Futuro da US Navy:"Hara-Kiri" Naval?(DDG-1000,LCS)

[pt]

Se o Pentagono é prolifico em "Pork Barrel Budgets", os MOD´s Europeus chegam a lembrar alguns livros do Kafka.

É uma dor de cabeça de solução dificil, porque cada país tem os seus próprios interesses. O caso mais absurdo tem sido o do porta-aviões francês e a sua adaptação para permitir a construção de três navios em vez de um na França e dois na Grã Bretanha.

Os Franceses congelaram o projecto e agora até pensam que no caso de o segundo porta-aviões continuar, construi-lo como porta-aviões movido a energia nuclear, o que o separa ainda mais do porta-aviões britânico.

Depois há também o problema do prestigio. A Itália quer ter o seu próprio tanque, a França quer ter os seus próprios conceitos e o seu próprio tanque. Os ingleses têm as suas exigências próprias e o seu próprio tanque...

Na aviação, a mesma coisa.

Só será possível fazer alguma coisa quando houver alguma coordenação de politicas. Mas no caso de a nível de Bruxelas alguma vez haver qualquer coisa do género, vai demorar décadas até se decidirem por um modelo, mesmo que depois as industrias dos vários países possam produzir as suas derivações.

[Rui Elias Maltez]

Sinceramente acho que ainda é um "bocadinho" cedo para vaticinar o início do fim da supremacia naval americana no mundo, e nem falo tanto pelo nº de navios, mas devido às suas doutrinas navais, com Task-Forces multidisciplinares, com navios a intergrar cada uma, com uma valência muito específica e sobretudo, com a extraordinária capacidade de projecção de forças e sustentabilidade, e isso é mais importante que ter grandes navios de linha, já que o tempo das batalhas navais, já lá vai.

[P44]

Op-Ed: Listen to the Navy: The DDG-1000 Destroyer Is Not Needed


(Source: Lexington Institute; issued January 27, 2009)


(© Lexington Institute; reproduced by permission)



The U.S. Navy has a favorite mantra that concisely captures why maritime strategy matters: 70% of the world is covered by water, 80% of its people live close to the sea, and 90% of its trade travels by sea. Those facts by themselves explain why having a forward-deployed naval fleet is necessary.

But being there isn't enough. The Navy must have the right capabilities to influence events both at sea and ashore. The service has done a good job of thinking through how its aircraft carriers and submarines can contribute to near-shore, or "littoral" operations. And it doesn't take much imagination to see why the Marine Corps requirement for 33 modern amphibious-assault vessels is relevant to the fight ashore. But when it comes to surface combatants, the Navy has made some missteps.

Surface combatants come in three basic flavors -- frigates, destroyers and cruisers -- with the smaller frigates optimized for shallow-water operations and other, larger combatants operating further out to sea. The Navy's opening gambit for becoming more relevant ashore after the collapse of communism was a huge destroyer initially called DD-21, then DD(X), and now DDG-1000. In naval nomenclature, "DD" means destroyer and "G" means it carries guided missiles.

DDG-1000 was supposed to meet the Marine Corps need for high rates of fire ashore by carrying guns that could shoot precision rounds a hundred kilometers or more. However, the high cost of the warship -- well over $3 billion each -- made it too pricey to buy in quantity, and too valuable to deploy near enemy shores. The concept of operations was thus inherently flawed, because the guns can't hit much unless the warship is close to enemy territory.

Navy leaders began to have doubts about DDG-1000 two years ago. By that time they had made progress on a replacement for their cold-war frigates dubbed the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that looked like a much better match for future military needs. The modular design of the LCS enabled it to perform a wide range of missions without becoming a multi-billion-dollar behemoth.

Meanwhile, threats had changed faster than expected in the Western Pacific and elsewhere, with China deploying very quiet diesel-electric submarines, sea-skimming anti-ship missiles, and ballistic missiles that might soon have the ability to hit U.S. carriers. So the Navy decided to pull the plug on the DDG-1000.

Last summer, the Navy told Congress it wanted to halt DDG-1000 production at three ships and instead build an improved version of its Aegis destroyers along with LCS. The reason why, it said, was that the firepower provided by DDG-1000 could be replaced using other weapons, but it desperately needed to enhance its anti-missile and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

Aegis destroyers and cruisers are receiving upgrades to their combat systems, already considered the best in the world for intercepting hostile aircraft and missiles at sea. When combined with the anti-ship, anti-mine and anti-submarine capabilities of the LCS, these upgrades will assure fleet survivability for decades to come.

The Obama Administration should listen to what the Navy is saying. The sea services can harvest many of the technological advances developed for the DDG-1000 by redirecting contractors to work on other projects. Prime contractor Raytheon appears to have done a very good job on the ship's electronic combat system. But the ship itself isn't needed, and it doesn't make sense to reconfigure the vessel for missile defense when only three are likely to be built.

