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dogma wrote:
I'm aware that it isn't an upgrade from 1945, but you're still talking about a 20 year gap. You also have a history of getting things horribly wrong, so I will not believe you without a source.

Dug out the GAO report from the last time they did the survey. I found my $500k was from the report issued at the time of their mothballing. The most recent numbers I could find are as follows:

"The estimated cost cited for reactivating the U.S.S. Wisconsin was $209.4 million and for the U.S.S. Iowa, was $221.3 million, including repair of the damaged turret.

To accomplish the reactivation, the Navy estimated 14 months for industrial support and 3 to 6 months for modernization and training on and certification of newly installed equipment. The estimated cost of reactivating the U.S.S. Wisconsin was based on the actual cost to reactivate the U.S.S. New Jersey battleship in the 1980s, less the modernization costs that occurred during its reactivation, and escalating the figure to fiscal year 1999 dollars. The
estimated cost of reactivating the U.S.S. Iowa is the same as the U.S.S. Wisconsin plus $12 to $14 million to repair the damage to the number 2 turret" - GAO/NSIAD-99-62

So, yes, price has gone up, but is still no where near 3 billion dollars each plus another 4 as we go.

There was another report done in 2005 but no numbers were sited. It was, however where the Navy complained about berthing men and women on the same ship. (GAO-06-279R)


One of the more specific upgrades, and probably oen of the most expensive was updating the ships from analog to digital systems, which is probably the reason for the massive discrepancy. At the time the original report was issued, that was not in the cards yet, and would require the electronic systems of the ships be completely overhauled.

BaronIveagh wrote:
"The estimated cost cited for reactivating the U.S.S. Wisconsin was $209.4 million and for the U.S.S. Iowa, was $221.3 million, including repair of the damaged turret.

To accomplish the reactivation, the Navy estimated 14 months for industrial support and 3 to 6 months for modernization and training on and certification of newly installed equipment. The estimated cost of reactivating the U.S.S. Wisconsin was based on the actual cost to reactivate the U.S.S. New Jersey battleship in the 1980s, less the modernization costs that occurred during its reactivation, and escalating the figure to fiscal year 1999 dollars. The
estimated cost of reactivating the U.S.S. Iowa is the same as the U.S.S. Wisconsin plus $12 to $14 million to repair the damage to the number 2 turret" - GAO/NSIAD-99-62

So, yes, price has gone up, but is still no where near 3 billion dollars each plus another 4 as we go.

Sure, I acknowledge that, I was just very dubious of the 500k number.

I would have to do more research into the Zumwalt in order to really assess if its worth the price, though.

BaronIveagh wrote:

dogma wrote:
I'm aware that it isn't an upgrade from 1945, but you're still talking about a 20 year gap. You also have a history of getting things horribly wrong, so I will not believe you without a source.

Dug out the GAO report from the last time they did the survey. I found my $500k was from the report issued at the time of their mothballing. The most recent numbers I could find are as follows:

"The estimated cost cited for reactivating the U.S.S. Wisconsin was $209.4 million and for the U.S.S. Iowa, was $221.3 million, including repair of the damaged turret.

I just want to make clear here, to people who maybe are skimming this, or are just bad at math, just how poor your original numbers were, the order of magnitude we're talking.

It was the equivalent of going to a restaraunt and getting a steak that would be about $20. When presented with the actual bill, it is $8,800.

dogma wrote:
Sure, I acknowledge that, I was just very dubious of the 500k number.

I would have to do more research into the Zumwalt in order to really assess if its worth the price, though.

Personally I don't see it. The AGS is very nice, but it's only a 155, and the extended range munitions had an alarming tendency to make the guns explode during initial testing (A similar problem occrued when they tried to develop extended range munitions for the Burke). To deal with the whole gun explode issue, they reduced the range from 63 to 45 nautical miles and have been testing some new coatings. Comparitivly, they offer the same firepower as a 12 gun 155 battery and limited missile launch capability.

