U.S. Navy’s largest and technologically most sophisticated class of guided-missile
destroyers - the Zumwalt class warship will see some major changes.
The class has 3 warships - USS Zumwalt, USS Michael Monsoor & USS Lyndon B. Johnson.
The USS Zumwalt was commissioned in October 2016. The follow-on ship, the USS Michael Monsoor
(DDG 1001), was commissioned in January 2019 and the third ship of the class, the future USS
Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG 1002) christened in April 2019 and is slated to be commissioned in 2021.
Zumwalt features a unique wave-piercing tumblehome hull that brings stealth to a major warship.
It features all-electric propulsion and uses extensive automation.
Importantly the system generates 58 MW of additional reserved power
which allows the legroom for future upgrades like integrating Laser weapons and Railguns.
While the warship has a lot of features - Zumwalt's combat role has long been
a point of contention. The class which was initially designed for the land attack role
has seen changes that enable it to carry out anti-surface warfare missions.
New developments indicate that it could have the ability to undertake diverse assignments.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how U.S Navy plan turn Zumwalt class
stealth destroyers into terrifying warship with 3 important enhancements?
Let’s get started.
This video is sponsored by War Thunder. If you are, like us, fascinated by military vehicles
and technology, I recommend you give War Thunder a try. It's a military vehicle combat game which you
can download and play for free on PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox One - with cross-platform support.
It has a huge variety of more than 1200 playable aircraft, tanks,
helicopters and ships from the 1930s to the 1990s, which you can take to battle on land, in the air
and at sea on more than 80 theaters of war. War Thunder has been kind enough to offer all
Defense Updates viewers a special bonus, which will grant you a free premium tank or aircraft
or ship and three days of premium account time for registering using our link in the description
below. So, take the plunge and join the more than 20 million players from all over the world!
Zumwalt-class destroyer was designed as multi-mission
stealth ships with a focus on land attack. Initially, there was a plan to built 32 of them.
Each of these warships was supposed to be fitted with two 155-millimeter Advanced Gun Systems, each
capable of engaging targets with precision-guided shells at ranges of up to 60 miles or 95 km.
During wartime the ships of this class were supposed to get close to the enemy’s coastline
and target their tactical assets, clearing the way for amphibious assault.
But the ship ran into technical difficulties and very high-cost overruns.
The U.S Navy had to ultimately curtail the count from 32 to only 3.
The Long Range Land Attack Projectile or LRLAP, the precision-guided shell
that would arm the ship’s guns, saw cost escalation from $50,000 a round to $800,000.
The U.S Navy, for this reason, canceled LRLAP but pushed ahead to complete the three ships.
The ships will now see 3 changes to enhance its combat capability.
Zumwalt was supposed to have a very advanced integrated Active electronically scanned
array search and tracking radar system. The dual-band radar (DBR) utilizes a multi-tier,
dual-band tracker, which consists of a local X band tracker
which is the AN/SPY-3, a local S-band tracker which is the AN/SPY-4, and a central tracker.
The X band tracker is optimized for low latency to support its mission of providing defense against
fast, low-flying missiles, while the S-band tracker is optimized for large area coverage.
The central tracker is designed to merges the two signals
to provide unprecedented situational awareness.
But in 2010, the Pentagon made the decision to eliminate the AN/SPY-4,
the larger of the two radar arrays. This was one of many cost-cutting
measures that degraded the ship's overall capabilities. Instead, a software was added
to work with the AN/SPY-3 to allow it to perform the volume search function, as well.
Though with this AN/SPY-3 could cover some of the AN/SPY-4's tasks, it has nowhere near
the performance that was supposed to come from the two radars operating in tandem.
U.S. Navy is in the process of exploring options to replace Raytheon's AN/SPY-3 radar
on three Zumwalt class destroyers. AN/SPY-6(V)3, AN/SPY-6(V)4, and AN/SPY-7(V)1
are some of the options that could be chosen.
These will enhance the Zumwalt class’s capabilities significantly.
According to U.S. Naval Institute News, the House of Representatives’ 2021 defense budget will carry
a provision ordering the Navy to begin integration of Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPS)
onto the Zumwalt class destroyers by 2021. CPS is a United States military effort
to develop a system that can deliver a precision-guided conventional weapon airstrike
anywhere in the world within one hour, in a similar manner to a nuclear ICBM.
Such a weapon would allow the United States to respond
far more swiftly to rapidly emerging threats than is possible with conventional forces
CPS will essentially be a hypersonic weapon system that travels at speeds in excess of Mach 5.
Viewers may note that the U.S Navy was put in charge of developing a common hypersonic
glide body that will ultimately serve as a conventional prompt global strike weapon
for the joint force, providing an alternative to nuclear weapons for strategic retaliatory strikes.
CPS was originally designed to deploy aboard U.S. Navy submarines but they are now inline
to be deployed to the Zumwalt warships. This will give the warships a strategic role.
The most important aspect of CPS will be its speed.
The speed would give air defenses very little time to detect & fire interceptors.
Current air defense systems can defend against subsonic missiles reliably and are effective
against supersonic missiles to an extent, but against hypersonic missiles, they will fail.
So essentially, the Zumwalt class destroyers will have a knockout weapon.
A pair of 30mm Bushmaster II cannons are now installed on the U.S. Navy's
first-in-class USS Zumwalt
The ship has fired the weapons for the first time in a test recently.
Zumwalt conducted what the U.S Navy stated was a
“structural test fire” of the two Mk 46 Mod 2 Gun Weapon Systems (GWS).
These guns, fitted instead of two larger 57mm guns,
are one of several controversial changes to the destroyer’s armament.
They are mounted on top of the ship's helicopter hangar toward the stern.
A single 30mm Mk 44 Bushmaster II automatic cannon
is contained in the Mk 46 Mod 2 is a remotely-operated turret.
The operators use control consoles within the ship to aim the weapon by way of visual,
low-light-level, and infrared video cameras, as well as a built-in laser rangefinder, inside the
turret. These gun systems, versions of which are found on San Antonio class landing platform docks
and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) equipped with the Surface Warfare Mission Package, are intended
primarily for close-in defense against smaller surface threats, such as small boat swarms.
During the late 1990s, the U.S. Navy understood that cruisers and destroyers
would be vulnerable to attacks in shallow coastal waters.
Large warships like cruisers and destroyers are designed for open-ocean warfare
and not for shallow water where these can be targeted by high-speed boats, missile-firing
fast-attack craft, small submarines, sea mines, and land and air-launched anti-ship missiles.
While the threat that small boats pose to major warships has been apparent for some time,
the Pentagon’s Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise
brought the issue to mainstream attention. In that controversial exercise,
small fast boats carrying suicide payloads inflicted heavy damage on U.S. naval forces.
With the two Mk 46 Mod 2 Gun Weapon Systems,
the warship would be able to counter these kinds of attacks.