DDG-1000 Freak Show

The whole world is turning into Salamanders, this time its Christopher Cavas.

Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of Naval Operations for Integration of Resources & Capabilities, told Congress July 31 during a hearing called to address the destroyer issue ... "Zumwalts, cannot ... fully employ the Standard Missile-2 (SM~2), SM-3, or SM-6."

...The SM-2 is the Navy's primary air defense missile, and Raytheon is developing the SM-6 replacement. The SM-3 is a BMD missile.

So what we have is a Graf Spee sized Light Cruiser (just because you call it a Destroyer doesn't make it one) that cannot do any AAW except for point-defense. It cannot use the Navy's, ahem, Standard Missile. That means it can't really defend itself or others from aircraft, missiles, cruise missile - and isn't able to be modified to do so? Yep, and people get promoted and trusted with billions of $ for this stuff. The one thing we know is that the closer you get to shore, the more options the enemy has to attack you - and with a ship that big not to be multi-mission against the greatest threats out there borders on the criminal? Just who was supposed to protect the ZUMWALT after all the Arleigh Burkes were either decommissioned or sent to do Corvette work like anti-piracy? You know, unlike all the propaganda Potempkin RP pictures we see of DDG-1000 - you know the enemy actually gets to shoot back - especially when you are off her coast in daytime.

There is a lot more on the subject, but I will just stick to what is in the article.

The BMD issue gained prominence with Navy planners over the winter as intelligence assessments described the new threat ... work to rejigger the destroyer program began "four and a half months ago"
..
The new threat, which "'didn't exist a couple years ago," is a "land-launched ballistic missile that converts to a cruise missile."

Other sources confirmed a new, classified missile threat is being briefed at very high levels. One admiral, said another source, was told his ships should simply "stay away, There are no options."
...
One source speculated it might be "Threat D, a cruise missile that separates to a supersonic missile." A Chinese ballistic missile with terminal radar-homing capabilities - "a carrier killer" - is another possibility,

"...four and a half months ago..." "...didn't exist ..." What a bunch of BS. The threat/possible thread from SRBS/MRBM etc to the Surface Fleet and Marines ashore has been discussed in my circles for years. Years.

Could it be that leadership has been too distracted by their Outward Bound MBA Weekend Babblespeak, Diversity and Transformationalism chimeras - and lost the bubble on their core mission? But I digress ....

This next line is funny - yet pathetically sad at the same time...

"There's really little unclassified information about this stuff," said Paul Giarra, a defense consultant in McLean, VA, "except for the considerable amount of information that's appeared in unclassified Chinese sources."

Therefore, lo & behold, do I sniff the evolutionary solution in the panic?.

...senior defense official confirmed the Navy is embracing BMD as a mission for Aegis surface combatants - and ~ all the new DDG 51s the Navy is asking for will be BMD-capable.

McCullough a1so said the destroyer modernization program, which will start in 2011 with the oldest ships, will include signal processors "with inherent ballistic missile defense capability," Those electronics will make the ship more easily upgradeable should the service choose to add the BMD Upgrade

Have we actually reached the point where my venn diagram of opinion overlaps former, ahem, RADM now Rep. Sestak (D-PA)? I guess we have.

"Wow. We're turning on a dime." Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa, a former Navy vice (sic) admiral, said July 31 about the Navy's decision to halt DDG 1000 construction. "Where is the analysis, the strategic thougpt, studies, and the cost studies that will show is this really the way to go, or is there a different change or a better approach? I don't think we've seen those."

Rep, Roscoe Bartlett R-Md, ranking member of the Seapower subcommittee and a former chairman, noted that he supported the Zumwalt program when the understanding was that the design's new tumblehome hull would be used in the follow-on CG(X) Cruiser. Now, although the Navy has not revealed any details of analysis of alternatives being conducted for the CG(X), Bartlett said the new ship will likely not have the new hull.

"I feel a little bit 'had' now when I'm told that the hull will probably not be used in CG(X)," Bartlett said,

Where are the heads on pikes? Who is going to clean out the Augean stables that is US Navy shipbuilding? Who is sharpening SECDEF Gates's broadaxe? The stink is in the air and everyone knows it - now...

Navy officials have been reluctant to explain the program shift publicly, Although senior Navy leaders began briefing Congress Jul 22, no press conferences have been held and no official statements released, And while McCullough and Allison Stiller, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for ship programs appeared at the July 31 hearing, they decline to speak with the media afterward, instead hurrying to a waiting van which sped off before the doors closed.

I guess the next stop is the perp walk.

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Just to add to the muddy waters, this just came into the holding tank enroute to raising Galrahn's blood pressure.

The Navy has changed course and decided to push for construction of a third DDG-1000 destroyer that would be built at Bath Iron Works, Sen. Susan Collins said Monday.

The Maine Republican said Navy Secretary Donald Winter informed her of the decision that comes one month after the Navy said it was scrapping the Zumwalt destroyer program once the first two are built. The Navy said at the time that it was opting instead to build more of the current-generation DDG-51, or Arleigh Burke, destroyers.

Collins quoted Winter as saying that in addition to seeking another DDG-1000, the Navy plans to reprogram some funding to purchase spare parts for DDG-51s that could also be used to restart production of that class of ships.

We'll call it an industrial base jobs program -- which actually is fine with me --- though with the money for a third ZUMWALT, I would rather have a few S1000 built here - but that is just me. Aw heck; let's just go ahead and rename her anyway. I recommend an outstanding namesake; USS PENNSYLVANIA.