And the "budget off by factor of 10" award goes to USS Zumwalt

[nachtjaeger]

Unbelievable. The Excalibur rounds for the 155mm AGS (Advanced Gun System) are coming in at $800,000 each.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/13/at-800k-pop-new-navy-destroyers-ammo-is-in-question.html

The Zumwalt has storage for 600 AGS rounds. The Navy has only ordered 90. Oh, and there are two more ships in the pipeline.

For that price, you might as well buy a cruise missile for $1.1 million, or use Kamikaze UAVs for $100k a pop. There's even a ground-launched version of the AF's Small Diameter Bomb for $40k each (plus a stockpiled rocket motor)- and an upgraded version for small, fast targets for $250k.

Sometimes I hate to be proven right. Turns out the Army has a simple, reliable add-on for 155 mm artillery shells or 120mm mortar rounds that for
< $10,000 each turns them into a precision guided weapon with a CEP of < 10 meters- often within 4 meters. Even the electromechanical ballistic computers on the Iowa class BBs can calculate where a moving target will be when the round arrives. As I have advocated before, put the precision guidance package on the nose of conventional shells, and launch them into the funnel with big, cheap rockets.

[Mynock]

So.....fire projectile out of cannon, which then ignites like a rocket, which is guided by satellites in space......but it can only go 70 miles. This is a weaponized version of the breakfast machine from Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

[kham]

Yes, Nacht, but some bloated fucking 4-star from BuOrd would harrumph, gurgle, wipe the contractor -cum from its lips, and then explain that THAT's NOT THE NAVY WAY!

You think I was kidding before when I said the Navy is a 19th-century organization being dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th??
And to avoid any wiseasses, yeah, I fucking am aware it's 2016 - THE 21ST CENTURY....

Aside from a colossal waste of money, there isn't a single bit of this project - the entire damn ship - that isn't overpriced, over budget, overhyped, you name it. It's the fucking LCS on steroids. And you can call ME the dinosaur all you fucking like - letting a company that designs fucking AIRPLANES work on ships, has been an epic fail from the beginning.

[nachtjaeger]

The idea was, to have something cheaper than a $1.1 million Tomahawk for close targets, and save those for when you need to reach WAY out and touch someone. 70 miles isn't bad, considering the main battery on the Iowa class BBs could reach out somewhere in the 20-25 mile range accurately.

So.....fire projectile out of cannon, which then ignites like a rocket, which is guided by satellites in space......but it can only go 70 miles. This is a weaponized version of the breakfast machine from Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

[kham]

Here's the problem they just LOVE to gloss over:

A barrage of 406mm, or 203mm from say Newport News-type guns is literal Steel Rain. And the volume and shock effect of that, has it's own value, besides destroying things and killing the enemy. Plus, the range-thing? Well, y'see TacAir was supposed to do the work from the gunline-in from the beach. Which is the mission the A-6 would have been tasked, perhaps with some F-18s pitching in. But , holey moley, we don't HAVE any A-6s now. Or A-7s. Or S-3s. Thank you SO much , NavAir, for that level of spectacularly fucked-up insight. Not like anyone brought it up. But, hey, fightermafia uber alles.

You plan for an enemy's CAPABILITY
Not his intentions

I think I read that somewhere

[Duncan Edwards]

In fairness the cost went way up when the production run on the ammo was cut drastically. The original intent was to produce at least a couple dozen DDG-1000 class ships but it got cut to 3. Doesn't do much for economies of scale.

[nachtjaeger]

Made worse when the R&D costs are factored in. This seems to be a pattern- the military needs to buy 100 of X, but the costs go up, so they cut the order to 50, which drives the per-unit cost up farther, and they end up with five- unless the whole program gets cut.

In fairness the cost went way up when the production run on the ammo was cut drastically. The original intent was to produce at least a couple dozen DDG-1000 class ships but it got cut to 3. Doesn't do much for economies of scale.

[Mynock]

It's 10,000 ways how not to make a light bulb. You R&D everything and 1 out of a 100 projects ends up super effective. The amount of money is mind boggling but it's how you stay on top.

They probably killed it because it'll be obsolete when the railguns make it into production in a few years. Then we're back to the old school method of "Shit, we're out of ammo! Get the flatware!".

[Fred588]

A budget being off by a factor of 10 is apparently not such a new thing. I am currently reading a book that includes the text of a speech in late 1839 by Abraham Lincoln in which he complains in the following words:

"The agents of the government in connection with that war (Florida War), need a certain steam boat; the owner proposed to sell it for ten thousand dollars; the agents refused to give that sum, but hired the boat at one-hundred dollars per day, and kept it at hire till it amounted to ninety-two thousand dollars."

That is not quite 10 times. Its 9.2 times but that seems pretty close.