Navy assumes ownership of stealthy destroyer - Zumwalt

[ExFreeper]

Navy assumes ownership of stealthy destroyer

Starts & Stripes/AP

The stealthy Zumwalt destroyer is now property of the U.S. Navy.

Sailors can begin moving aboard the 610-foot destroyer after the Navy assumed ownership Friday after signing off on extensive inspections, tests and builder sea trials.

Rear Adm. James Downey, program manager, called it "a significant achievement" both for the Navy and the shipbuilding team led by Bath Iron Works. The ship will be commissioned in the fall.

"What we deliver today is more than a tool. It's more than a capability. It's a promise of protection and an assurance in a long-standing tradition of maritime power," he said.

The futuristic-looking Zumwalt is the largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer ever built for the U.S. Navy. It's also the most expensive. The Navy's latest budget submission suggests the cost of the first-in-class ship will be at least $4.5 billion.

The destroyer features an angular shape to minimize its radar signature, new guns to boost the Navy's land attack capability, and a hull designed for sustained operations close to shore. Thanks to unprecedented automation, it'll have a crew that's nearly half the size of the complement on existing destroyers.

It's named after the late Adm. Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt, who earned the Bronze Star in World War II and commanded small boats that patrolled the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

He later became the youngest chief of naval operations and earned a reputation as a reformer who fought racism and sexism. He promoted the first female and African-American officers to admirals and opened the door for women to become naval aviators and serve on warships. He died at age 79 in 2000.

http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/navy-assumes-ownership-of-stealthy-destroyer-1.410662

At 80, shipyard skipper to step back after Zumwalt trials

Stars & Stripes/AP

Captain Earl Walker wasn't about to retire before seeing the Navy's futuristic Zumwalt destroyer safely down the Kennebec River to the Atlantic Ocean.

The 80-year-old river pilot and sea captain extended his contract at Bath Iron Works to ensure he could pilot the 610-foot warship safely through three sea trials.

He said he couldn't imagine retiring before the program was completed.

"I think I would've had tears in my eyes," Walker said if he'd had to watch the ship head downriver from his nearby home instead of being at the helm.

The old salt is prized for seafaring abilities - and his knowledge of the Kennebec River.

The river's tricky currents and twisting turns leave little margin for error when steering big warships coming and going from the shipyard. The $4.5 billion Zumwalt, bristling with high-tech gear and weighing in at 15,000 tons, cleared the river bottom with less than 2 feet to spare, he said.

"If it was easy, then anyone can do it," he said matter-of-factly.

Walker's official job title is port captain and he works under contract to serve as the skipper of Bath-built warships before they become Navy property. On Friday, the Navy officially took ownership of the Zumwalt, and sailors began moving aboard.

Over the years, Walker piloted frigates, destroyers, cruisers and container ships built at Bath.

In the olden days, white-knuckle moments came when ships were launched into the river for the first time with a splash. It was great fun for spectators but not for Walker, who oversaw tugs that ensured currents didn't send ships crashing into a nearby bridge.

Those days are long gone. Modern warships at Bath Iron Works are built at a land-level transfer facility and floated in a dry dock with far less drama.

But the ships still have to travel down the Kennebec to reach open ocean, and they do so at high tide to ensure maximum clearance for the ships' keels.

For the Zumwalt, care was required to ensure that the largest destroyer ever built for the U.S. Navy didn't drift sideways, he said, and calculations had to be precise to ensure the sonar and propellers didn't nick the river bottom.

Because the ship displaces more water when it moves, the 2 feet of underwater clearance at several locations on the river actually shrunk to only 12 to 18 inches, he said.

If that isn't tricky enough, visibility was restricted. Because of the ship's design, Walker couldn't see the water directly alongside its sloping hull when docking and undocking.

He's known for keeping his cool under such pressure.

"He never got frazzled about anything," said Jeff Monroe, former Portland transportation director, who got to know Walker when he was a Portland harbor pilot. "You knew you were in good hands."

With the ship being transferred to Navy ownership and his contract ending in July, Walker probably won't be piloting any more Navy ships downriver.

