DDG1000 Zumwalt class - CANCELLED

Thorvic

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http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN2332179620080723

Reuters are reporting that the 21st Century Super Destroyer program has been cancelled with just the initial prototypes to be completed.

US are carrying on building DDG-51 class instead, what next the F-35 cancelled and replaced by yet more F-16's :mad:

With the LCS program also on the rocks after the same farce, it does beggar belief that billions have been wasted on developing next generation vessels only to revert to back to the old designs, A-12 downgraded to tarted up Hornet, Shuttle replaced by re-hashed Apollo. C-130E by C-130J...... Anybody else notice a trend
 
Thorvic said:
A-12 downgraded to tarted up Hornet, Shuttle replaced by re-hashed Apollo. C-130E by C-130J...... Anybody else notice a trend

Packing up books for my new job. Lots of rocket design and engineering books... not a one of 'em written after 1970.

The West is failing. There is far too much interest in social programs, which *at* *best* promote slow decline, and not enough on new science and engineering.

Maybe we'll get lucky and an asteroid will plow into a major city.
 
Your talking like what I always feared a true 21st century cynic will be like (with the city being destroyed). We keep people working too hard, too insecure and with too limited an education for society to value much true R&D. Short term profit is valued, not long term quality or decision making.

Anyway, we'll see two major effects in the next century. One will be improvements in computer aided manufacturing which will allow rapid production of one off prototypes and lower the effective cost of novel equipment designs. The second will be a major re-organisation as a result of "the fall" of the United States from its dominant position and the recession of world economies.

I currently predict:
- the expeditionary forces will tend to be smaller and more professional
- the army will gradually give way to air force & navy (which are more useful for "punitive bombing" and blockading)
- there will be a continuing development of COIN capabilities in the form of improved tactics, auxiliaries (ie. local forces) and the development of cheaper automatised security systems (mainly cheap optics for cameras)
- a trend away from technologies which require large amounts of fuel (ie. subsonic turboprop/ducted fan bombers may reappear and smarter indirect fire will replace most close combat armoured vehicles)
 
Avimimus said:
We keep people working too hard...

"We" being who? And who are these people being worked too hard? Surely not those on welfare...

, we'll see two major effects in the next century. One will be improvements in computer aided manufacturing which will allow rapid production of one off prototypes and lower the effective cost of novel equipment designs.

Small problem: we *already* have this. Manufacturing and design capabilities have steadily increased, n onstop for many decades. What once would have required the careful work of craftsmen with decades of experience, spending many manweeks in painstaking labor can now be done by a college student on a laptop, and taken to a nearby shop with a mediocre CAD/CAM mill.

And yet we still can't seem to produce new things on timescales that are shorter than "geological."

Progress went faster *before* computers were so prevalent. And the reason fornthis is pretty simple... if you had to designa supersonic fighter with nothing but a T-square, a slipstick and some rules-of-thumb, you did the best you could and built the thing, making changes after you had some actual flight experience. But today every major design is expected to be fully optimized while still in the design phase. Every last gram shaved off, every margin calculated to the tenth decimel place. Computer aided analysis paralysis.

In my dozen years in the aerospace field, by far the most progress I saw was when I was workign at a company that built rockets using junk from Ace Hardware, and designed most of that stuff using a CAD program I bought from the 99-cent bin.

The second will be a major re-organisation as a result of "the fall" of the United States from its dominant position and the recession of world economies.

Can't wait. Perhaps we can warm our homes by burning hippies and Greenpissers who successfully managed to prevent the deployment of new nuclear reactors.
 
Orionblamblam said:
But today every major design is expected to be fully optimized while still in the design phase. Every last gram shaved off, every margin calculated to the tenth decimel place. Computer aided analysis paralysis.

Couple that with today's terror of risk and it's a wonder anything get's done at all. All anybody cares about anymore is CYA.
 
