How do 96 VLS cells stack up against Japanese, Chinese and Korean top-of-the-line destroyers?
Next-generation destroyers to pack more missiles, energy weapons
The Navy is requesting $133.5 million to research and develop the new destroyer in fiscal 2026, with the goal of procuring the first in the early 2030s.www.defensenews.com
While nuclear propulsion would offer plenty of benefits, I think the cost is something that makes it a particularly tough pill to swallow for the US. Not only the cost of the propulsion system itself, but also getting the people with the required qualifications on the ship.
Issue with nukes is that.
To make it more fair, how would the expected total munition weight be distributed among these launchers.
Same as the most recent Japanese destroyers (96), more than the Flight II Sejongs (88) but less than the Flight Is (128), and in between the Type 055s (112) and 052Ds (64), though closer to the former than the latter.
Yeah but they're only bumping it 1000 tons. Probably still too small. I'd think the way they'd go would be to define what it needs to do over its lifetime and then it displaces what it displaces. Steel is cheap. (Relatively speaking.)
I doubt its the Navy obsessing over it, more that the CBO is selective with what information they choose to publicize. And since the CBO "estimates" ship cost based on displacement, they're pulling the latest displacement figures from NAVSEA.
The two big advantages of nuclear propulsion are electrical output and mobility. With the advent of IEP and stored energy systems, the Navy seems to have the power draw requirement under control.
First they define future threats and operating environments, then what the future fleet needs to look like, then they set performance requirements, which helps choose systems, which they then design the hull around.
More VLS cells ≠ better. Meeting the ship’s designated operational requirements and that's enough — while interpretations of those requirements will naturally vary.
As mentioned already, Belknaps with 5" and 3", and Swift boats with 3" and 40mm.
Canister out of a rifled gun doesn't work well. The rifling tends to induce a "donut" shaped pattern, with few-to-no pellets in the center. You'd need something like the French 105mm HEAT round's ball bearing driving band to de-rotate the canister.
The Italians regard the 3" as a CIWS, not a major gun.
Remember that the Asian Burkes are beamier (and longer, I guess) than the OG.Early in May, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) put out a Request for Information (RFI) for “Advanced Marine Propulsion and Energy for Revolutionary Efficiency (AMRERE),” with specific mention of stored energy systems. The page has since been taken down as the request period has closed, but is still accessible via the WayBack Machine:
DIU Submission Opportunity - Advanced Marine Propulsion and Energy for Revolutionary Efficiency (AMPERE)
Submit your commercial solution to this national security challengeweb.archive.org
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It lists the general dimensions for DDG(X), they are as follows:
LBP: 160m - 180m (520 ft - 591 ft)
Beam OA: 22m - 25m (72 ft - 81 ft)
Full Load Displacement: 13.5k - 15k tonnes
My knee jerk reaction to these dimensions is it’s a fat ship. The minimum beam (22m/72 ft) is ~1.84m/6 ft lager than a Burke, which is already notoriously short-legged.
This does not match with the DDG(X) requirements, which explicitly call for increases in range (>50% increase), time on station (>120% increase), and Efficiency (>25% increase).
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The L:B ratio for the stated dimensions is ~7.207 - ~7.222, dramatically worse than Zumwalt’s ~7.5 and Burke’s ~7.898.
This doesn’t add up, until you consider that DDG(X) will be IEP’d and thus dramatically more fuel efficient, and leverages Zumwalt’s hydrodynamic advances.
If the Navy is to stick with Zumwalt's flat bottom hull (and they very well might, it offers significantly more volume), that comes with the added benefit of reducing draft and Total Resistance. However, it increases the hull's Block Coefficient.
It should be noted the DDG(X) presentation shows a flat-bottom hull, but I feel that's reading too much into an explicitly conceptual design. See the attached photo:
View attachment 772944
The point is, my knee jerk reaction was wrong, DDG(X) will likely have a form factor closer to Zumwalt than a Burke, thus reducing Total Resistance, and with it, propulsion power draw.
I'm leaning towards option 1, personally.But let’s go back to the stored energy system. The quote in question reads as follows:
“Up to 40MW of Electrical power generation, in excess of ship service requirements at 16 knots”
The wording here is ambiguous, and I can come up with 4 different interpretations off the top of my head. Personally I’m inclined to read it as:
“At 16 knots, the entire powerplant (including the stored energy system) generates an extra 40MW after propulsion draw.”
Putting this requirement in context, Raytheon’s website states that Zumwalt’s powerplant generates an extra 58MW of total available power at cruising speed. This claim has been repeated by USNI and TWZ, among others.