The Navy needs to focus scarce funding on the vessels that will provide the backbone of the surface fleet -- Aegis destroyers, Aegis cruisers, and Littoral Combat Ships -- while assuring a sufficient level of ship construction so that no adverse economic consequences are felt at the yards where surface combatants are built.

-ends-

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... eeded.html

[P44]

New Destroyer Emerges in U.S. Plans

Options Mulled As DDG 1000 Hits $6 Billion

A "future surface combatant" (FSC) and the accelerated development of an anti-missile radar could be the U.S. Navy's answer to new missiles under development by China.

The new ship could become even more central to Navy plans. The price tag for the DDG 1000 destroyer has hit $6 billion a copy, Pentagon documents show. The Zumwalts may be in a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which would require the Navy - already downplaying the ship - to recertify the program's value to the nation's defense.

The viability of the Zumwalt class was already in question because of its price tag, which the Navy has declared to be $3.3 billion per ship but which non-Navy analysts put at $5 billion to $7 billion.

A Jan. 26 Memorandum for the Record by John Young, the Pentagon's top acquisition official, said that the per-ship price as of last July is $5.964 billion. That's $2.7 billion, or 81 percent, over the Navy's estimate.

A Nunn-McCurdy breach takes place when a program's cost hits 15 percent of the baseline cost.

Defense News obtained a copy of the document.

Young, who championed the DDG 1000 a few years ago as the Navy's weapon buyer, apparently proposed several options to avoid the breach, including placing the FSC in the DDG 1000 budget line. That could bring down the unit price and possibly avoid the Nunn-McCurdy issue - but only technically.

In reality, the FSC may bear little resemblance to the futuristic Zumwalt.

The Navy has not decided what it wants the FSC to be - perhaps a ship based on the DDG 1000; more likely, a version of the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that Navy leader Adm. Gary Roughead wants to buy in its place. Some observers said Young seems to be using the indecision about the FSC to protect the DDG 1000.

They also say Young appears to be using the uncertainty about the FSC to criticize the service's handling of the major radar program - the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR).

A year ago, AMDR was the name of the radar for the new CG(X) cruiser, which the Navy intended to order in 2011. But plans for the radar have evolved. It is now intended, in an Increment I form, to be fielded in 2015 aboard the FSC. An Increment II version is still to be installed on the new cruiser - but the first CG(X) has been pushed back to 2017, according to Navy planning documents.

The AMDR could represent an opportunity for companies other than Lockheed Martin, which builds the Navy's Aegis system, to garner a key position in the Navy's radar programs. Roughead's decision last summer to "truncate" DDG 1000 production from seven to three ships and instead buy more Aegis-based DDG 51 destroyers was seen as a blow to Massachusetts-based Raytheon, which is leading the effort to develop the Zumwalt-class radar.

Although the Navy said the switch reflected a change in operational requirements, a number of observers viewed the move as a triumph for the Lockheed-led "Aegis mafia." Raytheon officials and congressional representatives, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., also decried the move.

The Navy and Lockheed, however, have spent considerable effort to move the 1970s-era Aegis system into a modern, open architecture environment, opening up the possibility that more companies could graft their systems and programs into the system. Although no Navy official would speak on the record for this story, privately officials agreed that companies such as Raytheon could, in theory, bid on the new radar, even if were to be an evolution of Aegis.

At a recent review of the AMDR program, Young reportedly criticized the service for its failure to define the FSC.

But it seems clear the Navy wants to further develop the DDG 51, which dates from the early 1980s.

At the recent Surface Navy Association symposium in Washington, Navy officials, from Roughead on down, repeatedly talked about the advantages of hewing to only a handful of basic hull designs and working to extract the maximum from each design's potential. None mentioned the FSC, but the new ship type seems to be a direct application of the concept.

It is not clear, however, whether the Navy wants to sanction a redesign of the DDG 51 to accommodate more missile launch tubes, a more powerful engineering plant or a much bigger radar. Several sources said the service was directing design studies to hold to the 51's existing dimensions, but others said those improvements would mean lengthening or otherwise enlarging the hull.

The Navy sees a need for a radar that can handle emerging threats such as a ballistic missile with independently targetable warheads, a weapon under development by China. The roughly 22,000-ton CG(X) will have an integrated power plant that can drive the powerful radars needed to pick up the fast, small warheads. It will be a challenge, Navy and industry experts concede, to create a radar and power plant that are up to the task yet able to fit in the less-than-10,000-ton DDG 51 hull.

But Navy plans show a total of only eight CG(X) cruisers over the next 30 years, far less than the stated requirement for 19 of the ships. That leaves a smaller, "CG(X) light" version of the FSC as a possibility - able, perhaps, to be fielded faster and more cheaply.

