In rolling out the first ship of the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-Class destroyer, the U.S. Navy has claimed repeatedly that the program is on time and on budget. Unfortunately, this claim—which has been picked up by the mainstream media, including the Washington Post—is both misleading and disingenuous.
The program actually started 20 years ago in 1994 and originally envisioned building 32 ships at a total cost of $35.8 billion, or about $1.12 billion per ship. The program had so many problems in research and development over the years that in order to keep overall program costs down the program quantity was reduced over the past two decades to 24 planned ships, then 7, and finally the 3 ships we have today (one completed, two still under construction).
The above excerpt was originally published in The Hill.
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