Navy struggles to find a place for Bath-built Zumwalt stealth destroyers

Brunswick Times Herald via The Portland Press Herald ^ | Friday, February 1, 2019 | Nathan Strout

[Wildbill22]

The Russian “Kirov” class is also a showboat and she has beautiful lines as well.
The Tumblehome hull design though looks weird to me, and it also has many thinking it would be very unstable in a quartering following sea, in a very dangerous way.

I think the Burke class has nice lines. I like the sharply raked bow and curvy hull lines. She looks fast. I am glad we are still building a ton of those things. And it sounds like a very successful design overall.

[rlmorel]

Agreed...the Burke Class is beautiful...thy are capable in the hands of a well trained crew...but I fear that is their weakness right now.

They resemble chiseled athletes armed to the teeth.

[LonePalm]

By way of full disclosure, I left the Surface Warfare community in 1985.

The Zumwalts, in hindsight, were an expensive mistake as they don't meet the mission needs of the Navy today.

I would like to comment on a subject not mentioned in the article, reduced manning.

While I understand the Navy wanting to stretch the budget as far as possible, I do think that reduced manning is not such a good idea. Once you start taking casualties (killed and wounded) in combat, your ability to continue the mission or even do Damage Control and save the ship is seriously reduced.

Unfortunately, the US has a long history of shorting the armed forces in peacetime only to desperately need them later.

I think it might be time to revisit an idea from the late 70s and early 80s, that of the Arsenal Ship. The Arsenals were envisioned as a high tech version of the Battleship. They were to act as a force multiplier for the new Ticonderoga-class cruisers and their Aegis Combat Systems. The Arsenals would carry several HUNDRED vertical launch SM-2 SAMS, ASROCs (ASW), and Harpoon (anti-ship) missiles. The Aegis ships would provide the targeting information and the Arsenals would provide the missiles.

Given the modular design of the bird-in-a-box Vertical Launch systems they could be rapidly and cheaply modified as new or improved missiles are introduced to the fleet. Likewise they could receive custom load outs as the mission need dictates.

Let me know if you still have an questions.

WWG1WGA

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Captain Rhino]

Agree with your primary mission assessment.

They are the surface fleet equivalent of the stealth bomber: close undetected in a high threat environment and begin the kinetic disintegration the enemy’s integrated sea and air defense systems. Collapse the defense so the less stealthy follow-on forces can pour in.

I haven’t checked their squadron assignments but I hope they are in one CRUDES group so the synergy of the three operating together can be realized.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Thank you!

Thanks for adding to the conversation! You have a lot more experience than most of us!

Understaffing; I do not know that the Forrestal was understaffeed, but it lost its primary Fire Suppression team in the 1st explosion leaving under trained backups to fight an aviation fule fire amoung cradles filled with 500 pound bombs and fuled up planes hung with live ordinance on deck. It did not work well.

Would the Arsenal ships have any small guns, or would it be entirely missle based? A 5” turret fore and aft or only the missle complement?

(Bed time! Last post tonight!)

[GreyHoundSailor]

I became a SWO in 1985. Completely agree with you on the manning assessment. One thing I noticed quite early was most of the ‘manpower analysis’ folks I met were female and not one of them had spent a single day underway on a ship since their commissioning. Funny how NAVMAC’s ‘vision statement’ is ‘We lead the Navy in manpower solutions’. The only thing we ever heard from them was how we could reduce manning.

When we went all proactive and sent extra people to school to become rescue swimmers or AIC’s, we’d eventually get raided just prior to deployment by the Squadron, so instead of being up two we’d be down one.

Just my opinion, but the addition of women made it worse. We were 0 of 1 for a Harpoon Maintenance Tech (HMT) and couldn’t receive our Cruise Missile Tactical Qual (CMTQ) until we had that person onboard. We waited a full year for her (FC1) to finish school and show up. The day she arrived we called our DESRON; two days later and the FC1 was gone. She reported for duty two months pregnant. Found out later she’d done that on her last ship too. No penalty for her, but we deployed without a HMT.

The Battle Group XO’s spent Saturdays trading people involved in romantic relationships, so we could get them on the Sunday Holy Helo. That’s one goat rope I don’t miss. It’s unfortunate none of this is reported - try to find the Navy pregnancy rates and you’ll hear ‘they don’t track that information’. Sure they do - it’s just so abysmal they don’t want the numbers out.