Other problems include potential capsizing in heavy weather, and the fact that she has to take on large amounts of water ballast and ride low in the water in order to fire accurately. Which means the very expensive lightly armored warship will be going much slower then usual, despite her impressive horsepower.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
I just want to make clear here, to people who maybe are skimming this, or are just bad at math, just how poor your original numbers were, the order of magnitude we're talking.

It was the equivalent of going to a restaraunt and getting a steak that would be about $20. When presented with the actual bill, it is $8,800.

You've never done business with the government, have you?

And those estimates were taken from two different reports done a decade apart. What you are seeing is the amount of upgrading that took place on all ships, but rather then done incrementally, you're seeing the difference in the bill all at once. Technology marches on.

Ouze wrote:It was the equivalent of going to a restaraunt and getting a steak that would be about $20. When presented with the actual bill, it is $8,800.

Well then why are we sitting around counting? Fething do something about it.
This is why we fail, because old people in D.C only ever know how to count numbers. They're useless!!! grrrrrrrrrr.

BaronIveagh wrote:

Ouze wrote:
I just want to make clear here, to people who maybe are skimming this, or are just bad at math, just how poor your original numbers were, the order of magnitude we're talking.

It was the equivalent of going to a restaraunt and getting a steak that would be about $20. When presented with the actual bill, it is $8,800.

You've never done business with the government, have you?

And those estimates were taken from two different reports done a decade apart. Technology marches on.

You are misdirecting. The point is you made a claim that we could upgrade battleships for $500K according the the GAO. This was your number, your unsolicited claim. When called on your utterly impossible number, which was immediately apparent, you did a moments research and discovered that of course your original claim was off by a factor of 430.

So, rather then take any responsibility for your bad estimation (or at least, the fact you're willing to throw out numbers without actually knowing the truth) now you're shrugging and going, "well, it's the goverment, bro, lol, right?". Arguing in this manner makes it very difficult to believe the value of anything you say going forward.

In any event, we've badly veered from the original post.

Ouze wrote:
You are misdirecting. The point is you made a claim that we could upgrade battleships for $500K according the the GAO. This was your number, your unsolicited claim. When called on your utterly impossible number, which was immediately apparent, you did a moments research and discovered that of course your original claim was off by a factor of 430.

So, rather then take any responsibility for your bad estimation (or at least, the fact you're willing to throw out numbers without actually knowing the truth) now you're shrugging and going, "well, it's the goverment, bro, lol, right?". Arguing in this manner makes it very difficult to believe the value of anything you say going forward.

No, what I said was that my number was not current. Therefor, yes, I was inaccurate. Notice, I admitted this. Not sure what your point was other then to irritate me.

Well, it's nothing against you, personally. I'm just hoping we can have a useful dialogue and part of that is at least some degree of precision in our statements.

BaronIveagh wrote: Comparitivly, they offer the same firepower as a 12 gun 155 battery and limited missile launch capability.

Limited In the anti-ship role maybe.

BaronIveagh wrote:
Other problems include potential capsizing in heavy weather...

A problem all ships face.

BaronIveagh wrote:
...and the fact that she has to take on large amounts of water ballast and ride low in the water in order to fire accurately. Which means the very expensive lightly armored warship will be going much slower then usual, despite her impressive horsepower.

Armor means very little when it comes to ships, as does speed. Detection and interception are far more important.

on I-5 North in Washington there is a personally owned billboard. The guy is a pretty Republican based nutjob a lot of the time, but this month it says, "20 TRILLION in debt, are you embarrassed yet?"

seriously Umerica, our trade deficit needs to shift, A LOT


we seriously are like a heroin junky hooked on CHINA. We borrow countless dollars while they fuel our economy. It's like no one in power understands how to actually run anything. Rich get rich, poor get poorer or in jail. for feths sake we have private prisons now. Places with cages for PROFIT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

honestly, if we don't try and help, we are fethed. Who cares about fething WarHammer, humanity is failing. Does anyone even care?

Dude $500,000 would afford you a Tamahawk missile, much less fully integrated and modernized post Aegis style air defense system.

Frazzled wrote:Dude $500,000 would afford you a Tamahawk missile, much less fully integrated and modernized post Aegis style air defense system.

