical bills after sending them into combat.
Show me what existing USN ships can do exactly the same thing as the LCS while having the same costs and expendibility after upgrades. In addition, show me how said ships can accomplish said missions and capabilities without requiring said ship to be spared or re-tasked from their current obligations.
The idea is you use your Zumwalt's to blow up tanks, missile batteries, aircraft bases, and other various anti air craft batteries then you have your bombers come with the JDAM's to destroy any hardened fortifications.
Modern armor piercing warheads have obsoleted that sort of amour and even multi foot thick modern ceramics. That is why all the focus on 'reactive armour' techniques like the Russians Kontakt 5.
There is large and there is spending more than double the combined budgets of the 2 closest countries. The military clearly needs utterly gigantic massive stupid huge budget cuts and it needs them yesterday to fix the overspending and waste.
Yup to all. Hell dude even Regan basically admitted to US military overspending forcing the USSR to go into a economy destroying arms race. But if you want to defend projects like the SDI or the B1B as totally legit non-pork barrel spending go ahead and knock yourself out.
Of course. That doesn't mean you can't reduce the cost of medical care. Everyone elsewhere pays about half of what we do here for a reason you know.
Is this a trick question because exactly none of the LCS's can do what they're touted to.
Sure I am you're just ignoring and/or mentally filtering out what I've already said about what the new weapon systems upgrades. Better weapons and weapon systems trump suicide ships/tactics any day as we learned from the Japanese during WWII.
Again, I never said there wasn't waste in military spending. But military spending still needs to be large in order for us to have the capabilities we have now. Show me which of those nations or combination of nations can provide the same level of military capability while touting significantly lower costs for the same standard of living.
The US military isn't in charge of changing our entire health-care system. They have to work with the crap we have now.
From your article:
The Spruance, Oliver Hazard Perry, and Arleigh Burke classes all had initial and major teething issues/glitches. The LCS is not a new phenomenon in that regard. Hell, even the very first six original frigates for the US Navy from 1797 had cost over-runs and teething issues. Now if that issue is happening several years from now, then yes you have a total point about the operational capability of the LCS.
What new weapon systems upgrades will allow a single destroyer to do two simultaneous missions at the same time in different theatres? And in coastal regions Again, one of the points for the LCS is that the USN gets more ships to do more missions across the globe.
Yes the Iowa class Battleships are vintage WW2, but they have been upgrade over time. Especially in the 1980's under President Regan's 600 ship navy. The Iowa's were fitted with four Phalanx CIWShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS mounts for close in threats, such as anti-ship missiles. Also they were given Armored Box Launchers with Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, and MK 141 Quad Cell launchers for Harpoon Anti-ship missiles. They also received the latest warfare electronics available at the time. The Babcock & Wilcox boilers were also upgrade to burn the current Navy fuel used today. Each of the four engine rooms had a pair of Ship's Service Turbine Generators (SSTGs) for a total of 10MW of electricity. The Navy still maintains a cache of spare parts and gun barrels for these ships. Other specialty parts remain stored abroad a number of South Dakota class Battleships that are museum ships now.
As far as the armor of these ships, I know of no anti-ship missile capable of penetrating over 12 inches of sloped armor, let alone 17 inches on the Citadel. If used in a Battleship Battle Group like they were in the 80's and early 90's, they would be just as well protected as our carriers.
As far as cost goes...well 7 billion for 1 ship, and 3.8 billion each for the other 3 when built. So thats 18.4 billion for the USS Zumwalt and her sister ships. Thats a lot of government pork if you ask me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa-class_battleship#cite_note-55
Even Harpoon missiles can go through over 50" of armor and they're old ooold news.
No but you are trying to say 2 conflicting things [1]the US military needs to spend stupid amounts of money and [2]has tremendous amounts of waste while also arguing against cuts. Which doesn't make any sense at all. Especially since we aren't in a Cold War geo-political climate anymore.
Why would I when you've already admitted there is a huge amount of waste in military spending and that the situation can be improved dramatically. The only real disagreement left now is how much and what to cut out.
