DD(x) wowee!!

[BB56]

Whos going to put a kit out, This thing is awesome. Twin 6" stealth turrets, VLS, stealth, etc. and it looks like a cross between a spaceship and a confederate ram!

[Guest]

It looks like a 3 triangle wire frame space ship from a 1980 Atari video game, filled in.

[Werner]

Maybe Ertl could knock one up next to their starship Enterprise.

It would be pretty accurate since the real one will be mostly plastic, too.

[Seasick]

That is the current design. The final design will most likely look like it. It's going into detail design now.

The 6 inch guns are actually 155mm guns, close but they are the same caliber used by the Army. Automatic with long range shells with fins and GPS.

[Bob J]

Try this site out! Look in TTH models and then cast pewter. I think you have to email them for the price and availibility bu I haven't ordered from them!
http://www.tth.com/

Bob J

[Fast and Feared]

I have most of the current measurements from a recent ASNE meeting, AND if I don't have to move out of Maine in the next couple of years I'll be able to see (and outfit) one of the 1:1 versions... I'd love to get a 350 kit of DDX, one of LCS would be pretty good too, but I think there needs to be a couple years before too many will come out in a detailed kit form.


V/r

[bb-56]

That is the current design. The final design will most likely look like it. It's going into detail design now.

The 6 inch guns are actually 155mm guns, close but they are the same caliber used by the Army. Automatic with long range shells with fins and GPS.

I just looked at my cminch ruler and nicknamed it a 6" gun but I realize though that the Navy is giving up inches and just calling it 155mm
I read somewhere the shells are smart bombs with super range and super expensive.

[Werner]

Another thing to remember is this ship will cost over $2.5 billion delivered (last year's GAO estimate was $3 billion), as opposed to $4.5 billion for a Nimitz-class carrier and $800 million for a Burke Flight-2. In addition, like Windows Vista the ship will be delivered with many of it's critical systems missing, not to be installed until the ship's mid-life update.

As an indication of how unlikely these ships will be, there is an active effort to name DD-1001 the USS Robert A. Heinlein after the dystopic science fiction author.

Hopefully Congress will come to it's senses and cancel these two in favor of an aircraft carrier or 6 Burkes.

[Gernot]

/../it looks like a cross between a spaceship and a confederate ram!

I think that describes the time-range over which the budget has to be integrated in order to pay for this monstrosity

[Seasick]

The USN does not need any more Arleigh Burke destroyers.
The way the book keeping is being done is insane, the cost of all the development of multiple systems is being rolled into the cost of the vessels.

New items:
155mm AGS
Mk57 GMLS (New type of VLS)
AN/SPY-3 dual band radar system
Fully electrical architecture
Electric engines.

This is stuff that is very expensive to develope.

In the 1970s and 1980s people were throwing fits about the size and the cost of the Spruance class and Aegis/Ticonderoga. Nimitz, Ike, and Carl Vinson were way way over budget. The cost is bull, its nothing more than freakey accounting. Much of the research cost being stuck into the price of the DDX is for technology that is going to be used in CGX, CVN-78, LHA(X), and a few others so its wrong to bunch it all in with DDX. The Problem is that Lehman defered technology that was supposed to go into the Arleigh Burke class to the next. Put off cost for a long time and evemtully it piles up into a mountain. Bite the bullet build the destroyer and get on with it.

[Dustermaker]

The USN does not need any more Arleigh Burke destroyers.
The way the book keeping is being done is insane, the cost of all the development of multiple systems is being rolled into the cost of the vessels.

New items:
155mm AGS
Mk57 GMLS (New type of VLS)
AN/SPY-3 dual band radar system
Fully electrical architecture
Electric engines.

This is stuff that is very expensive to develope.

In the 1970s and 1980s people were throwing fits about the size and the cost of the Spruance class and Aegis/Ticonderoga. Nimitz, Ike, and Carl Vinson were way way over budget. The cost is bull, its nothing more than freakey accounting. Much of the research cost being stuck into the price of the DDX is for technology that is going to be used in CGX, CVN-78, LHA(X), and a few others so its wrong to bunch it all in with DDX. The Problem is that Lehman defered technology that was supposed to go into the Arleigh Burke class to the next. Put off cost for a long time and evemtully it piles up into a mountain. Bite the bullet build the destroyer and get on with it.

not to mention when other navies see this ship on the sea they will be a little intimidated imo. It looks like something from a sci fi movie, how could other countries be anything but intimidated?

