US Navy just presented its future destroyer. Here's a detailed look at it.

late last week the u.s navy presented its vision and requirements list for its next generation destroyer basically a ship that will replace whatever taconderoga cruisers might remain as well as some burke destroyers evidently a crucial ship as we're talking about possibly dozens of hulls needing replacement there were a bunch of technical details given too but let's take a look at just how important the ddgx program is first ddg stands for guided missile destroyer and x stands for undefined design the whole program started officially in june 2021 when the navy set up a ddgx office that will run the whole show the office will oversee the whole acquisition strategy and ship's design current deadlines are 2028 for the first building contract and commissioning of the first ship by 2032 ddg x itself is at least five years late as years ago 2023 was planned as the year of contract signing but back then the navy people couldn't agree on just what they wanted finally now it seems the set of requirements is quite firm and this time the navy isn't shooting for the moon but is requiring a platform with mature solutions a familiar hull design tested out power plants and internal systems the navy doesn't want to risk much as the time is very short if the us navy wants to keep up with the build rates of the chinese navy after decades were wasted on high-tech projects that didn't go anywhere it seems finally this iteration of a destroyer might very well see the light of the day indeed the taekon deroga cruisers are so old that some will have to be retired even before the year 2030 followed closely by the first berks ships simply can't last forever and there is no more time to postpone and restart yet another next generation destroyer program the ddgx is to enter the preliminary design stage this year which is basically what we're seeing now it has to be said however that the image that the us navy disclosed is still not necessarily the final chosen and defined design and detailed design once a naval architecture firm is chosen and tasked with engineering the ship is due by 2026 then before the final shipbuilding contract in 2028 the design will be tested and some shipyards will have to qualify for getting the actual work what is defined and published by the navy's office is a list of requirements for the ship the ship is required to feature increased missile capacity over the bur-class destroyers including larger and longer range missiles both for anti-ship and ground strike roles it will combine combat systems from the newest variant of burke destroyers the flight 3 variant with the new hull form the new hull is needed as the navy wants a larger ship hull itself while newer and different from the burke destroyer may very well be partially based on the zumwalt-class hull research that's not to say it will be the same hull but the navy released an image of a zumwalt looking ship with a more conventional flared frontal hull section in testing at the same time the navy expects a hull smaller than zumwalt's so if the final displacement is right in the middle we might get a ship of some 13 000 tons which would be almost the same as the estimated displacement of china's newest destroyer the o55 class those combat systems planned included the very same radars the burke flight 3 uses so 4 large radar faces since the new spy 6 radars for the aegis system are modular the future variants are expected to have added array blocks so sometime in the 2030s these new destroyers may house larger raider faces with 57 array blocks those will be much more powerful and sensitive than today's radar raytheon the maker of the radar said that the raider phase made up of 69 blocks could detect the target with half as big radar signature at four times the distance of the original spy one raiders from 40 years ago initially the ship will come with two or three rolling airframe missile systems for terminal self-defense those have been replacing the old phalanx guns for the same role for some time now but during the 2030s the navy expects the ship to replace those ram systems with laser systems there are two separate laser systems projected by the navy one is 150 kilowatt one which is a similar laser to what the navy has been recently testing by the time the first ship enters servers it's very possible at least one of those terminal defense systems will be such a laser system however for the medium term the navy projects that the ship will use lasers for all terminal defense needs featuring 600 kilowatt lasers those are still quite far away from current day economical and practical technology the hangar is to be larger than one on the burke destroyer which probably means that on top of the two seahawk helicopters that burke carries the future destroyer will also carry an unmanned helicopter for recon there's also something called the destroyer payload module which was noted as being placed amid ship on navy's illustration such a module can hold vertical missile launch cells but evidently the navy wants to be able to use that space for other things if the need arises when it comes to vls modules exact missile count isn't known but the illustration seems to show 64 mark 41 vls cells in the front and enough space within the destroyer payload module amid ships for another 64 cells such a number would be higher than what burke destroyer has