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Friday, December 11, 2015

Navy’s new $3B stealth ship may already by obsolete

The long-awaited USS Zumwalt completed its first at-sea tests this week, and its captain, who really is named James Kirk, couldn’t be happier. "For the crew and all those involved in designing, building, and readying this fantastic ship, this is a huge milestone," he says.

But the Zumwalt, named for Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, may already be a relic.

The Zumwalt-class destroyer program started in the early 1990s and has been a problem child ever since. At first, the Navy planned to purchase 32 of the stealth vessels. Then it said it would buy seven. Then three. Now, it may buy just two. After decades and billions of dollars spent, the DoD may instead choose an updated version of the Arleigh-Burke DDG-51 destroyer, a model that entered service in 1991.

The Zumwalt’s got a lot going for it. It’s made for cruising coastal waters and firing on hostile land targets, filling a role the Navy lost when it retired the

Iowa-class battleships in the early 1990s. It’s bigger, stronger, and angrier than the DDG-51, which is mainly a defense vessel. According to National Defense magazine, the Zumwalt’s "advanced gun system" can hit targets 72 miles away. They can continue firing as more ammunition is brought aboard, a feature the Navy calls an "infinite magazine."

The two main problems with the Zumwalt are cost – at $3 billion – and serious doubts about the ship’s seaworthiness.

"On the DDG-1000 [Zumwalt-class], with the waves coming at you from behind, when a ship pitches down, it can lose transverse stability as the stern comes out of the water — and basically roll over," Ken Brower, a civilian architect with decades of naval experience, said in 2007.

For more of the Wired story: www.wired.com