On 4/19/14, 5:16 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/19/2014 4:52 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 4/19/14, 4:45 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/19/2014 4:32 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:
On 4/19/14, 3:47 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 4/19/2014 2:25 PM, F*O*A*D wrote:



A $3 billion ship...with IPS drives. It ought to be good for a few
laughs in the future.


"The ship took about three years to complete and was perhaps the most
advanced warship of its time."

Oh, that's not the USS Zumwalt. It's the USS Princeton,
commissioned in
1843 and the first US Naval ship to be driven by a propeller
instead of
sails or paddlewheels.

And they call me Mr. Luddite.


The Zumwalt looks as if it would roll over in heavy beam seas, but I'm
sure the design was tank-tested for that. I read that the "tumblehome"
design is supposed to minimize it's radar footprint, but really, a ship
two thirds the length of a New Jersey class WWII battleship is going to
be pretty easy to spot at sea, from the air, or from a satellite.



You forget. Oceans are big. A 600+' ship is a speck from the air or
space unless you know exactly where to look for it. It is said that
the radar signature of the Zumwalt is about that of a small sailboat.




Hi-res satellite photos aren't going to mistake a 600' target for a
small sailboat.

Agreed. *If* they know where to look. The optics in satellites won't
resolve a 600' ship if they are looking at hundreds of square miles of
ocean.



The heat blooms from the ship's four Rolls-Royce turbines will show on
satellite infrared, and the wakes and turbulence will be easy to spot,
too, especially with intelligent search and tracking. The reality is,
this ship is too big to hide itself at sea, and the kazillions spent on
making it "radar invisible" (which it isn't) was a waste of dollars.