U.S. Navy
Posted on 12/11/2015 11:09:59 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
8 Over the years it’s become commonplace for writers to sex up their descriptions of guided-missile destroyer (DDG) Zumwalt, the U.S. Navy’s newest surface combatant. Commentators of such leanings depict the ultra-high-tech DDG-1000 [4] as a battleship. Better yet, it’s a “stealth [5] battleship [6]â€â€”a fit subject [7] for sci-fi [8]!
Not so. And getting the nomenclature right matters: calling a man-of-war a battleship conjures up images in the popular mind of thickly armored dreadnoughts bristling with big guns blazing away at one another on the high seas, pummeling shore targets in Normandy or Kuwait, or belching smoke and flame after Nagumo [9]’s warplanes struck at Pearl Harbor.
Such images mislead. Battleships were multi-mission warships capable of engaging enemy surface navies, fighting off swarms of propeller-driven aircraft, or pounding hostile beaches with gunfire. The DDG-1000 is a gee-whiz but modestly armed surface combatant optimized for one mission: shore bombardment. The shoe just doesn’t fit.
Now, there’s no problem affixing the label stealth to Zumwalt, which at present is undergoing its first round of sea trials [10] off the New England coast. Shipbuilders went to elaborate lengths to disguise the ship from radar detection. Radar emits electromagnetic energy to search out, track and target ships and aircraft. It shouts, then listens for an echo from hulls or airframes—much as sightseers shout and listen when visiting the Grand Canyon.
Quieting the echo is the trick. This 15,000-ton behemoth displaces half-again as much as a [11]Ticonderoga [11]-class cruiser [11] yet reportedly has just one-fiftieth the radar cross-section [12] of the fleet’s workhorse Arleigh Burke [13]-class DDGs [13]. While not entirely undetectable, DDG-1000 will look like a fishing vessel or other small craft on enemy radar scopes—if it’s picked up at all. Blending into surface traffic is no mean feat for an outsized destroyer.
How did shipwrights pull this off? For one thing, the geometry of the DDG-1000’s hull, superstructure, and armaments deflects rather than reflects electromagnetic energy. Right angles and surfaces perpendicular to the axis of EM radiation bounce back energy—boosting an object’s radar signature. Accordingly, the DDG-1000 design includes few right angles. Everything slopes. And while radar antennae, smokestacks, and other fittings clutter the decks of conventional warships, such items are mostly concealed within Zumwalt’s hull or deckhouse. That accounts for the vessel’s clean, otherworldly look.
For another, radar-absorbent coatings slathered on the ship’s external surfaces muffle such radar returns as do occur. While hardly invisible to the naked eye, this big ship will prove hard to detect—let alone track or target—while cruising over the horizon.
If stealth is an accurate adjective, though, dubbing Zumwalt a battleship conveys false impressions. First of all, there’s the matter of linguistic hygiene. It’s all too common among laymen to use battleship as a generic term for any ship of war. Indeed, I got my start as a columnist in 2000 precisely because reporters took to labeling the destroyer USS [14]Cole [14] a battleship [14]. An explosives-laden small craft struck that unfortunate vessel in Aden, blowing a massive hole in her side [15]. How could that happen if Cole was a battleship? Battlewagons are ruggedly built, with vulnerable spaces sheathed in a foot or more of armor. They were built on the assumption that they would take a punch in a slugfest with enemy battleships.
Destroyers aren’t built on that assumption. Describing Cole as a battleship obscured a basic fact about modern warships. U.S. mariners try to bring down the “archer,†namely a hostile ship or warbird, before he lets fly his “arrow,†a torpedo or anti-ship missile. That’s because few ships are built to withstand battle damage. Crewmen call them “tin cans†for a reason: it’s easy to pierce an American ship’s sides should an enemy round evade the ship’s defenses. So it should have come as no surprise that a small craft packed with shaped-charge explosives could land a crushing blow against one of the U.S. Navy’s premier combatants. Again: calling things by their proper names constitutes the beginning of wisdom [16].
Second, those who portray Zumwalt as a dreadnought seem to be thinking of dreadnoughts not in their prime but in their age of senescence. This too blurs important facts. Aircraft carriers supplanted battleships as capital ships—the fleet’s heaviest and rangiest hitters—during World War II. Dreadnoughts found new life as auxiliary platforms. They pummeled enemy beaches during amphibious operations. They rendered escort duty, employing their secondary batteries to help screen carrier task forces against aerial attack.
