Largest Destroyer Built For Navy Headed To Sea For Testing (ap.org)

An anonymous reader writes: The first Zumwalt-class destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, the largest ever built for the U.S. Navy, headed out to sea today. Departing from shipbuilder Bath Iron Works, the ship left to undergo sea trials. The AP reports: "The ship has electric propulsion, new radar and sonar, powerful missiles and guns, and a stealthy design to reduce its radar signature. Advanced automation will allow the warship to operate with a much smaller crew size than current destroyers. All of that innovation has led to construction delays and a growing price tag. The Zumwalt, the first of three ships in the class, will cost at least $4.4 billion."

Comments

Perspective

[wbr1]

To compare, NASA s 2011 budget was 18 billion. Compare this to one project for one branch of the military, not counting ongoing ops.

Re:Perspective

[The Real Dr John]

Yeah, and as long as voters keep voting for warmongers, taxpayer's money is going to be endlessly squandered on weapon systems we will never use. The entire NIH budget is something like $35 billion. Cancer deaths alone in the US are over half a million a year. How many lives are these destroyers going to save?

We are not going to be at war with Russia or China, so please don't try and bring that up as a justification (although I know some of you will nonetheless).

Re:Perspective

[wbr1]

It surely does. Let me list some with government run and/or heavily regulated healthcare that run better than ours.

UK (although quickly changing), Canada, Japan, Sweeden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland....

The bottom line is that healthcare deals with pain, disease and death. There will always be a very vocal group that is unhappy with the current state of things because they or their loved ones are sick or dying despite best efforts. The least we can do is not have private corporations or government stick their hands so far in the pockets of those affected as to bankrupt them and ruin their lives.

Case in point. My grand mother recently had a stroke. I am her power of attorney, and signing papers for her. She is paralyzed and unable to speak. After Medicare, the skilled nursing facility is billing ME over $4000 a month. If needed I can likely get that debt reassigned to her, but that will also cost in time and legal fees and probably still leave a stain on my credit. I do not have $4000 a month. I make roughly 3k per month. Extra is reinvested in a business I am starting as my retirement vehicle (as an ex felon with 10 years in I have no savings or safety net). Medicaid denied covering her care for two very stupid reasons. 1. No balances on provided bank statements (untrue), and an unclaimed life insurance policy. I did not know of the policy, and found no paperwork on it. My grandmother cannot speak, and I asked the social services office to inform me of any assets they found that I was unaware of. They did not (even though the caseworker said she would).

Where in any sane world dose this make sense? Would it not make more sense to say that these absolutely normal parts of life such as illness and injury are covered by the payments you made earlier? And before you say, she could have saved or prepared for this eventuality, not everyone is financially or mentally capable to do so, and not all illness and injury is foreseeable.

So yes, my argument does follow. We have a failed system. Others work better even if not perfect. Even our new system (obamacare) was corrupted from the start by 'free market' interests. To act like the magical hand of the market will fix it is like relying on the tooth fairy for your retirement fund.

Catch the captain's name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Captain James Kirk

Crazy. Naval swarm warfare.

[Etherwalk]

This is crazy. Any nation seriously interested in naval war should be spending their money on developing a swarm-based navy. If you could develop a small swarm warfare ship with a price tag of say, $250K, you could produce 16,000 of those at this cost. Good luck fighting those 16,000 ships with this one.

Re:Crazy. Naval swarm warfare.

[paiute]

Admiral, are you prepared to fight a hundred duck-size destroyers or one destroyer-size duck?

Re:one ugly ship

[sexconker]

It's 600 feet long, so it would only cost $3000 at Subway. Unless you add guac. Guac is extra.

Re:Boondoggle and can it combat other ships?

[hey!]

Repurposing missiles as ship killers? You have heard the term "guided missile cruiser", haven't you? The first purpose built guided missile cruisers were put in service in the early 80s, and could sink ships at 10x the range the big guns on the New Jersey could hit. The Harpoon anti-ship missile went into service in the 70s.

