It can be, in fact a carrier that is conventional with only a squadron of multipurpose fighters, and one of reconnaissance planes might be cheaper, and more survivable.

Having worked many years ago for my father's Marine engineering company I find this appalling that these major ship building companies are out to line their own pockets. If they were in the the commercial shipbuilding business they would have been litigated out of business by their customers. I watch some of the cable programs about building military vessels in other European countries the aircraft carriers are considerably smaller. They have new technologies that work and also design to be stealthy. To me, smaller would be better and survivable in ocean warfare.

That certainly fits the Millenial philosophy.

Yes, I had forgotten about NDAs, I would think there would be some way around it, but as long as the sheeple do not object, I guess they have no incentive, cost plus is an excuse for this exact behavior. Fixed cost contracts would make them be a lot more stringent on both sides, such as Boeing uses.

Nick, there are several things standing in the way of contractors engaging in full disclosure publicity to defend themselves. First is the issue of classification: most specs for these systems are secret and above, so any discussion with anyone without a "need to know" gets you put in jail (unless you're Hillary Clinton). Second is nondisclosure statements that are a standard part of every government contract, preventing any discussion of any aspect of the program with outsiders, classified or not. And finally, there's the money aspect: with big systems with lots of new technology, the contracts are almost always cost-plus, meaning the government pays for overruns; corporate management doesn't want anything to cause a glitch in the money flow, so they roll over to what would be unreasonable demands for change in commercial ventures. Government customers are used to doing business this way, since it's a cultural thing, and it isn't their money.

Which does not happen in business as R&D are usually tax deductible....

Most of them will not touch government contracts due to all the issues with them. Civilian standards are a lot lower than mil spec, so building a mil spec ship is an exercise in herding cats. You do one one inspector says, than another comes along and makes you change it all for something else and so on. They are too busy in DC decoding Trumps tweets, trying to find a way to slither their own crappy health plan, and fighting with each other, not to mention trying to find something to impeach Trump with, to concentrate on something as silly as their screwy procurement system. Besides that, there is a huge background of money, favors and trades in play. Many senior officers retire and get appointed to the boards of these companies, in return for their previous service to them and their connections.

Herb, probably not, a lot of these issues are the result of what Doc says. changes submitted all through the building process. The elcetromagnetic launchers is one example, it never entered their pea brains to put ONE on board, test, use and fix until it works, before going whole hog and finding out "oops". These are the decisions of incompetent people who just know that they can issue orders that will be obeyed, common sense notwithstanding...

Doc, I can agree with that and it would behoove the contractors to list all of those without specifics so the public can see just who is at fault here. After 20 years in the military, I firmly believe that the military functions just like a septic tank and the less desirable people float to the top and can do their best to ruin anything. While there are some outstanding senior people, there are a whole lot more "less stellar" ones who stay on enjoying their power and prestige and causing mayhem along the way.

There is a flip side to this that rarely (if ever) get publicized. I was in development and delivery of new Air Force space systems, and had to constantly fight the operational (customer) side that kept wanting to change specifications far past final design. I had a reputation for being an iron clad hardass compared to more malleable developers, because I refused to allow significant changes beyond a certain point in development, knowing that they would either be extremely expensive, cause significant delay, or be written up as "deficiencies." I suspect that many of the so-called "deficiencies" are a result of late changes the operator forgot to include in the original specs.

I'm not privy to any inside information when it comes to ship building, but I am sort of privy to information about automobile building, since many top exec's from the auto industry frequented my camera shop. In the glory days, before Japanese cars were a significant import, many cars made by the big three were built very shoddy with many defects.Especially those assembled on Monday and Friday when employees were in the lowest attendance.

Cars were delivered to dealers with the expectation that they would fix the defects before selling the cars. Many dealers only fixed the cars minimally in order to keep the un-reimbursed costs low. One dealer complained to me that he got one care with the entire engine in the trunk. Every one knew about the practice. No one said much about it except for Nader, Who wrote a book called "unsafe At Any Speed" that was quite a hit, but very little was done about it. Now, my question is, are we sending our men to lay down their lives in ships that are unsafe at any speed or any maneuver?

we should contract with the ship builders that make the cruse ships.

Me dino was not surprised either.

The problem the U.S. Navy faces is that it is developing technology and isn't allowed to fund that separately. Therefore, each ship's actual cost is hard to determine, since both development and construction are rolled into it.

I expect nothing less than this, so no disappointment. Good thing we do not get all the government we pay for.

Lol. I wonder if that was before or after they auctioned off their souls...

I am of the opinion that Kennedy's last address is along the same lines as Eisenhower's speech you mention. I love Paul Harvey's "If I were the devil" too.

Unfortunately they sold their toenails to the devil.

So basically, we have a Navy that can't put to see or do any real fighting. [facepalm]

Who signs off on these pieces of floating junk and can we hang them by their toenails?

That is the infamous "military industrial complex" Eisenhower warned of, though some think he meant an even darker version....

I always see it as Orwell writes in 1984, perpetual war and perpetual money spending on war simply to keep the economy going.

Thanks for getting me up to date on that one. I simply absorbed a title mocking the purchase and then dismissed it.

I would say yes to that, except that all I have seen is F35s having issues with O2 systems and some minor flight control issues. I have also seen some opinion pieces with claims about other issues but I have not seen anything yet to verify them. At their price, you have to agree that anything less than perfect is a ripoff. It almost makes one think all military procurement is either a huge corrupt system, or a way to mask money going into some pretty expensive black projects.

This is along the same lines as England buying 18 billion in defective F35's to bail out the pentagon and England calling it the premier fleet although they are really useless.

I had to go look that up, I have never heard of him, but just from his bio I would say he would not be impressed with this situation...