If All US Warships Look Like the Zumwalt Destroyer

[Applause] what if all future american warships looked like the stealthy zumwalt the u.s navy's next big warship could look a lot like its current ddg 1000 zumwalt class of stealthy destroyers rear admiral william galinas the navy's program executive officer for ships said during the american society of naval engineers annual technology systems and ship symposium on tuesday by contrast the new ship probably won't look like the ddg 51 arleigh burke class currently the mainstay of the 290 ship u.s fleet galena said the navy is still studying how many of the new large surface combatants it should try to acquire in coming decades the signature aspect of it what does that do to the shaping of the deck household form galinas mused i'll tell you not to predispose anything but i think in the end you know it's probably going to look a lot more like a ddg thousand than a ddg 51 if i had to say so but there's still a lot of work to kind of go do in that area the burke class is conventional in layout the two billion dollar vessels are heavily armed with as many as 96 missile cells apiece the navy is pleased with the condition of its 66 arleigh burke class destroyers and plans to keep all of them in service for 45 years decommissioning the oldest vessel no earlier than 2036. another 22 of the 9 500 ton arleigh burke class are under construction or funded including the first examples of the flight 3 version which adds a powerful new radar the 4 billion zumwalts by contrast are novel and niche vessels the navy possesses three of the 16 000 ton vessels and plans to deploy them for experiments as well as for frontline operations each packs 80 missile cells in a stealthy downward sloping hole the new large surface combatant would first replace the fleet's 22 1980s vintage ticonderoga class cruisers each of which carries 122 missiles in a 9 500 ton displacement hole the navy had planned to buy the first of its new class of large surface combatants in 2023 but galena said the navy has since pushed back the start date usni news website first reported the navy now is looking at awarding a contract in fiscal year 2025 the current arleigh burke class multi-year contract expires in 2022 by pushing back the production timeline the u.s navy can refine its requirements now and incorporate feedback from industry and current programs to help improve the ship design and control costs in any event the navy is likely to de-emphasize large surface combatants as it moves toward a new fleet design the bottom line is that the old ticonderoga-class cruisers could go away soon in the meantime the fleet could borrow systems from the new arleigh burke flight 3 destroyers in order to upgrade older flight 2 destroyers farther in the future the missile frigates the navy plans to buy beginning in this year as well as the new large surface combatant that's still in development could replace the oldest destroyers the navy announced in april that the service had chosen fincantieri's design for the next generation of frigates the navy said the vessel is designed to operate either on its own or with a strike group to provide capabilities including an enterprise air surveillance radar mk 41 vertical launching system and a baseline 10 aegis combat system the vessel's lethality survivability and improved capability will provide fleet commanders multiple options while supporting the national defense strategy across the full range of military operations the navy said in a news release the first batch of up to 10 frigates will be constructed at marinette marine corps in marinette wisconsin the navy has yet to determine if it will continue working with marinette for subsequent frigates in total the service aims to acquire a total of at least 20 frigates as it shoots to build up to a 355 ship or more fleet the end result in the 2030s could be a fleet with more smaller warships by the crystal ball and had to predict what the force structure assessment fsa was going to do it's going to probably recommend more small surface combatants meaning the frigate deputy chief of naval operation vice admiral bill mers told usni news the odyssey of the navy force structure assessment dates back to at least september 2018 when then navy requirements boss vice admiral williams told the audience at that year's defense news conference the service planned to launch a new force structure assessment to update the december 2016 force structure assessment that set the navy's goal of creating a 355-ship fleet at that point the 355 ship force structure assessment had been in effect for less than two years the navy's previous force structure assessment released in march 2015 had set the goal at 308 ships and was in effect for about 18 months as of september 10 2020 the navy has 296 deployable ships according to its website at the time of mert's announcement he said the new force structure assessment would be completed sometime in 2019 but with the ascendance of general david berger to the position of commandant of the marine corps along with his vision of a more closely aligned navy and marine corps the navy realized it would need to revise its forthcoming force structure assessment to accommodate that vision that gave rise to the integrated naval force structure assessment which was designed to integrate marine corps requirements and navy requirements but by the beginning of this year defense secretary mark esper 27th united states secretary of defense signaled in an interview with defense news that he wanted to take control of the work being put into the navy's future force needs saying department of defense will run this asperid told defense news that the pentagon's cost assessment and program evaluation office as well as the navy will conduct a series of war games and exercises in the coming months to figure out a way forward i think once we go through this process with the future fleet that'll really be the new foundation the guiding post esper said it'll give us the general direction we need to go and i think that'll be a big game changer in terms of future fleet for structure for the navy and marine corps team the navy's 22 1980s vintage ticonderoga class cruisers could be the first casualties of the new plan the cruisers are old and have suffered structural cracks and other material problems the navy for years has asked congress for permission to decommission the vessels lawmakers rejected all the requests and compelled the navy to enter the cruisers into a refit program we're sort of undoing that in 20 bill mers said with new flight 3 berks entering the fleet in large numbers lawmakers finally seem open to letting go of the cruisers four of the tycos could go by 2022 according to usni news the future large surface combatant is a wild card the navy hasn't finalized the new warship's design it might use the same combat systems that the flight 3 burke does but galina's comments hint that it might borrow the zumwalt class as whole how many of the new large warships the fleet acquires depends on how many of the other frigates destroyers and cruisers the service decides to maintain and for how long [Music] you

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Keywords: us warships, us warships classes, us future warships, famous us warships, fastest us warships, first us warships, us warships news, new us warships, zumwalt class, whats a zumwalt, zumwalt boat, zumwalt destroyer, zumwalt ddg, zumwalt ddg 1000, zumwalt gun, zumwalt navy, zumwalt news

Id: kyM4fIm2TW8

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020