Now I understand the big criticism of the Zumwalt is that it has limited anti-ship capability; but it's supposed to be a destroyer. Destroyers traditionally play mainly anti-submarine and anti-aircraft roles, and in the US Navy mount modest 5" guns for anti-ship use. The Zumwalt's gus are actually 6.1 inches and have considerably longer range -- if they work as advertised. The idea of making it more potent in the anti-ship role would fall into the F35 trap: building cost-is-no-objecdt, do-everything wonder-weapons.

Defense systems?

[CohibaVancouver]

One thing I don't understand about modern naval warfare: Couldn't you just send 50 cruise missiles in skimming across the wavetops and take a ship like this out? Or a few ballistic missiles raining down from above at hypersonic speeds? Can these ships really defend against an attack like that?

Re:Defense systems?

[anzha]

First off, there are no hypersonic missiles and will not be for a good 5 or 6 years at least. Secondly, swarming with missiles is, indeed, one way to kill warships. Its exactly what the Soviets planned to do in order to prevent the US from reinforcing Europe in the event of a NATO/Warsaw Pact war before the end of the Cold War. However, the US is very, very, very good at fighting this sort of war. A Zumwalt has 80 VLS cells that can be packed with missiles (though these are meant for attacking, not defending on the Zumies, except when using the ESSM self defense missile (4 to a VLS cell)). However, the Burke class, which would accompany a Zum, each have 90+ VLS cells themselves and an excellent radar system. You'll probably need a minimum of 50 to 75 missiles to get a ship for each Burke defending the Zum. It starts getting really expensive. The US is really good at the hot missile on missile action: even against ballistic missiles. The best way to attack a Zum is with a sub. Defenses against subs are not nearly as good as against incoming missiles. There are NUMEROUS examples of even 'bitty' SSK subs sneaking up on even the big carriers.

Re:Defense systems?

[Locke2005]

Am I the only one that wishes they'd spend those billions on hot girl-on-girl action instead of hot missile-on-missile action?

Don't you just enforce the original poster's argument by saying the expensive monstrosity can be easily taken out be a submarine? The Russians have plenty of submarines...

Re:Defense systems?

[towermac]

"First off, there are no hypersonic missiles and will not be for a good 5 or 6 years at least"

Wut? Hell an old fashioned ICBM is a hypersonic missile if you use it as one, and they have better nowadays. If you don't actually need to traverse a continent, you have the fuel to come all the way down at full power. And be smaller.

The latest Chinese missiles are estimated to come down at up to mach 22. They've put a lot of money into them for a while now. Which is why they don't really bother with a navy to counter ours. They figure they need the one carrier for show, and they can give the Philippines a hard time if they need to.

But they don't have to beat our navy with their navy to win.

Re:Boondoggle and can it combat other ships?

[wisnoskij]

Ships really are not good at killing other ships, planes and submarines are better. Ships are best to house huge artillery to bombard inland targets with, or as cargo/carrier vessels.

Tumblehome is a poor French joke

[Runaway1956]

This "futuristic" hull design isn't anything new. The French did this already, long ago. They sold a small fleet of these "rollover" design ships to Russia. And, Russia lost the only engagement in which they participated to Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Arleigh Burke class has 1.5 times the righting arm that the Zumwalt does, up to about 50 degrees. From 50 to 90 degrees, the Burke has three times the righting arms. Right around 95 degrees of roll, the Zumwalt stops trying to right itself, and capsizes. The Burke continues to right itself all the way to 110 degrees - that is, when the ship is lying on it's side, with the mast underwater, it can still roll itself back upright.
http://www.phisicalpsience.com...

Long story short - the Zumwalt is a fair weather sailor, and it won't be worth a shit in the real world.