Not really. The VA is its own system for the most part and can do quite a bit outside the 'regular' healthcare system. This includes things like medical tourism for stuff like CABG's and hip replacements which are far cheaper elsewhere than in the US even after travel and hotel expenses are factored in.
The article also gives a slew of fundamental problems with the LCS's though. To fix them they'd have to scrap the current hulls/ships and start fresh and they'd end up with a much bigger and expensive ship if they still want it to do all they say it can. These are not minor issues that can be worked out.
Sorry but you gotta take the very bad with the wishy washy cherry picked quotes there and the article is chock full of the very bad. Why don't you actually try and address some of the bad stuff it brings up instead of quote mining the article and going, 'hey maybe possibly there is a chance this isn't a horrible screw up?'.
Drones and/or cruise missiles.
Sure but it wouldn't have to sink it. A mission kill would be as good as complete sinking since economically it would no longer be viable to repair one.
Your right, but the missiles would still have to get by the BB's escorts, and then get by the BB's own defenses. This happened in the Gulf War with the USS Missouri, two missles were fired at the Missouri, one missed and the other was shot down by a British Frigate.
How does that not make sense? Ok, let's try to get on the same page/understanding here: When I mentioned waste, I was talking about the program mismanagement among the numerous military programs we have, pork barreling (i.e the US Army being forced to buy tanks it doesn't want/need), and contractor greed. Without those, our military spending would be a lot lower.
I'll just let the Undersecretary of the Navy handle this for me:
The paper I linked to above should make clear why those won't fit the LCS' intended role.
Yea this what I mean by cuts for the most part. I think we don't need as many overseas bases or carrier groups but I'd be happy if we 'only' fixed the stuff you mention.
I think if we're not fighting a major war and we're still spending $300 billion+ or for that matter even $200 billion+ something is really wrong here. Its the baked in Cold War mentality that we always need to be spending x% of GDP at a minimum on the military that needs to go. For reference we were able to get military spending to $100 billion in 2013 dollars post WWII. Briefly. Very briefly. Once that Cold War got going though...welp.
That is the old 2013 report that was meant to squash rumors about how badly the LCS program was going and give the shipyards some political cover to hopefully work a miracle and fix the problems. There is a new one that came out in Feb or Mar 2014 that has congressmen openly astonished at how much of a dismal failure LCS has been at meeting all its goals. Hence congress cutting the program down to 32 ships total most of which will probably end being given to the coast guard if they aren't used for target practice after early decommissioning.
I'd have to disagree: from what I can tell, that $300 billon is the minimum we'd need for our current global commitments and capability. In order to cut back the military spending, we'd have to be willing to give up a lot of the military capabilities. To me, that's not possible in light of current and future obligations as well as China's increased spending per year.I think if we're not fighting a major war and we're still spending $300 billion+ or for that matter even $200 billion+ something is really wrong here. Its the baked in Cold War mentality that we always need to be spending x% of GDP at a minimum on the military that needs to go. For reference we were able to get military spending to $100 billion in 2013 dollars post WWII. Briefly. Very briefly. Once that Cold War got going though...welp.
The LCS program has been badly mismanaged I will give you that. The pricing of each LCS ship is higher than I would like. But the capabilities it can offer, if/when the bugs/teething issues are fixed, warrant their purchase IMO. The program can always be canceled if I'm wrong.
Based on what though? Even during peace time our military post WWII has been notoriously wasteful. Many programs that are only giving results today had seeds planted way back in the mid 90's for instance.
If LCS did what they said it did but was only somewhat over budget/late I'd agree with you.
You're looking at that all wrong.
I bet that ship has a couple of secret china kill switches in it. Too much opportunity not to.
Even supposedly heavily subsidized (they aren't) poors don't have anywhere near the wealth of the top 5% much less 1%. So yes it does matter. Especially since you tried to make a per person claim about costs being low based on GDP.
That is what happens when you have a post recession economy with little or no recovery for the non-rich. If you want to fix that issue you have to force the rich to put more of their money back into the economy and enact progressive taxation. The alternative is more wealth just keeps concentrating at the top.
18% of yearly budget is pretty far from nothing and I already posted the graph showing historical costs in 2013 dollars showing your wrong on your latter claim too. You're not even trying anymore. :/
