The Zumwalts began as a 1990s naval fantasy. Besides being by far the biggest and most expensive surface combatants in memory, the Zumwalts are actually inferior to older, smaller ships in certain key stats, in particular radar performance and missile capacity.īut what they lack in weapons and sensors, the new battleships make up for with other enhancements, including space for their own robotic air forces plus massive electrical output that, in the near future, could support powerful laser weapons. “On the DDG-1000, with the waves coming at you from behind, when a ship pitches down, it can lose transverse stability as the stern comes out of the water-and basically roll over,” naval architect Ken Brower told Defense News.Įven if they don’t sink in heavy seas, the Zumwalts are controversial vessels. The high-tech battleships feature a novel, downward-sloping “tumblehome” hull that’s optimized for stealth not stability - and lacks the wave-resisting qualities of traditional ships with upward-flaring hulls. That’s assuming the $7-billion-apiece Zumwalts don’t simply capsize the first time a powerful wave strikes them from behind. The Navy is building three of the Zumwalts over the next five years and deploying them to the Pacific to counter China’s fast-improving military. The lead ship in the class is slated to launch any day now - a milestone briefly delayed by the recent government shutdown. Six hundred feet long and displacing 15,000 tons of water, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class ships are designated as destroyers but are actually as big as some World War I battleships. The Navy’s newest warships are hard to detect on radar, heavily armed with super-accurate guns and missiles … and gigantic.
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