The weapons system removed from the Zumwalt They were going to build 30 and ended up building three of these dysfunctional monstrosities. Commissioned in 2016, it has only taken them eight years to retrofit the weapons system. The Navy's priorities have changed since the post-9/11 era, and shore bombardment no longer figures prominently, especially in an era of high-tech competition in the Indo-Pacific. China and Russia both possess antiship missiles that greatly outrange Zumwalt's cannons, even if shells were available. Recognizing this reality, the Navy is repurposing the high-end...

On this day, 62 years ago, David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) premiered in London, UK. My favorite movie of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULsFcSpaVO0  

Editor's Note: Just returned from business travel so my blogging frequency should bump up again. Boeing continues o provide legions of future business historians the fodder for hundreds of books and cautionary tales on how engineering can fall of a cliff once competency and merit are abandoned for the fashionable 21st century reboot of National Socialist identitarian totalitarianism in DEI nonsense. A federal judge on Thursday rejected a deal that would have let Boeing plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and pay a fine for misleading U.S. regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before...

I have always had my doubts but Jane Shaw brings the receipts. RedDR needed the war because his communist takeover of America was failing bigly and a war empowered government like nothing else. A decade ago I began to research the history of the Pearl Harbor attack. I  had happened upon the book Infamy by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, John Toland, which raised disturbing questions about foreknowledge of the attack. [2] This was Toland’s third book about World War II. His prize-winning Rising Sun had treated the attack as a dastardly Japanese act; the second revealed poor communication...

Word. The Zumwalt-class destroyer will never be the battleship of the twenty-first century. It’s the U.S. Navy’s version of the Russian Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier. Yet another multi-billion dollar failure. Yet, the instant that the Zumwalt-class appears to conduct strikes against enemy ground targets, they can be visually spotted by an enemy scout wielding binoculars. The reduced radar cross-section provides little protection for the warship when operating within the visual range of the enemy.  What’s more, the moment the Zumwalt fired its payload its stealth would be gone, as the...

One billion dollars for twisted metal for ten F35 crashes, soon you're talking real money. The incident rate with respect the US Air Force (USAF) has continued to decline since the 1950s as safety practices have increased and technology has matured. During the 1950s, approximately 23.6 aircraft were destroyed per 100,000 flying hours, this continually declined through to 1960s when the number of aircraft destroyed per 100,000 flying hours dropped to approximately 4.3. That's an impressive record. And then the F35 stumbles on the stage. And remember, this is peacetime and not wartime. Ten...

A crashed RN F35 on the seafloor.* My readers knew all of this already; the Royal Navy will not be mission effective as a blue water navy after 2030 and the era of aircraft carriers is over. Eight billion dollars for future fish apartments. Eight billion dollars. Kit Klarenberg goes into exquisite and painful detail on the lack of planning, shortsightedness and criminal negligence in being complete unaware of the Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) that are foreshadowing surface navies quickly demolished and sunk by munitions a fraction of the cost of these doomed capital ships. Western...