Navy

Russian Naval Expert Calls US Navy’s New Stealth Destroyer ‘Giant Washtub’

Russian military experts have been belittling the U.S. Navy’s next generation guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt, the largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer in U.S. naval history, which will be handed over to the U.S. Navy tomorrow, in Russian state media. Speaking to Russian state-owned media outletRadio Sputnik, a prominent Russian military analyst, critically examines the Zumwalt program and its high price tag:

With an annual defense budget of over $600 billion, the Pentagon can take the liberty of conducting various kinds of experiments, including spending $4.4 billion on a single destroyer. By comparison, one US [Virginia-class] nuclear submarine, the newest in the fleet, costs about $2.2 billion. In other words, they used the budget for two nuclear subs to build one Zumwalt. What can be said? Americans love grandiose projects which sometimes go beyond the scope of reason.