Sadly, even that's a price from 1999 that increased to $1,490,000 in 2011... Weapon systems are so ridiculously expensive these days!

I thought St. Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter?

How much "life" does the main gun tubes have left on them? I highly doubt anyone manufacturing them anymore and the some of the spare tubes were made into "MOAB" for Iraq

Jihadin wrote:How much "life" does the main gun tubes have left on them? I highly doubt anyone manufacturing them anymore and the some of the spare tubes were made into "MOAB" for Iraq

Unknown. Originally 290 rounds, but that was back in World War II. Post War it jumped to 350 when the Navy went to Diphenylamine, higher again when they used Swedish Additive, and again when they went to polyurethane jackets and a chromium lining, at which point they stopped measuring it in shots fired and came up with 'Fatigue Equivalent Rounds' as it's measurement.

If you're thinking of the turret 2 explosion on the Iowa, that was caused by several factors, mostly the use of munitions that had been improperly stored. (which does call into question all the parts currently in storage, as if something as fundimental as ammo is being mishandled...)

DIDM wrote:
honestly, if we don't try and help, we are fethed. Who cares about fething WarHammer, humanity is failing. Does anyone even care?

Countrary to what some people seem to believe, the US isn't the entire humanity. You'd do well to remember...

Easy E wrote:I thought St. Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter?

Reagan was one of those politicians that was able to trick his own party in to going against their beliefs.

He did it so well, the party STILL worships him.

dogma wrote:
A problem all ships face.

More so then most. The tumblehome hull means that the ship is not self righting, unlike most modern hulls.

dogma wrote:
Armor means very little when it comes to ships, as does speed. Detection and interception are far more important.

Anti-ship missile speeds are climbing faster per generation then CIWS interception speeds. However, this is done at the cost of reduced warhead power. This does not affect their performance opposed to modern warships, as most navies currently think very much as you do, and only lightly armor new ships. However, it should be pointed out that battleships, unlike most other warships, are designed and armored against their own gun batteries (the idea being that they would have to engage ships equivalent to themselves).

As an (admittedly old, as it's hard to get modern aircraft v ship info for battleships) example would be that the 9 bomb hits to Yamato did fairly superficial damage to the ship, mostly obliterating unarmored deck emplacements. One did strike the radar room, another hit one of the secondary batteries, but this was not an irreparable situation.

Far, far more damaging was the 13 torpedo hits that finally beat it to death, overwhelming the Japanese DCT's attempts to counterflood and pump her out. (However, it should be pointed out that poor damage control was a recurring issue in the Japanese navy. While I doubt a US DCT could have saved her at the end either, the ship most likely would have lasted longer.)

Against missiles, there's even less. A Fritz X (which is considered the ancestor of the modern guided missile and smart bomb) hit the battleship Italia following the fall of Mussolini, but failed to penetrate it's armor. Two hit the nearby battleship Roma, which did sink due to the chain reaction of events inside the ship following the hits, particularly the magazine explosion of the number 2 turret, which was powerful enough to throw the turret off the ship.

The Iraqi's tried to engage the Mo with Russian silkworms, due to it's astonishing success rate at obliterating Iraqi coastal defenses, but these either missed or were intercepted. I did not know this before, but Mo fired over 800 16 inch rounds during Gulf War 1, but only 20 odd Tomahawks.

I'm sure many of you will point out the loss of the General Belgrano to British Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes. It should be pointed out that the mod 4 is much more powerful then the Mk 8 used in WWII. The Belgrano was struck in two relatively unarmored locations past the anti-torpedo bulge, and probably would have remained afloat if the pumps had been working. The Bouchard was also struck, but the torpedo failed to detonate.

Hey Baron, take it to the South China Seas thread....

This one is about... ahh... infrastructure or something.

BaronIveagh wrote:
More so then most. The tumblehome hull means that the ship is not self righting, unlike most modern hulls.

And yet the people with the relevant data have supported the tumblehome design for a little over a decade, and statistical data that has been released indicates that its fine.

Here's a good summary.

BaronIveagh wrote:
However, it should be pointed out that battleships, unlike most other warships, are designed and armored against their own gun batteries (the idea being that they would have to engage ships equivalent to themselves).