The DDG-1000 is optimized for that sort of auxiliary duty. In particular, the vessel sports a couple of long-range guns optimized for bombarding foreign shores, along with eighty vertical launchers capable of lofting land-attack cruise missiles hundreds of miles inland. The vessel thus meets the navy’s need to supply offshore fire support [17] to troops fighting in coastal areas. Gunfire support is a capability that lapsed when the last battleship retired in 1992 [18]. In a narrow sense, then, it’s fitting to liken the Zumwalts to battlewagons.
But battleships never fully relinquished their multimission character. In their days of nautical supremacy, they dueled hostile battle fleets to determine who would command the sea. They then protected cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious craft that fanned out in large numbers to exploit maritime command. Dreadnoughts retained that primacy until the flattop and its air wing came into their own during World War II.
But they remained hard-hitting surface-warfare platforms even after being eclipsed. Carrier aviation didn’t render them obsolete. For example, the battleships Washington and South Dakota played a pivotal part in the naval battles off Guadalcanal [19] in 1942. The Pearl Harbor fleet got some vengeance in a surface gun battle in Surigao Strait in 1944 [20]. Surigao Strait comprised part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, history’s last major fleet action. Iowa-class battlewagons resumed their surface-warfare function during a short-lived revival during the 1980s and 1990s. Equipped with Harpoon and Tomahawk anti-ship missiles to complement their nine 16- and twelve 5-inch guns, they formed the core of surface action groups [21] while also discharging shore-bombardment missions [22].
In short, battleships remained multimission vessels throughout their service lives—even after technological progress relegated them to secondary status. The Zumwalt is one-dimensional by contrast. Each ship is armed with two “advanced gun systems [23]†capable of raining precision fire—albeit with lightweight projectiles compared to battleships’ 1,900- and 2,700-lb. rounds—on land targets some 83 nautical miles [24] distant. Marines will welcome the backup.
It remains unclear, however, how capable the advanced gun will prove against enemy surface fleets. For example, a recent report from the Congressional Research Service [25] pays tribute to the gun’s long-range land-attack projectiles but makes scant mention of how the DDG-1000 would fare in surface warfare. The gun’s manufacturer touts the weapon’s “highly-advanced gunfire capabilities for anti-surface warfare [24],†yet—like the ship’s other boosters—overwhelmingly emphasizes the littoral-combat mission. To date, then, surface action appears to be an afterthought for the DDG-1000s—unlike their dreadnought forebears. That’s another nuance masked by the moniker stealth battleship.
In that vein, it’s fair to say the DDG-1000 suffers from the same problem bedeviling the rest of the U.S. Navy surface fleet. Assume the advanced gun system eventually boasts the same range against warships it boasts against land targets, eighty-three nautical miles. Guns can disgorge a large volume of fire, to the tune of hundreds of rounds, compared to the ship’s eighty-round missile magazine. That’s good.
But it matters little if the ship never gets within range to fire its guns. However impressive for a gun, eighty-three nautical miles is only a fraction of, say, the range sported by China’s YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile [26]. Currently being deployed aboard People’s Liberation Army Navy ships and subs, the YJ-18 can strike at targets 290 nautical miles distant. Nor, apparently, will the [12]Zumwalt [12]s carry Harpoons [12], whose range falls short of the advanced gun system’s in any event.
Like the rest of the surface warships, then, the DDG-1000 will find itself sorely outranged by the missile-armed submarines, warplanes and surface combatants that comprise the core of naval fighting forces around the Eurasian perimeter. Chinese or Russian forces can blast away from beyond the reach of American guns or missiles. And if U.S. forces try to close the gap, they will do so under fire—fire that will enfeeble them on the way.
In that the DDG-1000’s plight does resemble the battleship’s plight after Pearl Harbor. It’s a heavy hitter whose reach is woefully short. Defense firms are developing new long-range anti-ship cruise missiles [27]. The U.S. Navy has experimented with repurposing land-attack cruise missiles for surface warfare [28]—resurrecting a capability [29] the leadership shortsightedly allowed to lapse after the Cold War.
Let’s get some long-range weaponry out there—pronto. No, the DDG-1000 isn’t a stealth battleship. But it should be. And—suitably armed—it could be.
James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College, coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific [30], and the last gunnery officer to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger [31]. The views voiced here are his alone.
