THE MIL & AERO BLOG,
15 Sept. 2015. I see reports this week that U.S. Navy leaders are ready to pull
the plug on plans to build a fleet of large surface warships designed
specifically for long-range shore bombardment -- a role filled during World War
II by the Navy's battleships and heavy cruisers.
The issue revolves
around the Navy's Zumwalt-class destroyer, a 600-foot 14,800-ton maritime
behemoth designed around the Advanced Gun System (AGS), a 155-millimeter cannon
designed to hurl special shells as far as 83 nautical miles at a rate of 10
rounds per minute.
Navy leaders went
forward with the Zumwalt destroyer program on the assumption that they would
build 32 of these formidable shore-bombardment warships. Since then the number
of planned Zumwalt destroyers dwindled to seven, and now to three.
The third ship of the
class, the USS Lyndon B. Johnson, is at the eye of the storm. Navy leaders are
considering scrapping the third Zumwalt land-attack destroyer, even though the
vessel is already under construction, in efforts to cut the rising costs of the
program.
The estimated
procurement cost for all three vessels has increased by 37 percent since 2009
to $12.3 billion, according to a Bloomberg Business story by longtime defense
reporter Anthony Capaccio, entitled General Dynamics Destroyer Reviewed by U.S.
for Cancellation.
If you ask me, the death
of the Zumwalt-class destroyer program has been a long time in coming. The big
ship dedicated to shore bombardment has a questionable role in this era of
cruise missiles, smart munitions, and modern jet fighter-bombers. Even if the
ship were to fill an obvious need, how much punch would two or three ships
offer?
Let's face it: cutting
the size of an entire class of ships to two or three reduces the vessel to
irrelevance. It does have a modern "stealthy" design to reduce its
radar signature, but the thing is 12 stories tall and about the same mass as a
Virginia-class battleship from generations ago. How stealthy can it be?
Experts argue that the
Zumwalt-class destroyer packs an offensive punch found nowhere else in the
Navy's fleet, except for the fighter-bomber aircraft aboard the aircraft
carriers. That's a good point, and whittling down the Zumwalt program to
essentially nothing, that's a capability the Navy will have to do without.
Losing the third ship of
the Zumwalt class will save money and barely would be noticed by naval
planners. No doubt its offensive capabilities would have been useful had the
ship been built in substantial numbers, but not in just a handful.
All this is not to say
that the Zumwalt destroyer program has been for nothing. The ship has value as
a technology development laboratory -- albeit an expensive one.
The ship is designed
with revolutionary power generation. It uses electricity generated by gas
turbines to power all of its systems, including weapons. The Zumwalt's power
system design potentially could be applied to new ship classes, or perhaps even
as backfits to existing ship designs.
The Zumwalt design also
offers a broad range of enabling technologies in systems automation to reduce
the ship's complement of officers and enlisted personnel to operate the vessel
efficiently. The Zumwalt requires only 140 officers and enlisted, while the
Navy's much smaller Arleigh Burke-class destroyers destroyer requires 323.
Still, as a design for a
ship that can stand on its own in the 21st century, I think the Zumwalt falls
short. Despite its shore-bombardment capabilities, the ship isn't designed for
anti-submarine warfare and ballistic missile defense, as some of the Navy's
Burke-class destroyers are.
As Pentagon budget
cutters look for ways to save money, the Zumwalt as a target was an obvious
choice.
Source:
military aerospace. 15 September 2015
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