[Jimmy Valentine]

With all of the discussion about these, I haven’t seen anything about their Sea keeping.

[daniel1212]

I became a SWO in 1985. Completely agree with you on the manning assessment.

Thank you and all for their service, but you mean there is a problem?

Worse than you thought: inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy ... Jan 13, 2019 - Their report documents the routine, almost casual, violations of standing orders on a ... Some radar controls didn't work and he soon discovered crew members who didn't know how to use them

When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the deck and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn’t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn’t know how to use them anyway.

Fort found a Voyage Management System that generated more “trouble calls” than any other key piece of electronic navigational equipment. Designed to help watchstanders navigate without paper charts, the VMS station in the skipper’s quarters was broken so sailors cannibalized it for parts to help keep the rickety system working.

The Fitz’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, and Lt. Natalie Combs, who ran the CIC, are battling similar charges in court but contend unlawful command influence by senior leaders scuttled any chance for fair trials.

About three weeks after the ACX Crystal disaster, Fort’s investigators sprang a rules of the road pop quiz on Fitz’s officers. It didn’t go well. The 22 who took the test averaged a score of 59 percent, Fort wrote. Also, The ghost in the Fitz’s machine: why a doomed warship’s crew never saw the vessel that hit it .

He found a pee bottle that had tipped and spilled behind a large-screen display. Fort’s eyes started to take over for his nose, and he took it all in. “There was debris everywhere,” Fort said under oath. “Food debris, food waste, uneaten food, half-eaten food, personal gear in the form of books, workout gear, workout bands, kettlebells, weightlifting equipment, the status boards had graffiti on them.”

And, A warship doomed by ‘confusion, indecision, and ultimately panic’ on the bridge

Coppock wasn’t communicating with her CO or his XO but she also wasn’t talking to the ship’s electronic nerve center — the Combat Information Center, or CIC. Bridge and CIC teams are supposed to constantly share information on what they’re seeing and their sensors detecting, working together to navigate a ship safety through the night. But Coppock wouldn’t talk with the CIC because her counterparts there “had given her bad information in the past,” according to the report.

The CIC was led by Lt. Natalie Combs. Testifying under oath at a hearing last year to determine if Combs should stand court-martial, Fort said it was “unfathomable” that the bridge didn’t talk to the CIC on the night of the disaster.

Then there is

A junior sailor stationed on the amphibious assault ship Essex pleaded guilty this month to bringing a handgun onto a base, driving his car toward a command master chief and smoking marijuana, among other charges. http://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/31/junior-sailor-pleads-guilty-to-driving-car-at-command-master-chief/?utm_source=clavis

[Midwesterner53]

It’s a female thing not to talk to someone for whatever reason. If the other section had been sending bad info, was it reported? Was any action taken? Or was the lack of talk because another female officer was in charge there and the two were not speaking for several reasons? Lower standards for officers and NCOs means disaster for everyone. But hey, the social justice warriors are happy and they must be kept happy these days.

[daniel1212]

It’s a female thing not to talk to someone for whatever reason. If the other section had been sending bad info, was it reported? Was any action taken? Or was the lack of talk because another female officer was in charge there and the two were not speaking for several reasons? Lower standards for officers and NCOs means disaster for everyone. But hey, the social justice warriors are happy and they must be kept happy these days.

The New Navy sexually places women to rule over men, and sexually joins men with men and women with women (in "marriage"), and also "joins" its ships with others who are no more fitting for that than the other.

[Midwesterner53]

I have read somewhere else the women in charge that night were not on speaking terms over some issue that upsets women. People died for that and many other reasons.

[daniel1212]

I have read somewhere else the women in charge that night were not on speaking terms over some issue that upsets women. People died for that and many other reasons. >

More likely than with men I think.

Coppock wasn’t communicating with her CO or his XO but she also wasn’t talking to the ship’s electronic nerve center — the Combat Information Center, or CIC. Bridge and CIC teams are supposed to constantly share information on what they’re seeing and their sensors detecting, working together to navigate a ship safety through the night. But Coppock wouldn’t talk with the CIC because her counterparts there “had given her bad information in the past,” according to the report. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/01/14/a-warship-doomed-by-confusion-indecision-and-ultimately-panic-on-the-bridge/