That's not how the Iowa class was designed. It focused on speed, not protection, and would not have survived a hit from its own main guns. We're also talking about ships that featured armored decks, and a torpedo belt. Anti-ship missiles fit neatly between the two.

BaronIveagh wrote:
A Fritz X...

The Fritz X was a glide bomb, not a missile.

BaronIveagh wrote:
I did not know this before, but Mo fired over 800 16 inch rounds during Gulf War 1, but only 20 odd Tomahawks.

Possibly because the Tomahawks are more accurate.

sourclams wrote:You miss the broader point. Warren has continuously been in favor of more spending, bigger spending, larger government involvement, and more direct intervention for... ever.

So the broader point is that you don't like the sorts of things Warren generally says, so you're not going to like this either.

Which is fine, except we're at the point where we've literally run out of the revenue to have even one, not to mention 'other', or 'both'.

You literally haven't. Not at all. You can't just make this stuff up. There are real numbers out there, and you can go and look them up any time you want. The idea that the US doesn't have access to more money is complete fantasy.

Let's sideline this discussion for 6 months, when it'll become shockingly apparent just how big an issue this is.

dogma wrote:
And yet the people with the relevant data have supported the tumblehome design for a little over a decade, and statistical data that has been released indicates that its fine.

Here's a good summary.

It's an interesting article, though it points out my salient points against it, and that the Navy insists that it will work based on a successful run by a 1/4 scale model. It also points out the the poor seaworthiness of similar ships in the past is a matter of record. (And dances around that Tsushima, that battle they mention, was also the first real occasion where modern battleship designs absolutely crushed earlier tumblehome designed ships)

dogma wrote:
That's not how the Iowa class was designed. It focused on speed, not protection, and would not have survived a hit from its own main guns. We're also talking about ships that featured armored decks, and a torpedo belt. Anti-ship missiles fit neatly between the two.

The Iowa was designed as an upgrade to the South Dakota class, which was armored against the Mk 6 16" gun (which the South Dakota class had carried). Late in the design phase, the Navy opted to use the newer Mk 7 in the Iowas as a space saving measure, initially without increasing armor, as it had already been ordered. The armor was increased to 14" thick on the Missouri and Wisconsin as a later refinement of the design once combat data could be collected. The later Montana class was designed to withstand the Mk 7.

Above the surface, the internal armor belt is uniform 12" class A armor (an item you seem to have forgotten listing the Iowa class' armor). It's below the waterline that they switch to the steadily thinning class B. Granted, there may be such a thing, and I've just never heard of it, but I've never heard of a cruise missile that turns into a torpedo before. My understanding of anti-ship missiles is that the majority of them work on a delay, a smaller blast penetrating the hull allowing a larger explosive to enter and detonate. Against thin hulled modern warships, this is very effective. Against an Iowa class, with it's armor belt being internal rather than external, this would *probably* not work, the external hull metal acting in a similar manner to spaced armor or chobham on a tank, in theory.

dogma wrote:
Possibly because the Tomahawks are more accurate.

Actually this is why:

"TLAM performance in Desert Storm was well below the impression conveyed in DOD's report to the Congress, as well as in internal DOD estimates. During Desert Storm, a TLAM mission was loaded 307 times into a particular missile for launch from a Navy ship or submarine. Of those 307, 19 experienced prelaunch problems. Ten of the 19 problems were only temporary, thus these missile were either launched at a later time or returned to inventory. Of the 288 actual launches, 6 suffered boost failures and did not transition to cruise. Despite initial strong positive claims made for TLAM performance in Desert Storm, analysis of TLAM effectiveness was complicated by problematic bomb damage assessment data. The relatively flat, featureless, desert terrain in the theater made it difficult for the Defense Mapping Agency to produce usable TERCOM ingress routes, and TLAM demonstrated limitations in range, mission planning, lethality, and effectiveness against hard targets and targets capable of mobility." (emphasis mine) http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/bgm-109-operation.htm

A 16" Mark 7 has exceptional effectiveness against hard targets, it can penetrate concrete up to 30' thick.