Will the DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class be cancelled?

Originally posted by Brother Stormhammer
reply to post by Devastator7

 

From Defense News 22 July 2008:

The once-vaunted Zumwalt-class DDG 1000 advanced destroyer program - projected in the late 1990s to produce 32 new ships and subsequently downscaled to a seven-ship class - will instead turn out only two ships, according to highly-placed sources in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill

I'm in full agreement that the destroyer fleet is getting a bit old, but the Burkes are still very solid platforms. The "DDG 1000" / Zumwalt class wouldn't be a viable 'replacement' for the Burkes (never mind the Perrys), simply due to cost.

As much as I'd like to see railguns deployed, I'm a lot more "bummed" by the general trends that I see in current Navy programs. Rewind just a few years to the Virginia class SSNs. Supposedly, they were going to be almost as good as the Seawolf class, but represent a huge decrease in cost. Depending on how you do the cost-accounting, they came out a lot less capable, and at least as expensive, possibly more so...and a decade later to boot. Then we get the DDG-1000 / Zumwalt. The less said about this, the better it will be for my blood pressure. Currently in the pipeline, we have the JSF...and I'll bet any reasonable amount of cash that, as time goes on, we'll find that the JSF's costs were under-estimated when the thing was pitched to Congress, and that its technical problems were minimized. This will lead to the same scenario we just saw played out with DDG-1000, in my opinion. Then there's the likely king of money sinks...the Navy's CGX program, that's still in the paper stages, and already smothering itself in bad planning. The Navy can't decide whether to build an actual cruiser (multipurpose warship capable of semi-autonomous operations in the classic style), a theater ballistic-missile defense platform, or (the most likely to be selected and least likely to work) a hybrid of the two. Add in the fact that Congress is pushing to make nuclear power a requirement, and things get really "amusing", thanks to the initial costs of nuclear power, and the political problems of basing / porting nuclear powered ships.

The Zumwalt was not to be used replacing Burk calss but the Ticonderoga. Railgun won't be used but electronical powerplant is available now. Since Chinese ESA radar destroyer entried into service, the gap between USS fleet with Chinese has been narrowed, which is not US want to see.
The Ticon also reached life limit.

Originally posted by emile
The Zumwalt was not to be used replacing Burk calss but the Ticonderoga. Railgun won't be used but electronical powerplant is available now. Since Chinese ESA radar destroyer entried into service, the gap between USS fleet with Chinese has been narrowed, which is not US want to see.
The Ticon also reached life limit.

Uhh, no.

The Zumwalts are not meant to replace the Burkes, more like take over the roles that were lost when we retired the Spruance class.

The gap between the US Navy and the Chinese navy has not closed at all. It won't until you get your destroyer to work the way you designed it to.

The TICOs have not reached their life limits, otherwise we would not be bothering with their mid-life upgrades.

www.defenseindustrydaily.com...-5108

The USA’s reconciled FY 2009 defense budget approves $2.5 billion to “fully” fund DDG-1002, but that will not end the debate. Official reports place the ship’s likely cost at up to twice that amount, and the FY 2009 bill includes a clause that could divert the $2.5 billion to fund additional DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Class destroyers instead.

things are no longer looking anything like rosy for the future - if costs cannot be kept under control then problems will occur