Folks, I'm with Orion 110-percent. My country's industry has degraded since the Apollo era. It's gone to hell in a handbasket and the tailspin will continue. So now all we get is a warmed over F/A-18 upgrade and a crappy Apollo remake (vice the original idea to build an Orbital Space Plane). And that's just two of the biggest examples right there. And now the DDG-1000 gets canned.

I'm shaking my head in disgrace right now.

I'm a veteran of two foreign wars and four overseas deployments. And this is what my service on active duty and my tax dollars get me? Half-ass systems at half-price. For shame!!!!

Sometimes I think maybe they should just put the White House up for sale to China or Iran. If this trend of "half-assing" it in the aerospace industry spreads to the rest of my country, I wouldnt be surprised at all to see the FOR SALE signs goin up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Maybe Orion is right, perhaps we could use a smacking by a meteor to put things right again. If I truly didn't believe in my country at all, I'd probably take my Zippo to the colors already.

Still, I haven't given up yet. . One day, maybe, we'll get with the program again. I'm not giving up hope yet. I still believe.

However things like the Zumwalt cancellation really chap my hide!!! I mean, seriously!

Moonbat
 
Orionblamblam said:
Avimimus said:
We keep people working too hard...

"We" being who? And who are these people being worked too hard? Surely not those on welfare...

Orionblamblam said:
Avimimus said:
The second will be a major re-organisation as a result of "the fall" of the United States from its dominant position and the recession of world economies.

Can't wait. Perhaps we can warm our homes by burning hippies and Greenpissers who successfully managed to prevent the deployment of new nuclear reactors.

Er... don't really want to get into this, but it is too tempting isn't it?

Presumably by "we" I meant our entire (principally North American) society, including those on welfare etc. By "working too hard" I presumably wasn't referring to people one welfare. I think most people would agree that any "welfare" program that makes people "work too hard" is "deeply screwed up".

The fact is, that our society's value placement (which over emphasizes short term profit/productivity), as well as its understanding of innovation, is flawed. People at all levels in society are able to maintain a naive "Edisonian" belief in invention without even acknowledging the number of technicians working under Edison or the history of experimentation he inherited or the simplicity of the light bulb compared to other tasks. People need more varied and deeper educations, and more free time to learn, think and talk once they are in the work force, if we want to expect them to understand and appreciate what is required for technological and scientific progress. We need long term, public investment (ie. not-profit driven) in research, as well as a greater valuing of science and knowledge "for knowledge's sake".

As for burning one's own citizens for fuel... I believe that social cohesion is improved in societies which are built on mutual support (even for political opponents and people on welfare). Without sufficient social cohesion a military cannot remain effective and disciplined during long term conflict. They can win initial battles but not a prolonged war.

Orionblamblam said:
Avimimus said:
, we'll see two major effects in the next century. One will be improvements in computer aided manufacturing which will allow rapid production of one off prototypes and lower the effective cost of novel equipment designs.

Small problem: we *already* have this. Manufacturing and design capabilities have steadily increased, n onstop for many decades. What once would have required the careful work of craftsmen with decades of experience, spending many manweeks in painstaking labor can now be done by a college student on a laptop, and taken to a nearby shop with a mediocre CAD/CAM mill.

And yet we still can't seem to produce new things on timescales that are shorter than "geological."

Progress went faster *before* computers were so prevalent. And the reason fornthis is pretty simple... if you had to designa supersonic fighter with nothing but a T-square, a slipstick and some rules-of-thumb, you did the best you could and built the thing, making changes after you had some actual flight experience. But today every major design is expected to be fully optimized while still in the design phase. Every last gram shaved off, every margin calculated to the tenth decimel place. Computer aided analysis paralysis.

In my dozen years in the aerospace field, by far the most progress I saw was when I was workign at a company that built rockets using junk from Ace Hardware, and designed most of that stuff using a CAD program I bought from the 99-cent bin.

I found this quite interesting.

