By Kevin Baron
Defense One
Defense One
BATH, Maine — It doesn’t look like a ship. It doesn’t even feel like a ship.
The hallways are too wide. The ceilings are incredibly high. There’s barely an outdoor deck. No bridge tower. No lookout crow’s nests. Flat-screen TV mounts are everywhere. In fact, the only sign that this is a ship are the steep deck ladders and “knee-knocker” air lock doorways sailors and ironworkers duck through from bow to stern.
There’s also the relatively cavernous mission control room, which looks more like something from Houston than Groton, with large flat-screen displays at the front of the room, five rows of 18 work stations with even more flat screens at each station, and a rear loft for flag officers to oversee the entire operation.
Welcome aboard the Zumwalt, the Navy’s first DDG-1000 stealth destroyer.
Launched just last month, she is an impossibly spaceship-looking trapezoid tower jutting from the still water. The incredibly automated, totally electrical vessel will hold a smaller crew than any destroyer before her. She can house two helicopters that can land in higher seas than ever and then be automatically pulled inside a concealed hanger. There’s room for several drone aircraft. It can power a small city. And her two advanced guns on the forward deck can hit a basketball with a 155mm Howitzer-sized artillery shell from 63 miles away.
Eventually. For now, much of her interior has been bolted down, entire consoles and window panes are covered in plywood as the work continues to piece together the world’s most advanced naval destroyer ever built.
The menacing grey wedge of destruction that is sleeping eerily and dormant in a tranquil sliver of coastal Maine water is not scheduled for sea trials until 2015, and won’t be fully operational until at least 2016 — in the Pacific, of course, where the Pentagon has sent the bulk the fleet’s most advanced naval power. There, if ever needed, the Navy says the Zumwalt will be able to launch 600 shells from 63 miles away to an accuracy of within 30 inches.
Lest there be no doubt, she is a destroyer.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the ship and the team of sailors and contractors working on her at Maine’s Bath Iron Works on Thursday. Shipyard workers took Hagel’s staff and reporters through the vessels insides, where no photography was permitted (Hagel’s official photographer’s shots had to be cleared for security leaks.) But here’s what it’s like inside.
There is industrial construction equipment everywhere, making it difficult to judge the size of open space. But even with the clutter of welding tanks, electrical lines, and scaffolding, it’s clear this is a ship built with room to move inside – especially on the hangar deck. Right up the middle is a track, where helicopters – two Sea Hawks, for example can land and then attach to a hook that pulls the aircraft inside. No need for sailors there. In fact, everywhere, from firefighting to lookouts, sailors are being replaced by technology.
Walking alongside the outer passageway on the hanger deck feels like walking along the inside wall of a giant tent, and is wide enough for a small fork truck to drive through. The ship has an external skin that shoots from the hull right up past what would be the top deck. So instead of chrome railings and a seaside view, a wall of grey protects the sailors inside.
At the mission control room, complete with new paint smell, one can still see the giant rivets where the 900 ton composite deck house — that top trapezoid thing — was bolted to the steel hull.
“That happened in December,” said Todd Estes, DDG-1000 program office manager, who proudly showed off the build. “It was very cold – a very cold night,” he said, wistfully.
In fact about the only design element of the ship that resembles a battleship are her forward guns. But these are not your grandfather’s guns. In tests they have proven incredibly accurate, ship workers boasted. “If we missed by 30 to 40 inches, that was a bad shot,” said one industry official overseeing the ship, who asked to remain anonymous.
Hagel praised the workforce that gathered dockside in the chilly Maine wind and said the ship reflected the diversity of future threats the United States will face, as it heads to the Pacific. “Assigning this new ship to that rebalance is an important signal to the commitment that we are making to a part of the world.”
He didn’t say specifically which rival navies, or adversaries, she will face when she finally reaches the Pacific. But silently the Zumwalt held firm behind Hagel, the chop picked up across the water, and as the secretary left the shipyard workers scurried back to the ship, and the work still to be done.
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Defense chief: Big new destroyer important for Asia-Pacific
By David Sharp
Associated Press
Associated Press
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, center, tours the Zumwalt destroyer at Bath Iron Works during his first visit to Maine since being confirmed, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013, in Bath, Maine. The group is standing beneath the barrel of a 155MM advanced gun system. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) ( Robert F. Bukaty )
BATH, Maine — The biggest destroyer ever built for the U.S. Navy will play an important role in the Pacific Ocean as the U.S. refocuses attention on the region, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told shipbuilders and sailors on Thursday.
With the stealthy-shaped Zumwalt serving as a backdrop, Hagel said the ship’s assignment to San Diego after it joins the fleet in 2016 “sends an important sign” about U.S. commitment to the Pacific region as the military bolsters its presence in response to Asia’s growing economic importance and China’s rise as a military power.
“It represents an important shift in our balance and assets and focus and America’s interest in the Asia-Pacific,” Hagel said. “We’re not retreating from any part of the world.”
Hagel spoke to crew members, shipbuilders and other naval personnel after touring the 610-foot-long Zumwalt, which is due to be christened in the spring at Bath Iron Works.
Afterward, he traveled to Canada’s Nova Scotia for a security conference.
The Zumwalt, which is far larger and heavier than current destroyers, was designed for shore bombardment and features two 155mm guns that fire rocket-propelled warheads, along with missiles and other weapons.
Originally envisioned as a “stealth destroyer,” the ship features a composite deckhouse that hides radar and antennas along with sharp angles that deflect radar signals. Its unusual wave-piercing hull was designed to minimize the ship’s wake.
Despite its larger size, the high-tech ship has so much automation that the crew size will be nearly halved from existing destroyers. Its gas turbine generators will produce 78 megawatts of electricity, enough to light up a small city — and to provide a platform for future weapons.
The Zumwalt’s big price tag — more than $3.5 billion — nearly caused the Navy to scuttle the program before reducing the number of ships to just three.
Despite its cost, the program seems to be on time and on budget for the time being, a rarity in an era of routine cost overruns and delays in new military programs.
On Thursday, Hagel praised the shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works, a General Dynamics subsidiary, and addressed budget uncertainties created by sequestration that have left many of the 5,500 shipbuilders worrying about shipbuilding cuts and job security.
“We’re going through a difficult time but we’ll get through it,” he said.
Capt. James A. Kirk, the ship’s skipper, said afterward that the ship’s big guns and missiles provide a powerful strike capability. He said he’s looking forward to sailing down the Kennebec River and out to sea.
Asked about its ship’s unusual look, Kirk said it’s a “magnificent-looking” vessel.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever done,” he said.
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