The Zumwalt won't be leaving Bath Iron Works again until September, when it departs for good to travel to Baltimore to be commissioned into service.

By then, the shipyard will have a new port captain, Mark Klopp. Still balking at retirement, Walker will stay on for another year as Klopp's backup.

"It's time for me to move on, as much as I hate," said Walker, who's been semiretired since 2001. "I really would prefer to work but time catches up with you. Let's face it. Most guys would've quit when they were 65. I didn't. It was only because I love the work. You hate to give it up."

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/at-80-shipyard-skipper-to-step-back-after-zumwalt-trials-1.410953

[Relic]

Pretty cool, but it looks like a submarine!

I wonder how long it takes to get those covers off of the guns? And it doesn't look like the ship has any lifelines?

Finally, I'll never forgive Zumwalt for making us wear Zummies!

[ExFreeper]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsIpvgt9y4k

Zumwalt-class destroyer

The Zumwalt-class destroyer is a class of United States Navy guided missile destroyers designed as multi-mission stealth ships with a focus on land attack. The class emerged from the previous DD-21 vessel program. The program was previously known as the "DD(X)". The class is multi-role and designed for surface warfare, anti-aircraft warfare, and naval gunfire support. They take the place of battleships in filling the former congressional mandate for naval fire support, though the requirement was reduced to allow them to fill this role. The vessels' appearance has been compared to that of the historic ironclad warship.

The class has a low radar profile; an integrated power system, which can send electricity to the electric drive motors or weapons, the Total Ship Computing Environment Infrastructure (TSCEI), automated fire-fighting systems, automated piping rupture isolation, and may someday include a railgun or free-electron lasers. The class is designed to require a smaller crew and be less expensive to operate than comparable warships. It has a wave-piercing tumblehome hull form whose sides slope inward above the waterline. This will reduce the radar cross-section, returning much less energy than a conventional flare hull form.

The lead ship is named Zumwalt for Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and carries the hull number DDG-1000. Originally 32 ships were planned, with the $9.6 billion research and development costs spread across the class, but the quantity was reduced to 24, then to 7, and finally to 3, greatly increasing the cost-per-ship.

Background and funding

Many of the features were developed under the DD-21 program ("21st Century Destroyer"), which was originally designed around the Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS). In 2001, Congress cut the DD-21 program by half as part of the SC21 program; to save it, the acquisition program was renamed as DD(X) and heavily reworked.

Originally, the Navy had hoped to build 32 destroyers. That number was reduced to 24, then to 7, due to the high cost of new and experimental technologies. On 23 November 2005, the Defense Acquisition Board approved a plan for simultaneous construction of the first two ships at Northrop Grumman's Ingalls yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi and General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. However, at that date, funding had yet to be authorized by Congress.

In late December 2005, the House and Senate agreed to continue funding the program. The U.S. House of Representatives allotted the Navy only enough money to begin construction on one destroyer, as a "technology demonstrator". The initial funding allocation was included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. However, this was increased to two ships by the 2007 appropriations bill approved in September 2006, which allotted US$2,568m to the DDG-1000 program.

On 31 July 2008, U.S. Navy acquisition officials told Congress that the service needed to purchase more Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and no longer needs the next-generation DDG-1000 class, Only the two approved destroyers would be built. The Navy said the world threat picture had changed in such a way that it now makes more sense to build at least eight more Burkes, rather than DDG-1000s. The Navy concluded from fifteen classified intelligence reports that the DDG-1000s would be vulnerable to forms of missile attacks.

Many Congressional subcommittee members questioned that the Navy completed such a sweeping re-evaluation of the world threat picture in just a few weeks, after spending some 13 years and $10 billion on development of the surface ship program known as DD-21, then DD(X) and finally, DDG-1000. Subsequently, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead cited the need to provide area air defense and specific new threats such as ballistic missiles and the possession of anti-ship missiles by groups such as Hezbollah. The mooted structural problems have not been discussed in public. Navy Secretary Donald Winter said on 4 September that "Making certain that we have – I'll just say, a destroyer – in the '09 budget is more important than whether that’s a DDG 1000 or a DDG 51".