My speculation basically comes down to three areas:
- We will see improved modelling of the more complex behaviours of some types of materials and of fluid dynamics as processing power improves and experimental knowledge builds (certainly, our ability to make computer models match the "real thing" will still take a few decades to refine)
- The construction of a larger number of automated plants capable of producing more complex one off prototypes will speed up testing of designs (eg. by allow multiple prototypes of some components with slight variations between them).
- Overall, such an approach can only be applied to smaller components so we will likely see conservative designs for major systems (eg. airfoils) and more rapid development of specific sub-systems and components (much like what the the Isreali arms industry tends toward).

So, it isn't really computer aided design, but improvements in cheap computer aided manufacturing of one-off components (that can in turn be tested) as well as improvements in the overall science behind the software. So, under these assumptions, we won't see the full results of CAD and CAM until at least fifty years from now (and possibly much later.
 
Sorry to seem sarcastic saying this, but WELCOME to the "real" world guys.

The "bean counters" and "experts" have been in control of the U.K. defence industry, in-fact ALL industry in the U.K. for far too many years.
The armed forces are told what they can have - then they are given ridiculous finance levels, the designers are then told to get as much "bang for their buck" as possible - result spiraling costs on any new weapon system/aircraft/ship which usually results in at best a severely curtailed numbers run (the U.K. Type 45 destroyer is yet another classic example) or outright cancellation.
 
Thorvic said:
With the LCS program also on the rocks after the same farce, it does beggar belief that billions have been wasted on developing next generation vessels only to revert to back to the old designs, A-12 downgraded to tarted up Hornet, Shuttle replaced by re-hashed Apollo. C-130E by C-130J...... Anybody else notice a trend

I seem to remember reading an article in Jane's some time back re. the LCS. Seems the US Navy were trying to change the development contracts from "cost + percentage" to fixed price. I don't know the terms of the DDG1000 contract, but I believe part of the problem could be the way many development contracts are issued, or at least have been in the past: The customer (read: government agency) pays the cost of development, plus a given percentage of the cost as "bonus" for the contractor. So, if a contractor wants to make twice as much money, all they have to do is make sure the development program becomes twice as expensive.

Doing it this way provides no incentive for the contractor to be on time and within budget, and cost overruns would hardly be a surprising consequence.

Is there a better way of doing this ? NASA, again IIRC, has issued a couple of contracts where pretty much any company that cares to do so can take part. Only NASA doesn't pay anything up front. Each participating contractor gets a bag of money only as and when they demonstrate a series of predefined development milestones. This way, NASA (or any other agency using this scheme) pays only for actual results. Better ? I believe so. At least budget overruns are no longer a good idea for the contractor, and even if they happen, they're not the governments/agency's problem.

Anyway, that's my two Danish Kroners worth.

Regards,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
 
Lauge said:
So, if a contractor wants to make twice as much money, all they have to do is make sure the development program becomes twice as expensive.

Now add to that only having one supplier which eliminates any benefit of competition.
 
Avimimus said:
I think most people would agree that any "welfare" program that makes people "work too hard" is "deeply screwed up".

Actually, I'd jump for joy if the US had a welfare system that made people work *at* *all.* One that makes people work "too hard" would be even better, as it would be an incentive to get *off* welfare.

People at all levels in society are able to maintain a naive "Edisonian" belief in invention without even acknowledging the number of technicians working under Edison or the history of experimentation he inherited or the simplicity of the light bulb compared to other tasks.

And of course it's worse now than then. Apart from software, where one can stillm make important innovations in one's home workshop (or dorm room), real innovation these days tends to require not just tools and technologies outside the realm of what one person can own, but *many* such tools and technologies. While the movies might show people cobbling together unlicensed particle accelerators at home... in reality, that's just not going to happen.

We need long term, public investment (ie. not-profit driven) in research

Actaully, "profit driven" is *exactly* what we need. Science today is a big job, requiring a lot of money. People don't work for free. So if you want a new drug, or a manned mission to Mars, a lot of money is going to have to be spent to get there. The best way for the government to spur this sort of thing is not for the government to do it themselves, but for the government to offer prizes. "One Hundred billion dollars for the cure for AIDS." First company to get there wins one hundred billion dollars. Government does not need to spend a penny until the cure is on-hand. Simple, straightforward, effective. You just need to make sure that the prize is sized appropriately for the goal, and then you unleash the investors and the scientists.