“While steaming at 20 knots, the system provides 58 MW of reserved power…”
Zumwalt class destroyer
The Zumwalt-class destroyers are America’s next generation combat ships.www.rtx.com
Zumwalt having more total "reserve power" does not make sense. DDG(X) will have a larger ship service power draw, therefore it needs more reserve power. After consulting others, I've found at least 5 reasons to explain this discrepancy:
1. Different definitions are being used
2. Zumwalt consumes ungodly amounts of energy at higher speeds (I find this unlikely)
3. Zumwalt's 58MWs of reserve power is after the removal of SPY-4 and other power-hungry systems (this still does not explain such a large discrepancy, recall that Burke Flight III has 9MW of ship service power)
4. Zumwalt's powerplant produces more energy than expected, largely due to MT30's infancy at the time of selection (I find this unlikely, as NAVSEA built a fully functional land-based Zumwalt propulsion plant, and wouldn't have selected MT30 without knowing its electrical output in such conditions)
5. Note that Zumwalt was also designed to take on railguns and DEWs, but the power requirements would've been set in the mid-to-late 1990s. It's plausible that when factoring in SLA for such systems, they dramatically overestimated power consumption, thus inflating total power requirements.
Occam's Razor tells me it's Option 1, but I'm curious for other thoughts.
I believe that they're Ship's Service generators.
I remember some articles when the Burkes came out, that the beamier hull compared to a Sprucan or Tico had better seakeeping.
I suspect there may be a dedicated anti-hypersonic Standard developed out of the 21" SM3 propulsion stack with a different KV on top. Which, of course, is still within Mk41 thermal limits.
I think I guessed the navy would estimate the DDG(X) cost at about $5b, and final cost would be around $8-9b.
The USN isn’t going with a 76 unless there are some MAJOR changes in thinking.
…this is a cruiser, just being called a destroyer…
Not sure how relevant that is, I'm not seeing anything suggesting it will be built to Cruiser Standards. And even then its the same concepts as found in destroyer design, just with different numbers.
That's reductionist to the point it's wrong. The key thing about DDG(X), where all the "new" tech comes into play, is the powerplant. They're opting for full IEP with stored energy systems, which will restore SWAPC margins to 5-10% per metric, greatly expands mobility, and adds full flag facitilites, something the Burke lacks. The electronics and weapons are old technology, and I personally think they're getting way to much attention in the media.
Meanwhile Lockheed Martin puts out more marketing material for G-VLS, and Mk57 went off without a hitch.
Again, the CBO estimates are borderline useless and do not reflect the material costs, labor costs, or the actual equipment of a ship. Their estimates prove nothing.
Can we drop the cruiser vs destroyer talk?
Pretty sure the hydrodynamics of cruisers has varied wildly over the decades, so let’s not pretend hydrodynamic characteristics is what defines something as a cruiser or not.
I could see maintaining Mk57s as a way to stick another 24-32 cells around the periphery of the helo deck. The average helo deck is about 55ft long and ~45ft wide (well, it tapers). Mk57 cells are 14.2ft long each, so you can put 4 of them in 57ft. If you only put 3 of them in you have space for bollards and cleats, etc.
I will hands down take a single mk110 for small boat defense over 4 mk38s, but 2 per side is much better than 1 per side.
Mod3 isn’t a totally different gun. It’s a slightly upscaled gun.
Can only shoot in 1 direction at a time, but much bigger boom when it does. Also takes up a lot of deck space, and IMO deck space is too expensive to have more than 1 Mk110.
At least right now, there seems to be space for 2-4 mounts around the amidships missile deck.
Nuclear propulsion is definitely coming back. The US Navy has invested heavily in Small Modular Reactors. The US Army is even looking at small reactors that can be transported in a C-5 galaxy.
The USN hasn't built a proper cruiser since the late 1950s. The "Cruisers" and Destroyers they operate today are near indistinguishable in capability, so much so that they classify them under the same "Large Surface Combatant" designation. They just need to build a ship with significant SWAP-C margins, reasonable passive protection and redundancy, big enough to carry large diameter radar arrays, have a long range, and high seakeeping speed to keep up with the carriers. I don't care if they call it a cruiser or destroyer, it's not like the USN differentiates between the two these days.
There isn't, even if it was Hydrodynamics is a know Science that is extremely replicatable and no way lost.
Sure can only shoot 1 direction at a time but when it hits, it’s almost guaranteed to disable the target, and can train very quickly to the other side, an actual fire control system.
Right, I said it's something of a dead end.
Larger caliber doesn’t make it a completely different gun. The design of the gun is the exact same as the m242, just slightly scaled up.
I’d be surprised if these turned out to be bigger burkes with minimal changes to the over all design tbh. I imagine they’ll look quite different.
They will have to start doing so again, and fast, or they will keep facing failure.
Unless things have gone badly enough (a cyber attack for example) that they have to operate in manual mode.
The difference between cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, sloops, large anti-submarine ships, small anti-submarine ships, and whatever other names people have dreamt up for surface combatants are all pretty arbitrary.
It was never about hydrodynamics. Hull structure was part of it - back in the day, destroyers were lightly built - but what really defined a cruiser was things like workshop space, stores capacity, and crew amenities.
Why does there need to be a distinction? What does distinguishing between cruiser and destroyer have to do with success of a building program?
I mean according to various treaties what defined cruisers was tonnage and gun size
A ship has a very easy way to defeat any cyber attack.
