Christopher Rowland in the Boston Globe today takes a look at the Zumwalt-class destroyers being built at Bath Iron Works in Maine. The Navy has slashed its orders for the 600-foot ships, each of which will cost $4.3 billion on top of $9.1 billion in R&D costs.
As Rowland puts it, “The Navy doomed the ship to sideline status when it slashed its order to just three of the vessels, from an original plan for 32. It disclosed in 2008 that the warship would be vulnerable to enemy missiles and submarines. And it has publicly questioned the destroyer’s mission and usefulness.”
Even citizens of Bath are reserving judgement on the ships, the first of which is 97% complete. Rowland quotes Nathan P. Lipfert, the senior curator at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, as saying, “It makes people wonder. Will it turn out to be something the Navy can’t live without, or will it turn out to be another Katahdin?’’ Katahdin was also built for the Navy at Bath. That unsuccessful ship was commissioned way back in 1896, decommissioned two years later, and sunk in target practice in 1909.
A key feature of a Zumwalt-class destroyer is its emphasis on electronics. Raytheon, which serves as the prime mission systems equipment integrator for the program’s electronic and combat systems, calls the ship “all-electric”—generating 100% of the energy needed for propulsion, electronics, and weapons systems. When steaming at 20 knots, the company reports, the ship reserves 58 MW of power to support current and future weapons technologies.
According to Raytheon, the ship includes a “total ship computing environment,” which controls all shipboard computing applications, ranging from lighting and machinery control to radars and weapons systems. Each ship will include 16 (of more than 235 variants) electronic modular enclosures—ready-to-install ruggedized units that facilitate integration, maintenance, and upgrades.
Rowland in the Globe notes that the ships have many critics, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who cites the project as representative of Pentagon weapons-purchasing mismanagement. Rowland quotes McCain as saying, “It’s part of a long history of a compelling need for acquisition reform. They add on requirements. Somebody says, ‘Yeah, we need this and we need that,’ and it’s out of control, and nobody is responsible.”
But the program has supporters, including Ben Freeman, Ph.D., a senior policy adviser in the national security program at Third Way, a centrist think tank. Early this year in National Defense, he wrote that the decision to curtail procurement “…may have been penny wise and pound foolish, as it leaves significant voids in the Navy’s ability to adapt to future threats. Most notably, ending the Zumwalt program in favor of buying upgraded versions of the decades-old Arleigh-Burke DDG-51 destroyers limits the Navy’s capabilities without significantly reducing costs.”