I believe that social cohesion is improved in societies which are built on mutual support (even for political opponents and people on welfare).

"Mutual support" only goes so far. Children do not become adults if the parents do not cut them loose.



- The construction of a larger number of automated plants capable of producing more complex one off prototypes will speed up testing of designs (eg. by allow multiple prototypes of some components with slight variations between them).

_39912096_i_robot_pa.jpg


"Robots building robots? That's just stupid."


So, it isn't really computer aided design, but improvements in cheap computer aided manufacturing of one-off components (that can in turn be tested) as well as improvements in the overall science behind the software. So, under these assumptions, we won't see the full results of CAD and CAM until at least fifty years from now (and possibly much later.

Small problem: the raw materials. If you assume a Star Trek "replicator" level of technology, you still need the right raw materials. Advanced alloys, cermets, fiber-based parts with the fibers in specific orientations, etc. Hell, I just might be able to fully design down to the last nut a fully-functional 1.21 Gigawatt nuclear reactor that'll fit in my car, but what do you think the government will say when they find out I got plutonium from the Libyans to run it?
 
Mmmm, seems we are in a '20s mood and still feeling the aftershocks of the end of the Cold War. Anyway, the DDG 1000 cost was really overblown. Complex technological systems will be always difficult to build, look at the misery of the Japan's orbital launcher program. Don't think the West is failing, I think more of faulted program management, in particular the main contractor-subcontractor-subsubcontractors etc chain has gone too far (in part from the necessity of spreading the wealth the most for political reasons. As for the "lack-of-future syndrome" in the minds of a lot of people, that's a big problem, and I think it derives from a "lack-of-purpose", that's widespread, it the worst social ill of the XXI century so far (if you look at it, jihad mvements could be a way to cure the "lack of purpose" in the mind of young affluent muslims). Even Al Gore had a glimpse of it: the MAIN asserted motivation for tackling the so-called "global warming" is (I cite from memory): a great all-encompassing effort to direct our lives. Might seem OT, but I think it isn't.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Avimimus said:
I think most people would agree that any "welfare" program that makes people "work too hard" is "deeply screwed up".

Actually, I'd jump for joy if the US had a welfare system that made people work *at* *all.* One that makes people work "too hard" would be even better, as it would be an incentive to get *off* welfare.

No kidding. Make them pick up trash on the side of the road if nothing else. Deport 12 million illegals and have the welfare crowd do the jobs that "nobody else will do". :mad:
 
sferrin said:
Orionblamblam said:
Avimimus said:
I think most people would agree that any "welfare" program that makes people "work too hard" is "deeply screwed up".

Actually, I'd jump for joy if the US had a welfare system that made people work *at* *all.* One that makes people work "too hard" would be even better, as it would be an incentive to get *off* welfare.

No kidding. Make them pick up trash on the side of the road if nothing else. Deport 12 million illegals and have the welfare crowd do the jobs that "nobody else will do". :mad:

An attempt at getting this discussion back on topic: maybe we could start up a new Works Projects Agency that uses people on welfare to bang sheets of armor plate into DDG-100 hull plates... ???
 
I hope I'm not out of line, but it seems as if this conversation as moved quite a bit off-topic.


The DDG-1000 program has been controversial since well before it was even known as "DDG-X" and when it still known as the "Arsenal Ship." Detractors called it too complex and too expensive for too limited a mission, and as the costs and development time continued to creep, the number of detractors within Congress and the Pentagon matched those increases. With an increasingly budget-conscious military already trying to keep a large number of expensive and controversial programs afloat, chances are something had to give. Defense News had an article a while back about exactly this type of budgetary management the armed forces will have to deal with, and predicted DDG-1000 would go.
 