Re: Tumblehome is a poor French joke

[Runaway1956]

Well, Mr. Smartypants - click my second link. Current research says nothing HAS changed. Righting arms. What is that, you ask? Well - what it means is, a Zumwalt putting to sea from Hampton Roads will have hell just GETTING TO SEA. Zumwalts can't cruise the Arctic circle in the winter months. In fact, they can't cruise the central Atlantic in hurricane season. Tumblehome is inherently unstable in heavy seas. It doesn't matter how much technology has changed, a high center of mass remains a high center of mass.

Now, when the bright boys invent anti-gravity, a high center of mass may not mean anything. Until then, Zumwalt is a death trap.

Read, and learn. There is a career available for you in marine architecture, if you can grasp basic physics.

Re:Tumblehome is a poor French joke

[arglebargle_xiv]

Long story short - the Zumwalt is a fair weather sailor, and it won't be worth a shit in the real world.

It won't be worth a shit in the real world for a far more serious reason, that the enemies it'll be facing is Somali pirates, suicidal zealots in zodiac dinghies, and random insurgents in third-world arenas. None of the high-tech toys or cost are justified for this, all it'll do is make the repair bill more expensive when, say, a small fibreglass boat from Yemen blows a hole in the side of one big enough to drive a truck through. It's another example of a US military branch aiming for the most expensive toy they can build rather than something that's fit for purpose (cough)F35(cough).

Re: Tumblehome is a poor French joke

[khallow]

As I understand it, the idea is that you have an unstable control situation where multiple opposing forces pull the vehicle away, relatively quickly, from an equilibrium point., but these forces pull the vehicle towards useful directions. The active control is needed to stabilize this equilibrium point and help keep the vehicle out of bad instability.

So for example, it allows fighter jets to have more aggressive and responsive maneuvering because the system readily veers from equilibrium in the desired way.

The problem here is that rollover is not in a desirable direction. In addition to the capsizing threat, it makes turning more difficult as well as providing less stability for firing weapons perpendicular to the ship's axis (firing stability apparently is the reason for the "wave piercing" hull). Sure, one can adjust for this in other ways, particularly via an active control system, but ultimately, it's a straight trade off of radar stealth for somewhat worse maneuverability and handling.

Re: Tumblehome is a poor French joke

[Runaway1956]

Yes, it was used extensively in wooden sailing ships. That was a different world, and ships had entirely different designs, and reacted to physics differently than today's ships.

First, wooden sailing ships all have deep keels. A lot of the weight above the waterline was counterweighted by that keel. That is, a lot more weight than just the mast and sails, all of which were high above the main deck, adding to the tendency to roll over.

Also - virtually all of the material used to build the ship was lighter than water. Not so today.

I can only refer you once more to the study of the tumblehome's righting arms. A lot of experts have agreed that the tumblehome doesn't have inherent stability of an Arleigh Burke, or an Adams, or any of dozens of other steel, iron, or aluminum hulled ships.

Conventional hulls acquire greater and greater righting arms, the further they roll. Tumblehome starts losing that righting momentum around 50%, and it falls off yet a little more with every degree of roll.

I can tell you that I would desert if I were sent to the North Atlantic in the winter time aboard a tumblehome ship. I missed the "perfect storm", but we survived a couple other storms that were deadly. If you find yourself out on those waters on an unstable vessel, about all you can do is put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbuy.

A rather large "destroyer"

[tsotha]

The navy has been playing this game where it builds a large ship and call it something smaller, because Congress is willing to build small-sounding ships without checking to see that they're actually small. The Zumwalt, at 14.5k tons, is more than half again as big as Tico-class cruisers at 9.6k tons. "Oh my God, that new destroyer is expensive," say critics. Well, yeah, because by displacement it's really not a destroyer; it's a cruiser. Maybe even a heavy cruiser.

Size

[Princeofcups]

There are names for sizes of ships. There is no such thing a super-sized destroyer. It's called a light cruiser. I guess Congress funded a destroyer, but they get a cruiser instead.