Posted on 09/08/2005 9:20:19 AM PDT by Valin
The Navy's newest destroyer brings stealth to the high seas--and may mark the return of the gun to naval combat.
"The situation was an answer to the prayers of a War College strategist or a gunnery tactician. The enemy column, now reduced to one battleship, one heavy cruiser, and one destroyer, was steaming into a trap. It was a very short vertical to a very broad T, but Oldendorf was about to cap it, as Togo had done to Rozhdestvensky in 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima Strait, and as thousands of naval officers had since hoped to accomplish." --Samuel Eliot Morison
THE BATTLE AT Surigao Strait, described above, was only one engagement within the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf, which took place in the Philippine Sea during October of 1944. The clash in Leyte Gulf is regarded as the largest naval battle in history, but it is the battle at Surigao Strait which has for years captured the imagination of naval historians. It was, and, it was assumed, always would be, the last great battleship engagement in history. The dominance of the carrier in naval combat had become apparent more than two years prior at the Battle of Midway, and the obsolescence of the battleship, in turn, heralded the rapid decline of the gun as the primary weapon of the U.S. surface fleet. Over the next 50 years, advances in technology led the Navy to rely ever more on missiles and jet aircraft to project power at sea and on shore. But the naval gun may yet make a comeback. The Navy's next-generation destroyer, the DD(X), will be armed with a battery of two 155mm Advance Gun Systems that will offer a spectacular improvement over its predecessors in range, accuracy, and rate of fire. The DD(X) may, in fact, portend the reemergence of the gun as the primary weapon of the fleet.
THE MOST ADVANCED DESTROYERS in the fleet today are those of the Arleigh Burke class, or DDG 51's. This class includes the USS Cole, the USS Winston S. Churchill, the USS John S. McCain, and 42 other ships. These destroyers are armed with the Standard surface-to-air missile, the Harpoon antiship missile, the VLA antisubmarine warfare missile, and an array of torpedoes. Despite this formidable arsenal, the DDG 51's possess only one 5-inch lightweight gun--that is half the firepower of the Burke class' predecessor, the Spruance class, which is armed with two 5-inch lightweight guns. The Fletcher class destroyers, some 175 of which were built during the Second World War, possessed five 5-inch guns. This decline in the strength of naval artillery on U.S. destroyers took place over a period that saw the great Iowa class battleships, each with 9 16-inch guns (capable of propelling 1,900 pounds of high explosives up to 30 miles) and twenty 5-inch guns, disappear from the fleet altogether. At the dawn of the 21st century, the Navy's primary antisurface gun battery consists of one 5-inch gun with a range of 13 nautical miles. But if the Navy sticks to its schedule, by 2012 two DD(X) ships will be operational, each armed with a battery of two 155mm (6.1-inch) Advanced Gun Systems with a range of no less than 68 miles.
THE PRIMARY REQUIREMENT for the DD(X) program is to "carry the war to the enemy through offensive operations and destroy enemy targets ashore with precision strike and volume fires." Despite the impressive range of the Advanced Gun System, to achieve this requirement DD(X) will operate far closer to shore than its predecessors. In order to "dominate the littoral," the ship has been constructed with a number of features which will offer a tremendous improvement in survivability, the first among which is stealth.
DD(X) is designed to be the quietest surface ship in the fleet. The ship will be quieter even than the Los Angeles class submarines. More remarkable, however, is the ship's unique design, which will greatly enhance its ability to remain invisible to electronic surveillance. To reduce the ship's radar signature, the ship's designers have eliminated right angles from the deck. In addition, the ship's superstructure is built out of a composite material of wood and plastic--the effect of which is both to absorb radar and lessen the overall weight of the ship (leaving room for future, weight-intensive improvements).
Perhaps the most visibly striking feature of the DD(X) is its wave-piercing, tumblehome hull form. The tumblehome hull has a twofold effect. By having the hull slope inward from the waterline, the hull's exposure to waves is reduced, which in turn reduces the rocking motion of the ship, making it less easily detected by enemy radar. In addition, the tumblehome hull will make the DD(X) far more survivable than its predecessors in the event of an underwater explosion from a torpedo or mine. The Navy has already tested a quarter scale model at the Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland and achieved impressive results.
DD(X) will be less vulnerable to attacks above the waterline as well. Unlike the DDG's, DD(X) will employ a first of its kind Peripheral Vertical Launch System (PVLS). Missiles are typically stored in clusters at the center of a ship. PVLS, by moving those clusters to the hull, will provide the ship with something reminiscent of the reactive armor fitted to the M1A2 Abrams main battle tank. The PVLS concept has already been successfully tested, and will make this ship significantly less vulnerable to sea-skimming missiles like the French Exocet employed by Argentina against the British in the Falklands and those developed over the last decade by China.