... have the welfare crowd do the jobs that "nobody else will do".


or just pay a decent amount for these jobs in the first place...

then they won't be "the jobs that "nobody else will do"...

of course, if it's cheap labour you're after...

cheers,
Robin.
 
robunos said:
... have the welfare crowd do the jobs that "nobody else will do".


or just pay a decent amount for these jobs in the first place...

Why pay people to do nothing when they could be paid the same amount to do those jobs? Win/win. It's a travesty that the taxpayer has to pay people to sit around doing nothing while millions of illegals are employed because "nobody wants those jobs".

I'll get off my soap box now before someone gets out the rotten veggie cannon. ;D
 
Just call me Ray said:
I hope I'm not out of line, but it seems as if this conversation as moved quite a bit off-topic.

Naw, see, it's the same topic. But those of us on the "inside" are just using special codes. What looks like a debate about welfare actually, if you feed it through the right decryption codes, turns into a series of highly detailed CAD plans for the new, revised DDG-1000 series destroyers. You know, the new version with the fusion reactors, hydofoils and 20 km/sec railguns.
 
It is the men who should defend the walls and no the other way around.

Our society has forgotten this great truth that was said 2400 years ago by an Spartan general.
What do we want better weapons for if there is no will to use them, not even for self defence?

My country has many warships but is daily invaded by a flow of African people arriving to the coasts without any military intervention.
A few weeks ago a Spanish fishing boat was hijacked by some pirates in the Indian Ocean. We had one of our most modern frigates in the area but....the Government chose to pay, accepting the blackmail, because the voters do not want wars.

We have what we deserve.
 
millions of illegals are employed because "nobody wants those jobs".

call me naive if you will, but that's the point i'm trying to make. pay a decent rate for these jobs and somebody _will_ want them.
that's a win/win, more pay = more tax take, more economic activity, etc, (and to come back on topic, more money for more DDG1000s, ;D)

also, in my opinion, the _real_ travesty is that sports stars, 'entertainers', media types, and of course politicians, get obscenely huge salaries, while police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and service personnel have to make do with little more than welfare benefits. :mad:
 
Orionblamblam said:
pometablava said:
We have what we deserve.

It seems that Occidental Civilisation is entering a 2nd Middle Age.

"Middle Age?" Or "Dark Age?"

"Dark Age?" That might be a solution.
All that separates an ecology activist from reality is 48 hours without electricity....
 
Orionblamblam said:
Just call me Ray said:
I hope I'm not out of line, but it seems as if this conversation as moved quite a bit off-topic.

Naw, see, it's the same topic. But those of us on the "inside" are just using special codes. What looks like a debate about welfare actually, if you feed it through the right decryption codes, turns into a series of highly detailed CAD plans for the new, revised DDG-1000 series destroyers. You know, the new version with the fusion reactors, hydofoils and 20 km/sec railguns.


Ummm...I suppose.


To me, anyway, it seems that we've completely veered off from talking about DDG-1000 and talking about the merits/demerits of welfare and job programs (among other things).

A society, even if 100% of the population is toiling 12 hours a day in order to put 100% of the resultant resources into the government, and that government dedicates 100% of its entire budget to the military, will still have to learn to manage said budget. This was true of the United States during WWII and during the Reagan era, and this was true of the Soviet Union at any given time. The DDG-1000 was a high-value target for budgetary elimination because it had been mired in controversy from the beginning (remember, DDGX was a compromised shrink from the get-go from the Arsenal Ship) which many feared incorporated too many new, untested and too revolutionary technologies onto what many clamored was a badly designed hull even when it was demonstrated that those fears were unfounded (the "tumblehome" design) and had a too limited mission (many feel that its primary mission, that of fire support, can be done just as well with a multi-purpose design). When the Navy added a requirement for the DDG-1000 to be powered by new, more "environmentally friendly" propulsion designs, the end result was only to further burden the program's R&D resources.