[Werner]

I personally think this ship is a costly fiasco. Better to spend the money to get another carrier for which all the support ships already exist. Kennedy was supposed to last until 2017. Kitty Hawk & Enterprise are due to retire as soon as Bush & Ford commission.

A $4 billion carrier doesn't go anywhere without support because it's too important and expensive. DD(X) has as it's primary mission "stealthy land-attack" which means it's going to go into indian country without support and expose itself to the enemy's shore-based installations and aircraft. As such, a $3 billion ship is an anomaly and mistake.

[Gerarddm]

A good buddy of mine has been working on the safety systems software for this ship class for YEARS. If the rest of the systems are taking equally as long, no wonder it costs so bloody much.

Can this ship cause several billions of dollars of damage to an enemy? If not, then it's a waste.

Surface ships, other than CVNs and their supporting flock, are dinosaurs. Subs subs subs. Or VERY specialized ships for specific warefare scenarios.

[Werner]

What I think is utterly absurd is the sacrifice of ship qualities to attain "stealth", when it is obvious to any serious student of physics that the inevitable progress in computing power or signal strength will render these features obsolete almost immediately.

[Spartan]

someone already makes a model
http://www.tth.com/TTH%20CastP.htm

[Fast and Feared]

For the handful of systems that may or may not be on track, which as I understand everything will be delivered on time, and near allotted budget, I can tell you that there are a lot of different things that had to be considered. For instance, Entwistle, the company that makes the life raft canisters, has had to design a whole new way to launch them in case of an emergency. If launched with gravity then they will roll into the side of the tumble home and get damaged. So there will have to be a whole new launching mechanism with rockets and some sliding shelves I guess.

Did you know that one of the largest radar cross sections on a DDG is the safety nets around the helo pad? DD 1000 will aim to eliminate that with a panel system of some sort that will run with hydrolic actuators.

Companies like L3 and Raytheon are working to get the electronics systems together, which we are a sub to, so I get a bit more of the picture. BIW has negotiated with the Navy to pass weapons and sensor procurement away from BIW and back to the Navy which will help to reduce some of the run around costs for both BIW and the Navy.

DD 1000 is a gateway drug, from it will come a new theater ballistic CG(x) that will cost a lot too. Planners have already started the R+D...it is time for ships to get replaced, things cost more then they used to what more can I tell you? Want more DDGs? FFGs? maybe refloat some Spurcans? It is a reality check that large goods cost a lot of money, from a new refrigerator with an LCD tv in it-- to a satellite with a laser that will scratch your ass from space what more could you possibly want?

[Werner]

I understand the computer systems are all frozen now, around SPARC and Xeon based Linux systems. That's all well and good, but when the ships go to sea in 7 years or so they will be quaint antiques.

A true COTS solution would be to build the software in prototype and order the hardware just weeks or months before commissioning.

I wonder if these new computers are EMP-hardened. Somehow I don't think so. The current EMP-proof CPUs are 386-20 and Pentium I class machines.

[Deckard]

It looks like a yatch turned turtle, but...it's the future!

[herrmill]

The Chinese will have it knocked off in 2-3 years at a fraction of the cost.

In all seriousness, a local shipyard here in Shanghai is about to commission several of the PLN's stealthy FAC triamarans. You can see both vessles in their new cammo paint schemes as you drive over the north end of yard on the Xupu Bridge.

http://www.strategypage.com/military_ph ... ealth.aspx

Their plan to focus on smaller missile carrying fast attack craft & ultra quiet diesel subs could well put a serious bottleneck to any plans the US has towards projecting power in the region during a conflict.

I seriously doubt Taiwan is the real answer these are coming online since China has far more larger designs on ensuring "their" sea lanes remain uninterupted. Considering their fleets ruled the oceans 600 years ago, they may just have the rights to feel this way again. Should be an interesting time to come..

Chuck [/url]

[Gone Asiatic]

Neither will be much of a modeling challenge.