The Navy has posted video of the destroyer Zumwalt preparing to join the fleet, but one bystander can be heard offering criticism that neither the Navy nor the shipbuilder will appreciate.
In the video, which was shot last Wednesday, posted by Defense Media Activity — Navy on Friday and pulled on Monday, the destoyer Zumwalt can be seen getting underway from General Dynamics Bath Iron works in Maine in preparation for its commissioning in Baltimore next month.
The ship is the first of the DDG 1000 destroyers, which for the past decade and a half has gone through a number of design changes and reboots as leaders changed their view of what the Navy needs.
As the ship rolls by in the Navy video, a man near the videographer can be heard making comments, first saying the ship will “make a difference,” then saying the new generation of shipbuilders “haven’t got a clue.”
“It took like six to seven years to put that together and there’s a lot of, I won’t say corruption, but there’s a lot of baloney going on with these things right now,” the man says. “You see what they did, Bath Iron Works had a crew of people that built ships in the past. They knew how to build ships.
“General Dynamics bought them in the ’80s and sort of moved a lot of people out and the last of those people are in there right now. The very last few that have been there 30, 40, 50 years. And unfortunately, the college rookies they’re educating today might be book smart but they haven’t got a clue about building ships.
“That’s why that took so long. Because his daddy worked there for I believe 28 years and he told me how many things they had to redo after they redid and had to redo it again. Just a lot of politics.”
A spokesman for General Dynamics Bath Iron Works declined to comment.