The DD(X) will sail with a state of the art, dual band radar, which is one of the signature features of the new ship--and one of the primary reasons the Navy decided to invest in the DD(X) instead of upgrading their existing fleet of DDG's. The Spy-3 Multi-Function Radar has proven vastly superior to its antecedents in land-based testing. It offers 15-times greater detection against sea-skimming targets, 20 percent greater firm-track range against all antiship cruise missiles (which improves survivability), a 10-times increase in maximum track capacity, and dramatic improvements of performance in jamming environments.
DESPITE ALL THIS, the most intriguing element of DD(X) is its guns. Each 155mm gun will fire a Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP). The LRLAP has already been successfully tested to 83 nautical miles. Though it only carries 24 lbs of high explosives, the Advanced Gun System (AGS) is fully automated and holds a magazine of 300 rounds. With a rate of fire of 10 rounds a minute, the AGS should be able to provide the volume fire capability the Navy so desperately needs, and with GPS-guidance the LRLAP will be extremely accurate.
Critics of the AGS point out that accuracy of fire may be less important than the volume of fire when softening up onshore targets for an amphibious assault, but because the DD(X) can be replenished while at sea (and while firing), she will be able to fire at least one gun continuously for an indefinite amount of time. In addition, each gun will be capable of putting up to eight rounds on a target simultaneously. To achieve this effect, shells will be fired in rapid succession at different trajectories. In conjunction with the counter-battery capability of the dual band radar, any enemy troops who fire on U.S. forces will have only minutes before the 2 guns of DD(X) can return fire with devastating accuracy: Tests have shown the guns accurate to within two meters at a range of 68 nautical miles.
AT ROUGHLY $3.3 billion each, the first two DD(X) destroyers will be almost 50 percent more expensive than the DDG's. Though cost would likely come down with each additional ship built, it still represents an extremely expensive addition to the fleet. However, there are certain aspects of DD(X) which will deliver savings over the long-run, not least of which is improved survivability.
DD(X) will operate with a crew of only 150 men, while DDG class ships require more than 380. Over a 35-year period, the Navy claims this smaller crew will lead to savings of $450 million for each ship relative to the DDG. Furthermore, cruise missiles cost about $1 million each, while shells for the AGS will cost only about $50,000 a piece. Barring a trigger happy crew, this too should translate to substantial savings over the long-term. Still, the most significant savings will likely stem from the equivalence of 2 DD(X) destroyers to 1 Marine artillery battalion. Since each artillery battalion requires 640 Marines, over 130 trucks, 5 forklifts, and 18 155mm howitzers, the presence of two DD(X) destroyers will translate into a major reduction in the logistical burden associated with amphibious assaults.
But not everyone in Congress is convinced that DD(X) is worth the enormous investment. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the House Armed Services projection forces subcommittee, is concerned that the program has been reduced "to little more than a technology demonstration platform." Still, without the DD(X) contract, there is concern even among opponents of the program that America's shipyards would no longer be able to maintain their most skilled laborers. Bartlett concedes, "It's not so simple. We have got to consider the industrial base."
IF THE PROGRAM GOES AHEAD, DD(X) will help transform the fleet into a more modern and lethal instrument of foreign policy. The ship's ability to serve as a platform for the insertion of Special Forces, and to provide fire support for those forces in a way submarines never could, will be a major asset in the war on terror. But this high-tech ship is designed for a more conventional conflict with a more conventional enemy. With its antisubmarine warfare capabilities, stealth, GPS-guided artillery, and powerful radar, DD(X) is designed to help maintain the balance of power in the Pacific.
All of the technologies discussed so far have already been successfully tested, but the DD(X) is also designed to allow for the rapid deployment of technologies still in the pipeline. The Navy hopes to fit these ships with an electromagnetic rail gun by 2020. The rail gun would be capable of firing a guided projectile up to 267 nautical miles, which would put all of North Korea into range from either coast of that peninsula (or, to take another theoretical example, allow the Navy to bombard Paris from the English Channel).
The modern era of the carrier battle group has not yet drawn to a close but DD(X) may offer a glimpse at the future of Naval combat. The focus on stealth and firepower may augur a new way of fighting at sea--one that doesn't leave large numbers of American sailors and marines vulnerable to sea-skimming missiles and air attack. A future naval engagement in the Pacific may look more like the Battle at Surigao Strait than the Battle at Midway, with hard-to-detect ships exchanging volleys of fire over vast distances and with pinpoint accuracy. The great Iowa class battleships of the 20th century have disappeared, but the gun now seems unlikely to disappear from the fleet anytime soon.
Michael Goldfarb is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.
(click pic for article)
That is one UGLY ship. I'd be embarassed to be a member of the crew.
Allow me...
NO! :-)
If I was a midshipman on a DD(X)...I'd only care about: Firepower, Survivability (against Nature, Weapons & ordnance) and basic human comforts.
Wha? There must be some active guidance in the projectile.
The CSS Virginia/Merrimac had a flat, low-to-the-waterline deck surrounding the sloping superstructure.
check this out
Better?
Yeha, Man, thanks a Million & several Federal Loans.
If it kills its target and protects its crew, its beautiful.
Thank you, it sure does.
3rd its = it's
damn!
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