The shape of the CG(X) program has been in limbo for more than a year. An Analysis of Alternatives was to have been released in the fall of 2007, but the Navy spent all of last year reviewing and revising the plan, and has yet to announce when it could appear.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i= ... =FEA&s=CVS

[cabeça de martelo]

Estes gajos drogam-se, é que só com uma pedrada nos cachaços é que alguém gasta tanto dinheiro num único navio!

[P44]

acho que o mais certo é que nunca nenhum chegará a ser construido

(O Sintra vai fartar-se de chorar )

[Sintra]

acho que o mais certo é que nunca nenhum chegará a ser construido

(O Sintra vai fartar-se de chorar )

Aquela "meld..." já custa quase o dobro de um CVF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[soultrain]

Mas deita uma cor linda quando dispara a peça de vante....

[Sintra]

Mas deita uma cor linda quando dispara a peça de vante....

[P44]

mais polémica...

DDG-1000’s Cost Overstated in News Reports, Official Says
[img]
http://www.defpro.com/data/gfx/news/4b9 ... 3d_big.jpg[/img]

14:12 GMT, February 9, 2009 WASHINGTON | The projected unit cost of the next-generation U.S. Navy destroyer is much lower than the figures being cited in some news reports, a senior Defense Department official said here yesterday.

The DDG-1000 is a high-tech, guided-missile destroyer that is envisioned to eventually replace the Arleigh Burke class of warships developed 30 years ago.

The Pentagon would pay between $2.2 to $2.5 billion for each new DDG-1000 ship after the regular production line is up and running, John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics told reporters at the Pentagon.

Young said he disagrees with news reports that say DDG-1000 vessels would cost up to $7 billion per copy. “There’s no basis for any [cost] projection that this ship is going to cost 5 or 6 or 7 billion dollars,” Young said.

The cost of a first prototype, or lead, DDG 1000 ship is about $3.3 billion because the government pays for the initial drawings and production set-up, Young said. The unit cost of follow-on ships would decrease due to industrial economies of scale, he said.

Conversely, unit production costs can rise if the number of items to manufacture is reduced from the original schedule, Young explained.

The DDG-1000 series is designated the Zumwalt class, named after late Navy Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. The new ships feature computer-aided design, modular construction, high-tech armaments and radar, as well as a unique, streamlined hull design.

Originally, 32 DDG-1000 vessels were to be built at shipyards in Maine and Mississippi. Recent production plans called for two ships to be built.

However, the DDG-1000 is on hold for now, as Pentagon and interagency officials re-examine the project, Young said.

“Aside from the warfighting analysis, we do need to do some producibility analysis, manufacturing analysis and cost analysis,” he said.

Some officials suggest that modifying Arleigh Burke class ships would be a less expensive way to create a new vessel, Young said. That approach, he said, wouldn’t produce as much cost savings as imagined, and would result in a vessel possessing undesirable mass without the capabilities of the DDG-1000.

“You cannot do that without significant changes in that ship,” Young said of proposals to rework Arleigh Burke ships to create a new vessel. “You will have to add cooling capacity; you will have to add electrical generating capacity,” as well as upgraded radar equipment.

And, the Arleigh Burke class destroyer “has already gained weight because it is 30 years into its service life and ships are designed with a certain amount of weight-carrying capacity,” he said.

http://www.defpro.com/news/details/5417/

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... -says.html


ainda há esperança, Sintra

[P44]

a esta hora o SINTRA já abriu o champanhe....

Bath Iron Works, Navy Agree on Building Three DDG-1000 Destroyers


The U.S. Defense Department, the Navy and shipbuilders Bath Iron Works in Maine and Ingalls Shipyards have concluded an agreement to swap the construction of DDG-1000 and DDG-51 class ships, to establish more efficient construction of the next-generation destroyer at one shipyard instead of two. According to John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Bath Iron Works in Maine will build all three DDG-1000 destroyers. According to earlier plans, work on the DDG-1000 destroyers previously was to be split between General Dynamics’ Bath Works and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipyard in Mississippi. As part of the new agreement compromised between all sides, Ingalls shipyard received additional Navy vessels, gaining a contract to build two more DDG-51 guided-missile destroyers. Sixty-four Arleigh Burkes have been built to date, not counting the two new ones slated for construction at the Ingalls shipyard.

The DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class vessel was originally designed to replace the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class of AEGIS destroyers developed 30 years ago. The DDG-1000 design utilizes a distinctive streamlined 'low profile' hull, electrical propulsion and directed energy weapons to name only a few of unique features to be introduced with the new, modular design. However, DDG-1000 is admittedly an extremely complicated and expensive development, Young said. Cost of a first prototype, or lead, DDG-1000 ship is estimated to be around $3.2 billion, he said, with prices of follow-on vessels likely to decrease due to industrial economies of scale. The design and development of the DDG-1000 “has gone well,” Young said, noting that the program has “gone to budget gone on schedule.”