U.S. Navy
Whose job is it to scrape the whale blubber, blood and guts off the bow when it gets to port?
I’m thinking it is time to dust off the Missouri again.
The flenser?
Ping
No telling what stuff the military has tried and gotten to work but wasn’t really sure how or why or only worked once.
The movie was fair.
SEIU will claim jurisdiction and EPA will confine all stealth ships to port until lights, sirens, and ultrasonic devices are installed to warn off all aquatic life from its path. Environmental Impact Statements are underway.
The comparison to the Iowas in the 1980s is actually more apt than the wrtier realizes.
The Iowas in the 1980s were three-trick ships: shore bombardment, standoff land attack and anti-ship.
The writer gives short shrift to the work the USN has done recently with developing an anti-ship capability for the Block IV Tomahawk. The dedicated anti-ship Tomahawk was dropped in the 1980s due to the probls with targeting moving objects (ships) at long ranges. Recently the USN has demonstrated the ability to retarget Tomahawks mid-flight from both Hornets and Raptors. So the scenario where you have a long-range and survivable cruise missile platform way out in front of a carrier group that can take out enemy surface assets at distance is back in the table. The difference being that the Iowas relied on armor for survivability while the Zumwalts rely on stealth.
And, to add, the Zumwalts have an anti-sub capability thats comparable to the Ticonderogas and Burkes.
Media speak:
Tank- any tracked vehicle
Battleship- any warship
Bomber- any military aircraft
Fighter- any military aircraft
Soldier- any armed member of the military
Officer- All commissioned officer, warrant officers, and Navy petty officer, alternatively anyone in charge of others
Assault rifle- Any civilian gun that looks scary, but oddly never actually used to describe M-16s, M4s, etc. when carried by the military.
Pilot- anyone who crews a military aircraft
Sailor- anyone in the Navy
Screw that.
Build the Montana class. Put America back to work,
For anyone who has watched a bunch of knucklehead sailors explain complicated sensor and weapons systems, the stories of the incident aren’t too hard figure out.
Invisible to radar became “totally invisible”. I’ve spent 30 years in and around the Navy and I’ve heard some real whoppers and some unbelievable twists of reality. Sea stories get told and retold with predictable results, and the naive retell them as if they had seen it with their own eyes.
I can tell you exactly what it is.
A Giant POS Waste of Money Boondoggle!
The F-35 Program of the Navy.
It did a great job against them dang aliens a while back...
You can accept or reject any ‘tall tale’ as you wish, however one must go where the evidence leads even if it is circumstantial, for example:
In the 1944 Jane’s Fighting Ships, the USS Eldridge (the center of this story) was listed as being of the ‘Bostwick’ class. From that point forward however, the Eldridge is repeatedly referred to as being of the ‘Cannon’ class destroyer-escort. Jane’s got it right. The design specs of the USS Bostwick (first in class) are the same as the Eldridge.
Who prevaricated, and why?
And of all those Bostwick class DE’s, only the Eldridge has the distinction of having the captain’s log ‘missing’. The engineering logs were found, but nothing else. Likewise the first commanding officer of the Eldridge, LTC Charles R. Hamilton certainly disappeared from any and all official records (if not from the ship itself, lol). I challenge anyone to find any trace of the man, prior to his EO (William Van Allen) assuming command.
Now any of these things can perhaps be explained away, but it is when more and more of such ‘minor’ incidents accumulate, all relating to one alleged ‘tall tale’ that one either has to accept the official explanation, i.e. “nothing happened here, move along, nothing to see folks” or to consider what (if anything) is being hidden.
Enjoy your weekend.
US Navy’s Newest Ship Breaks Down in the Open Sea
The US’ Milwaukee littoral combat ship commissioned in November broke down in the open sea and had to be towed to a naval base, Navy Times reported.
The US Navy combat ship Milwaukee broke down in the open sea on December 11, while transiting from Halifax, Canada, to Mayport, Florida, and ultimately its home port of San Diego.
According to the article, the ship was commissioned 20 days ago, on November 21.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20151212/1031638937/us-ship-breakdown.html#ixzz3u7Rgo7TW
Mom used to work at the Philly Naval Yard and she believed it was true. She did drafting for Aircraft Carriers and loved going on the ships. Not me. I’m the only land lover in our family. I like to fly and not off a carrier.
sorry, forgot to preview.
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