The Future Is Ship Shape

The US Navy is expected to launch the next-generation DDG-1000 Zumwalt class stealth destroyers in 2013 as it seeks to use cutting-edge technology to reintroduce the overwhelming firepower capabilities of a battleship on the much smaller and more agile platform of a destroyer.

While the three vessels of this line are likely to be the most sophisticated warships ever built, their unconventional design and unusual stealth appearance makes them seem more like iron-clad behemoths from the pre-Dreadnaught days of the late 19th century.

Indeed, many of the firepower requirements that the US Navy has - coupled with the development and production of the Zumwalt class - are reminiscent of tactical battleship parameters from the first half of the 20th century, which later went out of fashion after World War II. 

The Zumwalt class is expected to operate on the open seas as much as in the shallow waters of coastal regions, and as such, must satisfy the operational requirements of both the Navy and the Marine Corps. The class is therefore designed to have high survivability in littoral areas and to provide full-time, all-weather fire support for amphibious operations.

Compared to the existing destroyers in the arsenal of the US Navy, the Zumwalt class will have triple the naval surface fire coverage and triple the defense capability against anti-ship cruise missiles. It is also expected to substantially boost the attack and defense rates of combined strike groups.

Ground-breaking assets

Aside from the cunning stealth design, with a wave-piercing tumblehome hull, the class features various other ground-breaking technologies and armaments assets, which are intended to give it the decisive tactical advantage that the Navy has mandated.

Among those attributes are an integrated deckhouse, an advanced gun system (AGS), a peripheral vertical launch system (PVLS) for guided missiles, dual-band radar (X-band and S-band) and an integrated power system (IPS), allowing for the transfer of electricity between either the ship’s propulsion drive or its main electronics system. The availability of so much extra power output should eventually also allow the Navy to fit the class with electromagnetic rail-guns.

Generally, the design of the Zumwalt class relies heavily on automation and sweeping software integration, allowing a reduction in staff requirements to only 140, almost half of the previous norm on other modern US destroyers.

The use of the so-called tumblehome form, in which the hull slopes inward from above the waterline rather than flaring outward from the water level up to the deck, gives the ship a substantially reduced radar profile and allows the vessel to cut through waves almost like a submarine. Because of that, the 183-meter-long stealth destroyers are expected to have a radar profile no larger than that of a fishing boat.

At the same time, the re-emergence of the tumblehome concept has lead to criticism from various naval architects, who have pointed out the traditional structural flaws of such a design and have questioned the likely performance of the hull in the high seas. In fact, the USS Zumwalt will mark the first time that a larger warship has used a tumblehome hull since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

Aside from the engineering issues surrounding the reputed seaworthiness of the tumblehome design, some additional concerns with the general production of the class were raised in January 2009, when a report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggested that only four of the 12 critical technologies employed by the stealth destroyers were already mature.

Costly technological maturation

While much of the time leading up to 2013, when the first two ships are a likely to be launched, and then 2015, when the official commissioning should take place, is expected to be used to address the various engineering issues and produce further technological maturation, it has become clear that the Zumwalt class is generally intended to serve as test bed and technology demonstrator for the US Navy, to help shape the future face of US ship classes in the first half of the 21st century. 

All three ships of the Zumwalt class will be built by Bath Iron Works in Maine, with the lead vessel, the actual DDG-1000, already in production since late 2008. Not surprisingly, the congressional representatives from the New England states have been the strongest and most ardent backers of the stealth destroyers on Capitol Hill, successfully pushing through funding for the costly ships, despite reservations by various other politicians and Navy planners in Washington.

Originally as many as 32 stealth destroyers were foreseen, but that number was progressively cut down to just three, as the cost estimates continued to balloon. With a price tag of more than $3.3 billion per vessel, and expected life-cycle costs of $4 billion, the Zumwalt class is one of the largest line items in the budget of the Navy, trailing in unit cost only behind nuclear-powered submarines and next-generation aircraft carriers.

In order to save money but still achieve strength in numbers, the US Navy and the Obama administration in April 2009 therefore decided to re-start production of the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers. With already 57 units in operation, the Arleigh Burke class is the present backbone of the Navy’s fleet of destroyers.

As Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC, explained to ISN Security Watch: “Because the DDG-1000 was so expensive, the Navy simply could not buy the number of ships required to accomplish asymmetrical and high-density missions such as anti-piracy operations that are fashionable right now with naval planners. The DDG-51 won out over the DDG-1000 because it was less expensive and could therefore be procured in greater quantities.

"Further solidifying the position of the DDG-51 has been the Obama administration’s decision to reconfigure US missile defense in Europe as a sea-based architecture dependent on DDG-51 destroyers armed with SM-3 interceptors and the advanced Aegis system.”

While the US Navy will therefore procure the Zumwalt class only in select style and small numbers, many of the technical features first developed for these stealth destroyers will be likely to find application on a whole host of future US naval vessels.

In the interim, though, the cutting-edge technologies of the stealth destroyers will need to continue undergoing refinement, both in the lab and later in actual deployment. The Zumwalt class can therefore be seen as a working prototype and real-world test case, blazing the trail for future generations of ships.