Initial plans were to build 32 of the DDG-1000-series vessels at the Bath and Ingalls shipyards. As part of the Defense Department’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget recommendations only three vessels will be built. “We cannot allow more ships to go the way of the DDG-1000,” Gates told the Naval War College audience. The DDG-1000’s rising cost per ship, he noted, was among the reasons for buying reduced numbers. If the DDG-1000s couldn’t be efficiently produced, Gates “was potentially prepared, even in the face of clear political danger, to go back and possibly cancel two ships, and that would have cut jobs in both shipyards,” Young said.

http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/ ... 00409.html

[Penguin]

Next-Generation Navy Destroyer Set for Construction in Maine
Navy News — By American Forces Press Service on April 20, 2009 at 7:29 am

WASHINGTON: A recent agreement among the Defense Department, the Navy and shipbuilders will enable more efficient construction of the next-generation destroyer at one shipyard instead of two, a senior Defense Department official announced here today.

The "swap" agreement calls for three DDG-1000 destroyers to be built at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, John J. Young Jr., undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the Pentagon.

Work on the DDG-1000 destroyers previously was to be split between General Dynamics' Bath Works and Northrop Grumman's Ingalls Shipyard in Mississippi, Young said. As part of the new agreement, the Ingalls shipyard, which also builds some other Navy vessels, will gain a contract to build two more DDG-51 guided-missile destroyers.

The swap agreement, Young said, is the result of months of negotiations and is a reflection of "unprecedented efforts by the Navy and industry partners to operate in a business-like manner." The agreement, he added, involved compromises by all parties "to enable efficient construction of naval vessels."

The DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class vessel is a high-tech, guided-missile destroyer envisioned to eventually replace the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class of warships that were developed 30 years ago. Navy Adm. Arleigh Burke was a famous destroyer commander in the South Pacific during World War II.

Named for Navy Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr., who served as chief of naval operations in the early 1970s and died in January 2000, the DDG-1000 ships feature computer-aided design, modular construction, high-tech armaments and radar, as well as a unique, streamlined hull design.

The DDG-1000's complicated, high-tech content, Young said, makes its design and construction an admittedly expensive endeavor. Cost of a first prototype, or lead, DDG-1000 ship is estimated to be around $3.2 billion, he said, with prices of follow-on vessels likely to decrease due to industrial economies of scale.

The design and development of the DDG-1000 "has gone well," Young said, noting that the program has "gone to budget [and] gone on schedule."

Initial plans were to build 32 of the DDG-1000-series vessels at the Bath and Ingalls shipyards. Today, the Defense Department's proposed fiscal 2010 budget calls for building just three vessels.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today told members of the Naval War College in Newport R.I., that the United States will require a naval presence in the future.

"But we cannot allow more ships to go the way of the DDG-1000," Gates told the Naval War College audience. The DDG-1000's rising cost per ship, he noted, was among the reasons for buying reduced numbers.

Gates has recommended building more Arleigh Burke-class vessels and upgrading those now in the fleet. Sixty-four Arleigh Burkes have been built, not counting the two new ones slated for construction at the Ingalls shipyard.

Gates also deemed the arrangement for constructing DDG-1000s at the two shipyards as inefficient and too costly to taxpayers, Young said.

"I think it was important to him that we build these ships efficiently," Young said of his understanding of Gates' reasoning.

If the DDG-1000s couldn't be efficiently produced, Gates "was potentially prepared, even in the face of clear political danger, to go back and possibly cancel two ships, and that would have cut jobs in both shipyards," Young said.

[Bender]

acho que o mais certo é que nunca nenhum chegará a ser construido

(O Sintra vai fartar-se de chorar )

Do jeito que as coisas caminham lá pelos EUA,além de muitos desses projetos serem adiados,ou cancelados,o "Hara-Kiri" naval,que eu começo a vislumbrar por aquelas bandas,é um sério enxugamento de meios,com muita coisa indo pra reserva antes do que se pensava Só uma opinião.

Sds

[Sintra]

Imagine-se Copenhaga lá ao fundo, Lord Nelson na coberta de um destes navios "et voilá"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... gen_(1801)


Agora fazemos o seguinte exercicio, coloca-se duas ou três baterias de MLRS PHL03 Chineses (http://www.sinodefence.com/army/mrl/phl03.asp) na costa e faz-se um duelo á boa e velha moda... Navio afundado... Note-se que duas ou três destas baterias custam para ai umas 100X vezes menos que um "barquito" destes.
Quem é que foi o idiota que se lembrou de gastar vários biliões de dolares por navio para voltar a bombardear alvos terrestres a canhão?
E vão construir três destas "coisas"!

[cabeça de martelo]

Mais valia terem comprado à marinha de Guerra Portuguesa as JB.