Anyway, I'm sure there will be technology that will "filter down" to old and new designs alike, just as technology from the Comanche has benefited the Apache and Black Hawk fleets. The SPY-3 radar will no doubt remain slated as the next generation AEGIS system. The AGS has yielded fantastic research and results, and a similar system may be adopted as the standard surface gun of the future. In fact, as the DDG-1000 was seen as too limited a compromise to some, we may get a return of the full-blown Arsenal Ship (there is a serious proposal for a nuclear-powered, very large AEGIS ship, after all - such a high-value target will no doubt have to incorporate stealth features in order to be considered survivable in a modern threat environment, and its tonnage will certainly allow even a large conventional gun system). And don't be so ready to knock the Burkes, they're still very capable, rather stealthy platforms.

Anyway, I've been playing with a few personal ideas for a fire support ship ever since the original Arsenal Ship went down the tubes. The Army's MLRS is a great system - basically a battleship in a box with 8-inch shells and a minimum range of 23 kilometers (never mind ATCAMS). I've been frankly amazed that no one's thought of putting an MLRS box on a warship - say, a decommissioned OHP taking the place of the Mk 13 launcher and using said launcher's magazine to support the new launcher - and using it as a cheap solution that can be delivered NOW, at least as a stop-gap measure. Or, if you want something more survivable, you can put it on a stealthy frigate or destroyer if you'd like. Either way, you should be able to fit quite a few launchers on a single platform (really two will do) or have a nice, hefty magazine capacity for one, and still have room for VLS tubes, a conventional gun, and detection gear (and even a helicopter if you want).
 
Yes, I think we're going a bit off-topic. We can split in two separate topics.


All that separates an ecology activist from reality is 48 hours without electricity....

That's really funny ;D. I agree with you 100%
 
Just call me Ray said:
(remember, DDGX was a compromised shrink from the get-go from the Arsenal Ship)

DDGX/DDX/Zumwalt had no relationship whatsoever to the Arsenal Ship.
 
sferrin said:
Just call me Ray said:
(remember, DDGX was a compromised shrink from the get-go from the Arsenal Ship)

DDGX/DDX/Zumwalt had no relationship whatsoever to the Arsenal Ship.

There certainly seems to be a relationship to me though, as both programs were with the intention of fire support in mind (Arsenal Ship with a large number of cruise missiles, DDG-1000 basically does this on a destroyer platform with an advanced gun system added).


Anyway, this is what defense writer Stewart Slade has to say (taken from Airliners.net):

At its simplest, nobody has any faith the ships will work and if they do work, nobody quite knows what they will be working for.

DDG-1000 has been a screwed program right from the start. The people behind it broke every single rule of naval design and consciously did not discuss the ship or her basic theoretical precepts with anybody. The ship was, you see, a break from the hidebound traditions of the past that tied the navy to obsolete ideas and prevented them from striding forward into the bright days of the future.

Those thirty words have doomed more naval programs than guns, torpedoes and missiles combined.

Some of the hide-bound conservative ideas they discarded included floating, moving, shooting, steering etc.

The big problem was that they changed everything in one go. They wanted new weapons, new electronics, new machinery, new crew levels, new hull design. Everything was new, everything was a major break with past practice. Of course, it all ended in tears, there's no way it could have done anything else (PS, check HPCA and you'll note I told everybody a week before the official announcement that this was going to happen).

Examples. The ship is supposed to use a radical hull form to reduce its radar cross section. . Great, only that hull form using a wave-piercing bow and tumblehome. Now, lets look at this more closely. Its a wave-piercing bow. That means it - uhhhh - pierces waves. In fact the water from the pierced wave floods over the deck, along the main deck, washes over the forward weaponry, hits the bridge and flows down the ship's side. Now, that water weighs quite a bit, several tens of tons in fact and its moving at the speed of the wave plus teh speed of the ship. That wave, when it hits the gun mount and bridge front is literally like driving into a brick wall at 60mph. The gun mount shield is made of fiberglass to reduce radar cross section. The wave also generates suction as it passes over the VLS system, sucks the doors open and floods the silos. The missiles don't like that. Spray is one thing (bad enough) but being immersed in several tons of water flowing down is quite another. Then we have the problem of the water flowing over the deck. It is strong nough to sweep men off their feet. In fact, its so dangerous that ships that operate under such conditions have to use submarine rules - nobody on deck. But to work the ship, we need people on deck. Uhhh, problem here?

