Your deeds are amazing, Lord! The US Armed Forces do not have enough money even after the new militarist President Donald Trump approved the country's defense budget in the amount of just under $ 700 billion (!) (In 2016, the defense budget was $ 534 billion, in 2017- m - 580 - 602 billion). To better understand this figure, it is worth remembering that similar spending by the two countries officially declared enemies of the United States last year was $ 69 billion (Russia) and $ 146 billion (China). And the Yankees still don't have enough money. Although they did not have a Russian failure in the late 80s and 90s. Just as there was no Chinese "stagnation" - in the late 70s, the PRC had an atomic bomb and machine gunners on horses in gas masks. So the defense industry of Russia and China in the 21st century is coming out of stagnation and making up for lost time, while the United States has been spending its $ 500-600 billion on defense for decades.
And it would be okay for some super-expensive projects like space squadrons to fight the "green men". No, they are spending on toys like new destroyers with railguns on board such as Zamvolt. No, while all this superweapon was being advertised, while they were making noises about the fact that an expensive gun would throw penny bricks hundreds of miles away with a wild rate of fire, it sounded somehow convincing. But when the program of 28 units of these super-destroyers was reduced to only three, and instead of railguns they were equipped with conventional guns with a barrel length of 62 caliber, it became somehow not laughing. Not for us, of course - we found it funny. Especially when the costs are calculated.
Two troughs float and break all the time, one more year is under construction and in a little more than a year will replenish the Navy. Which allows you to summarize costs. In fact, more than $ 22.5 billion was spent on two and a half ships. This is somewhere under 10 billion for each in the ranks and another 2.5 billion for the building under construction (the finished building today costs less than a third of the total costs).
Moreover, this squalor will not be able to shoot with main battery guns. Because during the implementation of the project, it turned out that there were no shells for them and there would not be. The prototype of the LRLAP (Long Range Land-Attack Projectile) type shells was under three meters long (okay, 2.24 meters), it could enter the barrel even with separate loading only after it was lifted vertically upwards and therefore the rate of fire was not above 10 rounds per minute. At the same time, the cost of one such projectile went through the roof for 800 thousand dollars. Somehow too much to throw only 11 kg of explosives at 100 km with a possible deviation from the target of 10-20 meters.
But the ammunition load of the two towers with the latest 155-mm artillery systems AGS (Advanced Gun System) is almost 600 rounds in automatic ammunition rack and 920 rounds in total. 730 million (million, Karl !!!) dollars for ammunition - somehow too much even for American sailors. But that's not all.
The design of the destroyer, by the way, leaks all the time, has no reservation. For at least some kind of replacement, the designers came up with the idea that they placed vertical launch units (UVP) for cruise and other missiles along the sides (they are universal for the Yankees). The logic is suicidal - let, they say, UVP protect the insides from enemy shells, missiles and shrapnel. The question of how the detonation of missiles in the UVP will help protect the destroyer was ignored as defeatist.
Everybody knows about the fact that destroyer sides suffer in everyday life, as evidenced by two criminal cases currently being considered by the tribunal against two captains of the second rank, who crumpled the sides and killed a dozen sailors. What would happen if you were in these airborne missiles with missiles … they preferred to keep silent about this.
But that's not all. Wanting to reduce the cost of the last, third in the series, destroyer Lyndon B. Johnson, the designers decided to abandon … the general computing environment (VHF) and the Mk57 vertical missile launch system. And this is beyond the scope of any understanding at all. In the absence of railguns and main-caliber guns, the destroyers of the series are only carriers of eight dozen missiles with a high degree of VHF automation.
All this looks even more silly against the background of the ongoing construction of Orly Burke-class destroyers, continuing in the United States and even reinforced due to the abandonment of the Zamwolts, which cannot replace them. Destroyers Orly Burke, in comparison with the realities of their failed "substitutes", move faster, are much more protected by Kevlar and undoubtedly carry more powerful and varied weapons. At the same time, the cost of the last pennants that have already entered service is less than 1.2 billion dollars, including armament on board, and the cost of the latter in the series will be 1.7 billion dollars in 2019 prices. The average price of almost 70 ships of this class is about a billion dollars at an annual cost of 20-25 million dollars. That is, one real Orly Burke is more powerful, faster, better protected and armed than the Zamwalt. At the same time, instead of one current and not brought to mind "Zamvolt", you can easily build 5 Orly Burke destroyers. FIVE!!!
But this is just one of many examples of how and on what the money of American taxpayers is spent, about which (more precisely, about caring for and about whose money) all American politicians love to broadcast from the stands. Notice, no outraged articles in the free American press. No investigations. No official cases at least about incomplete official competence, official inconsistency. Nothing. Despite the fact that any economist and accountant, or just a reasonable person, sees that we have before us a vivid example of impudent corruption. Which is easier to prove.
In any revolutionary project, first the weakest and most breakthrough element, the most risky link, is singled out. In the case of Zamvolt, it was precisely the railgun and new shells for the 155mm guns. It was enough to wait until the completion of the full test cycle on the shore and not lay new destroyers, and the saved $ 20 billion could have reduced taxpayers' expenses. Instead, they deliberately allocated money and mortgaged more than one - three ships. Which, obviously, now do not carry anything new, but are more expensive than a nuclear submarine, or as much as the latest British aircraft carrier.
By the way, it is also constantly leaking and breaking.
I wonder who learned to steal from whom on defense orders?
