Posted on 05/28/2019 6:46:39 AM PDT by Magnatron
Eluding radar, quietly sailing into enemy territory and launching long-range precision attacks from less-detectable positions all begin to paint the picture of how a “stealthy” offensive surface destroyers could transform modern maritime warfare.
Can a massive surface destroyer, armed with Tomahawk missiles, deck-mounted guns, sensors, antennas and heat-generating onboard electrical power, truly be considered stealthy? Surely, tall, vertical masts, hull-mounted sensors and protruding antenna could never be a low-observable ship, yet performing these missions comprised the technical starting point from which engineers launched into building a first-of-its-kind stealth warship.
Stealth attributes are just one of a number of defining characteristics of the much-discussed Zumwalt class warships, perceived by many to represent the beginning of a transformational pivot into a new generation of warfare -- including laser weapons, artificial intelligence, expanded networking, advanced sonar and electric-drive.
All three high-tech Zumwalt destroyers are now “in the water,” Capt. Kevin Smith, Zumwalt-class Program Manager, said at the Navy League’s Sea, Air, Space Symposium. Smith detailed how each of the three new destroyers are at various stages of development. The first-in-class USS Zumwalt is preparing weapons on its way to final delivery later this year. The Zumwalt is now test-firing its weapons systems, completing an operational scenario transit through Alaska and Hawaii and advancing tactical training for the crew, as it prepares for its maiden deployment. The activation, which involves refining weapons, sensors and networks, is a vital step towards launching the destroyer for war.
“The crew has been learning a lot as far as combat activation, a lot at-sea and a lot at its home port in San Diego. The maturity of the computer system has come a long way and is now at a higher level of completion,” said Smith.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“high-speed rail lines — a sector I also spent time lobbying for in the mid-2000s”
Willie Green, is that you???
I eat, drink, and sleep sarcasm, so thanks for that.
I’m going to watch it now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU
Stealthy destroyer?
I’ll believe it when I don’t see it.
“...against anything that strengthens America with it would ‘take too long’,”
“We can’t seem to make it happen now.”
I guess you are out of the loop, but we are going back and in less than 5 years.
I guess you are out of the loop, but we are going back and in less than 5 years.
I am old enough to remember 2001 Space Odyssey when it came out. It was assumed we’d have manned lunar colonies by the turn of the century. I read somewhere a long time ago that history would remember our landing on the moon as being similar to the Vikings making it to North America. Yeah, we were first, but we weren’t to be the ones to change world history. We went to the moon, puttered about and then abandoned the effort.
I believe that President Trump is trying to recreate the “can do” spirt that he and I grew up with (I’m a couple of week older than DJT). I hope he’s successful inspire of the multitudes who want to see him and the US fail.
If we’re not careful our going to the moon will be as remembered as well as the Solutrean culture crossing the Atlantic during that last major glaciation. Remember that? Experts are arguing about it. People are not sure it happened!
Kennedy made that statement in Congress on May 25, 1961. At the time he made that famous speech, we were already assembling the first of the Saturn rockets... but it had been ordered on August 15, **1958.** We didn’t start from zero in May of 1961 and the order of 1958 doesn’t reflect the development that took place before then; development actually began in 1957.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_I
The point is, AGAIN, that right this second, we *cannot* assemble a Saturn V to carry people to the moon. We didn’t maintain the assembly line or suppliers. New ones have to be built back up first and this takes time - even if you waive all the regulations and bureaucracy, it would still take years.
Psst - I already mentioned that *WE ARE WORKING ON GOING BACK TO THE MOON* but that the assertion that at this moment we can’t build a moon-capable ship is actually correct. If aliens came to the solar system and told us we had to put a man on the moon in the next three weeks, we couldn’t do it.
The capability to land a man on the moon *should* be restored in about 5 years, if the new designs prove out.
PAR35 wrote:
Deck mounted guns
Without any ammo for them.
Well, the deck guns have ammo - it’s just that the rail-gun ammo is too expensive (it’s a specific alloy, I believe).
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a23738/uss-zumwalt-ammo-too-expensive/
Frankly, it’s hilarious to me that a machined hunk of metal is not much cheaper than a Tomahawk guided missile.
and as of today, they sTILL have no amunition foir the main guns...
In November 2016, the Navy moved to cancel procurement of the LRLAP, citing per-shell cost increases to $800,000–$1 million resulting from trimming of total ship numbers of the class. The Navy is monitoring research on alternative munitions, but since the AGS was tailor-made to use the LRLAP, modifications will be needed to accept different shells, which is unlikely to happen by the time the first Zumwalt vessel enters operational service in 2018, leaving it unable to fulfill the naval gunfire support role it was designed for.[73][74][75]
No, the Zumwalts don’t have rail guns. They have 155 mm guns. Compatible ammo was never developed (Because 100 year old technology was too hard for future veterans to master.)
So the corrupt military industrial complex built a more or less useless ship around a gun that can’t be fired and there is not a senior officer in the entire US navy with enough brains to figure out how to replace the guns with smaller 5” ers to make the ship’s at least marginally functional.
We are going back to the moon in 5 years as surely as Brexit will occur in March 2019 as scheduled.
The US can’t even manage manned launch to orbit capability.
I thought the whole purpose of the Zumwalt and it’s power plant was to be a test bed for the rail guns?
“. We didn’t maintain the assembly line or suppliers. “
IIRC a lot of that was the huge Southern California aerospace industry which is now virtually non-existent.
Railguns aren’t ready yet, they fitted the AGS as a stopgap. And then the Navy cancelled the development work on the polywell fusion reactors needed to get the railguns up to a decent rate of fire.
It gets worse. They had software issues where the missiles on board could not be reliably launched and the small arms lockers couldn’t be used due to some fault I cant recall. There are privately owned fishing boats in Texas with more effective firepower than a Zumwalt.
And a lot that wasn’t in SoCal was up in the Chicago area, through the rust belt and all up through the Northeast. All gone now.
There are exactly zero US man-rated systems that could duplicate Carpenter’s flight as of this second.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on craft that can, but the former’s crew module design just literally had an explosion that destroyed the prototype on the test stand while testing the escape/launch abort system and the latter’s crew vessel can’t go as high or as far as Carpenter did.
Right now only the Russians have anything that can. *Maybe* the Chinese too, but that’s not all that clear at current.
All of that institutional memory lost. No following generation learning from those who took us to the Moon. What a waste.
When I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey back in fall 1968 I figured we really would have a Space Wheel/Space Station orbiting the Earth and research stations on the Moon.
Now the SoCal neighborhoods that once were home to thousands of aerospace engineers and the people who supported them have been turned into third world colonies. Our tax dollars at work, paying for population replacement. That turned out to be the real future.
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