Posted on 10/21/2013 6:04:10 AM PDT by C19fan
With its fearsome array of weapons, radar evading silhouette and $7billion price tag, this is one of America's most deadly - and expensive - warships ever. USS Zumwalt - the largest destroyer ever made - is just days away from leaving the specially constructed dry docks and entering the water. Equipped with guns capable of firing warheads 100 miles, stealth features, and engine able to generate enough power to run 78,000 homes, America is hoping it with guarantee its naval supremacy for decades to come.
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That’s funny. I thought “CSS Merrimac” only the builder had the plans upside down when he built the hull section.
$7 billion, but not enough left over to buy a flag?
Hussein will probably have them raise the flag with HIS ugly face in place of the stars; after all it is HIS military! /sarc
That would be unfortunate as they are the backbone of our Navy.
There has long been a battle between "black shoes" and "brown shoes" for control over the direction our Navy takes.
Having been a part of the canoe club for many years (and on the side of the brown shoes) I hope this excursion into overpriced weapons doesn't remain a trend.
Carriers and subs project our power. Everything else is support.
God help us to someday have a national leader who understands this.
That’s what I was thinking. Doctrine was little ships take fire so big ships don’t. If you make invisible-expensive little ships, doctrine must change. I assume they thought this through.
The hull form reminds me a lot of the 36-knot post-WWI Italian light cruisers. Pronounced tumblehome and a wave-cutting bow. They were wet but stable and the fastest cruisers in the world at that time.
One of those Italian destroyers was mentioned in the Guiness Book of World Records. The Bartolomeo Colleoni, IRRC. Could hit almost 40kts. But it was sunk by an Australian warship (HMAS Sydney, a cruiser?). BTW, isn’t this destroyer a de facto cruiser. Seeing as it can act independently from a task force and hit hard, it kind of seems like one.
Whether these ships will be any use in future engagements is yet to be seen. But at $7 billion, I can guarantee that they will never pay for themselves.
Its been the Surface Navy’s R&D platform since the 90s...lots of new things from automated systems, electric drive to the Guns....it will be the 1st platform for the for the directed energy weapons. It is more a battleship than destroyer....that has been perfected for now with the Burke class. Navy was going to buy 30 of them....but its just too expensive so we continued to build DDG-51s and will build 3 of these, meaning one will always be available.
That would be CSS Virginia, built on the USS Merrimac.
It goes back to the old argument, is it better to have a few high-tech weapons or a many low-tech weapons?
I don't know the answer to that one. But I will point out that Germany produced about 1000 Tiger Tanks. The Soviets produced about 50,000 T-34's. And we all know how that turned out.
You are absolutely correct. I knew that and posted anyway as I thought that there were few who will remember the Virginia but many who will remember the Merrimac. Thank you for the clarification.
The (prospective) captain’s name is James Kirk. Yep, serious.
Our current destroyers can fire up to 128 Tomahawk missiles - some improvement!
It is hard to class the Zumwalt. Although she is called a destroyer, she is the size of a large cruiser. Her mission is more akin to a cruiser than that of a destroyer, but is even closer akin to the long-cancelled Arsenal Ship or even the late, lamented Iowas.
The shape does remind me of the later Ironclads of the Confederacy—like the CSS Tenessee ot the CSS Albermarle. What’s old is new again—I guess. This ship seems to pack a good punch.
I thought it looks like something from a James Bond flick. Neat though.
Interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia entry on this vessel:
They have to ballast the ship in order to fire the guns, for stability!
I helped build the Spruance class destroyers.
Unless things have changed, everything on a ship is pretty much squared off. Simple to build and a lot less wasted space.
I got to sit in one of the chairs in the control room. It was just a temporary chair while work was being done, didn’t want to give the navy a used chair, but it was the same type of chair.
Didn’t want to get up. Kind of a Lazy Boy feel.
Looks like there aren’t enough spare bodies in the crew. Many of the jobs I did aboard ship had twice as many people present as were actually needed to to the job as “spares”, to replace casualties and fight fires and flooding.
I could manually operate the dead reckoning tracer (DRT) in the combat information center (CIC), with the electronic “bug” not working, and calculate closest point of approach, range and bearing info on surface contacts.
20 year old eyes looking through properly collimated binoculars could see and estimate range on targets out to the horizon. One of our lookouts could see masthead and range lights at night out to where part of the ship was over the edge of the horizon. Sometimes he picked them up before the radar operator was reporting them.
What does this new vessel do without GPS? (After the Chinese knock ours out).
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