Zumwalt-Class Can Become A Dominant 21st Century Destroyer
ByBryan McGrath
Published1 day ago
Yes, the Zumwalt-class can be rebooted: Months after the terror attacks of September 2001, the Navy announced a new three-vessel “Family of Ships” reflecting a post-Cold War sense of blue-water dominance. Those ships—the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the 21st-century destroyer (DD21, now the DDG 1000), and the 21st-century cruiser (CG(X))—emphasized operations in the littorals and in support of land campaigns, in addition to high-end Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD). Two decades later, the fleet architecture envisioned in these ships does not exist, falling victim to strategic shocks that drove near immediate obsolescence—the extended “War on Terror” and the rise of China as a peer competitor—in addition to questionable programmatic decisions resulting in significant cost overruns.
Zumwalt-class
PACIFIC OCEAN (Dec. 8, 2016) The guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), left, the Navy’s most technologically advanced surface ship, is underway in formation with the littoral combat ship USS Independence (LCS 2) on the final leg of its three-month journey to its new homeport in San Diego. Upon arrival, Zumwalt will begin installation of its combat systems, testing and evaluation, and operation integration with the fleet. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Ace Rheaume/Released)161208-N-SI773-0401
The Navy canceled CG(X) outright, and while it produced the LCS class in numbers, the Navy is keen to decommission many of them as being unsuited to high-end conflict. This leaves the three ships of the Zumwlat-Class, 14,000-ton multi-mission warships featuring an integrated power system that both propels the ship and creates several times the amount of electricity found on even the Navy’s newest destroyer class, the Flight III DDG. The Zumwalts have had a rough go of it in joining the fleet, due to both program mismanagement and industrial base problems driven by the Navy’s decision to restart the DDG 51 line. Lately, though, there is momentum building to spend the money necessary to achieve the significant war-fighting advantages these ships could provide, as Hope Hedge Seck recently detailed here in a 19FortyFive article. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Navy should proceed aggressively to achieve these benefits.
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/10/zumwalt-class-can-become-a-dominant-21st-century-destroyer/
