Took me a minute to realize that your first "news article" wasn't from a reputable organization like this link. Thought it was Bloomberg in fact. I tried to find out who runs blooms mag but I clicked the about us section and it just said there are 30 employees. Googled it and can't find anything about it. Not even a Wikipedia page. I did see a link to a Reddit page or something. Just the misleading title was enough to alert me to that something was wrong. I wonder how many people read crap like that and regurgitweet it every day.
C'mon, we need more Billion dollar aircraft carriers to extend their reach worldwide. Why not cheap drones from Israel instead of this dog shit plan?
"Billion dollar aircraft carriers"....lol... http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/politics/uss-gerald-r-ford-aircraft-carrier-delay/index.html
This shows what a travesty the defense budget is on the poor fools called taxpayers. It's too late but let's resurrect the Enterprise from mothballs. That could have been cheaper.
I'd be in favor of that if they can fix the transporter. That thing always malfunctions. And maybe keep a backup supply of dilithium crystals onboard? barfo
"and improved survivability against projected threats" Man that sounds like a tall mound of bullshit. Then this one is not understandable at all. " Despite delays to the USS Gerald R. Ford's delivery, the Navy says that the Ford-class carriers will yield a $4 billion reduction per ship cost as compared to its predecessor, the Nimitz Class." The first Nimitz cost 2 billion, the last 6. How the hell does a Ford at 13 billion save a nickel? Forget 4 billion. I hear it saves in crew costs like in less crew, but the ship cost way more.
O&M on a carrier is about 6M per day, last I checked. Maybe they're using a 50yr lifecycle delta...? I did some analysis for next-gen Ohio in another life. Original estimates with all the upgrades was going to be ~8-10B per, decreasing over the class build. Maybe better, based on Virginia lessons learned. Congress (McCain, iirc) said something like "I'm not approving this until the cost starts with a 4" (i.e, 4.99B would be ok). I asked the dumb question of "If we just pulled the plans for another Ohio off the shelf and built is as-was to 1987 technology, how much would it cost?" Vendors did the math and came back with 5.2B.
Maybe they mean $4B cheaper than it would cost to build another Nimitz today? Dunno, I'm just guessing. barfo