Now tumblehome. This means the ship's sides slop inwards from the waterline, not outwards like normal ships do. Now, we take a slice through the ship at the waterline. That's called the ship's waterplane. There;s a thing called tons per inch immersion, the weight of water needed to sink the ship one inch. TPI is proportional to waterplane area. As the ship's waterplane area increases it requires more tons to make it sink an inch. As the waterplane decreases it requires fewer tons to make it sink per inch. Now, with a conventional flared hull, as the ship sinks in the water, its waterplane area increases, so it requires a steadily increasing rate of flooding to make the ship sink at a steady rate. If the rate of flooding does not increase, eventually the ship stops sinking. This cheers up the crew immensely.

However, with tumblehome, the waterplane area decreases as the ship sinks into the water. So, the ship will have a steadily-increasing rate of immersion at a steady rate of flooding. in short, for a steady rate of flooding, the ship sinks faster and faster. The ship will not stop sinking. This is immensely depressing.

The problem is the damage goes much further than that. As a ship with a conventional flared hull rolls, the increasing waterplane area gives her added buoyancy on the side that is submerging and gives her a moment that pushes upwards, back against the roll. That stabilizes her and she returns to an even keel. With a tumblehome hull, as the ship rolls, the decreasing waterplane area reduces buoyancy on the side that's going down, giving moment that pushes downwards in teh same direction as a roll. This destabilizes her so she rolls faster and faster until she goes over.

Having dealt with the hull design, we now move to the machinery. The DDG-1000 is supposed to have minimally-manned machinery spaces. This will save manpower etc etc etc. There's a problem, all of that automation doesn't work. Its troublesome, unreliable, extremely expensive and it needs somebody to watch it and make sure it does it's job. In fact, its useless. It gets worse. The purpose of a crew on a warship is not to make it goa round and do things. Its to try and patch the holes and put out teh fires when other warships do things to it. Repairing damage cannot be automated (did I tell you that DDG-1000 was supposed to have automated damage control systems ? Ah, forgot that but it doesn't matter, they didn't work either). So, having designed a hull that sinks if somebody looks at it crosswise, we now remove the people who were supposed to try and stop it sinking.

Now we come to the electronics. Great idea here. Put all the antennas into a single structure and we can cut RCS. That causes a problem called electronic interference. The systems all shut each other down. And they did. Very efficiently. The radar suite on DDG-1000 was the world's first self-jamming missile system. Oh, they took down the comms and gunnery fire control as well. Did I also mention that the flow noise from the wave-piercing bow was enough to prevent the sonar working? That was an easy problem to solve. Remove the sonar. Anyway easy way to solve the interference problems, use multi--functional antennas. That sounds good. One day, when they get them working, I'll let you know. MFAs are pretty good when used in their place but NOT for operating mutually incompatible systems.

The gun. Ah yes, the gun. It fires shells, 155mm ones. Guided shells whose electronics can withstand 40,000G. The acceleration in the gun barrel is 100,000G. Ooops. Problems. Then we come to the missiles. They;re in new silos, all along the deck edge. Can anybody see the problems with that? Like moment and rolling inertia? The designers couldn't which proves they know slightly less about the maritime environment than the deer currently eating the bushes outside my office window.

Now, all these problems are occurring at once and the fact that everything in the ship is new means that one can't be fixed until the rest are.

And that is why DDG-1000 got cancelled.
 
Just call me Ray said:
There certainly seems to be a relationship to me though, as both programs were with the intention of fire support in mind (Arsenal Ship with a large number of cruise missiles, DDG-1000 basically does this on a destroyer platform with an advanced gun system added).