and would be in accordance with the navy's statement that the future destroyer would be able to carry more missiles however the navy clearly wants more options which is why the mark 41 missile cells will be swappable with future larger missile cells the navy expects that 32 mark 41 cells could be substituted by 12 large missile cells those large missiles would likely be hypersonic weapons either ground strike missiles or anti-ship ones some future very large anti-ballistic missile or even enter aircraft missiles are also possible indeed such a huge missile would very likely have no trouble intercepting even icbms during their mid-course trajectory the ship's propulsion will feature an integrated power system the navy said lessons were learned from the zumwalt propulsion and technology will also be leveraged from the future columbia-class submarines integrated power system basically has gas turbines powering a generator electricity is then fed to the electric motors powering the propeller shafts and to various ship subsystems like lights computers radars and weapons such electricity based power plants are a necessity for today's ships as modern radars and lasers require just so much power for the medium future the navy hopes it will turn those ips systems into integrated power and energy systems but basically they will use advanced controls to store and distribute electric energy the ship would then also have huge batteries that means less susceptibility to damage to the gas turbines it would all help the ship to be more fuel efficient which then translates to greater range and time on station indeed the navy gave out expected figures for those the ddgx is to feature 50 longer range than the burke destroyer and as much as 120 percent longer time on station given that we are talking about the big heavy hull those are some extremely impressive figures it remains to be seen just when and if such figures might be attained in practice this fiscal year the program got 122 million dollar budget but to actually finish the development and build the first ship basically the prototype the navy expects to spend billions a huge figure but still less than the ill-fated zumwalt destroyer that whole program cost 9.6 billion just to research and develop and another 13 billion to construct the three ships the navy projects that by the time the 10th ddgx is constructed the cost per ship will fall to no more than 2.5 billion indeed the congressional budget office projected average procurement cost per ddgx ship in 2021 to be 2.9 billion using the same year dollars that would compare to some 4 billion for the third zimwalt or 2 billion for the current burke class destroyers being built now while the image released by the navy may not be that of the defined design let's try to analyze it a bit the hull looks like a move away from the tumble home design of the zumwalt which was sometimes criticized for possible lack of stability in certain sea conditions but it was needed for stealth the ddgx illustration however puts much much less emphasis on stealthy shaping the futuristic looking zumwalt had the requirement of 50 times smaller radar cross-section than some previous generation destroyers that may seem like a lot but 50 times doesn't translate to 50 times shorter detection distance more like 12 times and modern raiders offer a few times bigger detection distances compared to 1980s raiders indeed swedish erie eye avax radar was touted as being able to track even tiny jet skis from over 200 kilometers away when the issues of maintenance of stealthy ships are added all that may very well explain why the navy has seemingly given up on very stealthy ships the ship in the illustration also features a distributed radar array embedded in the superstructure but not like per class with all four big raider faces around the bridge instead it's more like the older taiko cruisers or the new japanese destroyers with two raider faces being integrated above the helicopter hangar and too far away from those above the bridge all the other radar arrays seem to be integrated there as well which is another nod to the approach zumwalt destroyer took with the arrays being placed above the bridge fairly high up somewhat longer detection ranges can be achieved against low flying incoming missiles at least compared to the burke class destroyer or the current chinese destroyers the radar arrays are not the only ones distributed due to the electric propulsion half the turbines seem to be placed far away below the helicopter hangar so a single hit to the ship is unlikely to damage all the turbines and there you have it all this is still quite preliminary but the navy's requirements are clear they want the ship as quickly as possible even if that means it would enter the service not much better equipped than the current ships but at the same time certain technologies and design choices offer greater flexibility and capabilities for future upgrades in a way ddgx may indeed be a ship not just for the 2030s but also for the 2050s technologies and beyond its biggest adversary however will likely remain the same as it always was with ships budgeting and unplanned cost increases you

Channel: Binkov's Battlegrounds

Views: 787,822

Keywords: DDG(X), zumwalt, burke destroyer, ticonderoga, 055, chinese destroyer, next generation destroyer, us navy, usn

Id: FVnqcNoUTs8

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022