On 19 August 2008, Secretary Winter was reported as saying that a third Zumwalt would be built at Bath Iron Works, citing concerns about maintaining shipbuilding capacity. House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha said on 23 September 2008 that he had agreed to partial funding of the third DDG-1000 in the 2009 Defense authorization bill.

A 26 January 2009 memo from John Young, the US Department of Defense's (DoD) top acquisition official, stated that the per ship price for the Zumwalt-class destroyers had reached $5.964 billion, 81 percent over the Navy's original estimate used in proposing the program. If true, that means that the program has breached the Nunn–McCurdy Amendment, requiring the Navy to re-certify and re-justify the program to Congress.

On 6 April 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that DoD's proposed 2010 budget will end the DDG-1000 program at a maximum of three ships. Also in April, the Pentagon awarded a fixed-price contract with General Dynamics to build the three destroyers, replacing a cost-plus-fee contract that had been awarded to Northrop Grumman. At that time, the first DDG-1000 destroyer was expected to cost $3.5 billion, the second approximately $2.5 billion, and the third even less.

What had once been seen as the backbone of the Navy's future surface fleet with a planned production run of 32, has since been replaced by destroyer production reverting to the Arleigh Burke class after ordering three Zumwalts.

Construction

In late 2005, the program entered the detailed design and integration phase, for which Raytheon is the Mission Systems Integrator. Both Northrop Grumman Ship Systems and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works share dual-lead for the hull, mechanical, and electrical detailed design. BAE Systems Inc. has the advanced gun system and the MK57 VLS. Almost every major defense contractor (including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine, L-3 Communications) and subcontractors from nearly every state in the U.S. are involved to some extent in this project, which is the largest single line item in the Navy's budget. During the previous contract, development and testing of 11 Engineering Development Models (EDMs) took place: Advanced Gun System, Autonomic Fire Suppression System, Dual Band Radar [X-band and L-band], Infrared, Integrated Deckhouse & Apertures, Integrated Power System, Integrated Undersea Warfare, Peripheral Vertical Launch System, Total Ship Computing Environment Infrastructure (TSCEI), Tumblehome Hull Form.

The decision in September 2006 to fund two ships meant that one could be built by the Bath Iron Works in Maine and one by Northrop Grumman's Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi.

Northrop Grumman was awarded a $90M contract modification for materials and production planning on 13 November 2007. On 14 February 2008, Bath Iron Works was awarded a contract for the construction of Zumwalt (DDG-1000), and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding was awarded a contract for the construction of Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001), at a cost of $1.4 billion each.

On 11 February 2009, full-rate production officially began on the first Zumwalt-class destroyer. Construction on the second ship of the class, Michael Monsoor, began in March 2010. The keel for the first Zumwalt-class destroyer was laid on 17 November 2011.[32] This first vessel was launched from the shipyard at Bath, Maine on 29 October 2013.

The construction timetable in July 2008 was:

    October 2008: DDG-1000 starts construction at Bath Iron Works
    September 2009: DDG-1001 starts construction at Bath Iron Works.
    April 2012: DDG-1002 starts construction at Bath Iron Works
    April 2013: DDG-1000 initial delivery
    May 2014: DDG-1001 delivery
    March 2015: Initial operating capability
    Fiscal 2018: DDG-1002 delivery

The Navy plans for Zumwalt to reach initial operating capability (IOC) in 2016. The second ship, Michael Monsoor, is to reach IOC in 2018, and the third ship, Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002), is to reach IOC in 2021.

In April 2006, the Navy announced plans to name the first ship of the class Zumwalt after former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. "Bud" Zumwalt Jr. The vessel's hull number will be DDG-1000, which abandons the guided missile destroyer sequence used by the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDG-51–), and continues the previous "gun destroyer" sequence from the last of the Spruance class, Hayler (DD-997).

DDG-1001 will be named for Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, the second Navy SEAL to receive the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror, the navy announced on 29 October 2008.

On 16 April 2012, the Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that DDG-1002 will be named for former naval officer and U.S. President, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOhcZ1AGHhU