The Arsenal Ship was essentially a barge with lots of VLS cells and little else. DDG-1000 is a destroyer, hence the designation. Just because a few of the Arsenal Ship concepts had a wave-piercing hull doesn't mean the programs had anything to do with each other, which in fact they did not.


Just call me Ray said:
Anyway, this is what defense writer Stewart Slade has to say (taken from Airliners.net):

Any idea if this guy has a blog? The few things I've read of his were very interesting.
 
Not that I know of, I'm too cheap to have an account over at Airliners so I can't ask directly but I'll keep tabs on the thread if anyone else does.
 
So what is the United States Navy to do? Another reactivation and yard upgrade of the Iowa-class battleship?

Some have written that the Zumwalt-class is a revolutionary ship and will be remembered in history like HMS Dreadnought? While others believe that it is another HMS Captain?

Can the Arleigh Burke-class be used in the land attack role? Or are we looking at a new class of ship that will be derived from the Arleigh Burke-class like Spruance to Ticonderoga?
 
This is as rediculous as the Seawolf fiasco. The USN gets a fast, stealthy sub and cancel the series after three boats.
 
saturncanuck said:
This is as rediculous as the Seawolf fiasco. The USN gets a fast, stealthy sub and cancel the series after three boats.

They did it so they could buy the "cheaper" Virginia's (which are, ironically, just as expensive as the Sealwolfs were.) In this case "cheaper" meant in quality and performance, not price.
 
Some was that because the numbers were being cut (much like with the B-2), most of it was...I don't know.


Going back to the Zumwalt, please refer to the essay by Stewart Slade I posted a page or so back. Reading Defense News again, seems like the next-gen destroyer is going to be a direct Burke evolution.
 
Just call me Ray said:
Some was that because the numbers were being cut (much like with the B-2), most of it was...I don't know.

Which means had they bought more Seawolfs the unit cost would have been CHEAPER.
 
sealordlawrence said:
DDG1000 was and is a complete waste of time and money, that is why it is dying. The ArleigH Burke class is more than adequate and the sooner the nail is put in the DDG1000 coffin the better.

It's not adequate actually. The design is essentially filled up, apparently the Flight IIA ships don't have the excess power or cooling capacity for ballistic missile defense. They aren't upgradable for larger guns such as the AGS, and if you're designing for littoral combat missions, you want at least two guns for reliability (in case one jams).

[quote author=sferrin]
They did it so they could buy the "cheaper" Virginia's (which are, ironically, just as expensive as the Sealwolfs were.) In this case "cheaper" meant in quality and performance, not price.[/quote]

Virginias are supposed to be far more capable in the littorals than the Seawolfs and I highly doubt that you are using inflation adjusted numbers to compare the price.
 
Rosdivan said:
Virginias are supposed to be far more capable in the littorals than the Seawolfs and I highly doubt that you are using inflation adjusted numbers to compare the price.

And how expensive would the Virginia's be if we'd only bought three?
 
sferrin said:
Rosdivan said:
Virginias are supposed to be far more capable in the littorals than the Seawolfs and I highly doubt that you are using inflation adjusted numbers to compare the price.

And how expensive would the Virginia's be if we'd only bought three?

Unknowable. However, the Navy's planning, backed up by GAO, did show that the Virginia's would be cheaper than a thirty boat buy of Seawolfs (though there was a price increase, still under Seawolf cost, that was due to Congress mandating that the Navy use two shipyards). More importantly, the Virginia's were far more relevant.
 
If the Zumwalt-class is being axed, with perhaps only two ships being built, does that mean that we are looking at a land attack variant of the Arleigh Burke-class with a railgun? Flight III Arleigh Burke-class? Or more Flight IIA ships after DDG-112? Could the Arleigh Burke even support the requirements of a rail gun?

Does anyone believe that this will revive interest in the Arsenal ship? Wasn't the designation MRN-01?

Or do you think that they are going to pull the Iowa-class ships out of the museums and upgrade them and return them to the active list?

I love it when the General Accoutability Office gets involved with cutting-edge technology projects. :mad:
 

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