DDG 1000 program will end at two ships

 

By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer

Posted : Wednesday Jul 23, 2008 7:04:43 EDT

 

The once-vaunted Zumwalt-class DDG 1000 advanced destroyer program — projected in the late 1990s to produce 32 new ships and subsequently downscaled to a seven-ship class — will instead turn out only two ships, according to highly-placed sources in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

 

Instead of more 1000s, the Navy will continue to build more Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 destroyers, construction of which had been slated to end in 2012.

 

Top Navy and Pentagon brass met Tuesday to make the decision, which means the service will ask Congress to drop the request for the third ship in the 2009 defense budget and forego plans to ask for the remaining four ships.

 

Each of the two ships now under contract will be built, according to the new decision. That means the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine will build the Zumwalt, DDG 1000, and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls yard in Pascagoula, Miss., will construct the yet-to-be-named DDG 1001.

 

According to sources, the Navy also considered canceling the second DDG 1000 and building just one, but potentially high cancellation costs led to the decision to keep the ship.

 

The reprogramming decision was made at a conference Tuesday hosted by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and attended by Navy Secretary Donald Winter, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Pentagon acquisition chief John Young.

 

Officials were busy throughout the day and into the evening making personal phone calls to senators, congressmen and government and industry officials notifying them of the decision. Initial reaction on Capitol Hill seemed to be largely positive.

 

The move appears to be based on fears that potential cost overruns on the Zumwalts — estimated to cost about $3.3 billion for each of the two lead ships — could threaten other Navy shipbuilding programs. The service declined comment on the July 22 decision, but in a statement released July 17, Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss provided some insight.

 

“We need traction and stability in our combatant lines to reach 313 ships, and we should not raid the combatant line to fund other shipbuilding priorities,” Doss said. “Even if we did not receive funding for the DDG 1000 class beyond the first two ships, the technology embedded in DDG 1000 will advance the Navy’s future surface combatants.”

 

If the fears that rising costs could torpedo other new ships are indeed behind the decision, it is a tacit recognition that repeated warnings by budget experts from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office that the ships face huge potential cost overruns — up to $5 billion each and more — were correct.

 

Ron O’Rourke of CRS testified March 14 before the House Seapower subcommittee that cost overruns on the first two ships could drive their combined cost to $10.2 billion — an increase of $3.9 billion. Using CBO’s figures, O’Rourke pointed out that the remaining five ships, projected by the Navy to cost about $12.8 billion, would likely jump about $8 billion.

 

“The combined cost growth for all seven ships would be roughly $11.8 billion in then-year dollars, which is a figure roughly comparable to the total amount of funding in Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy (SCN) appropriation account in certain recent years,” O’Rourke testified at the hearing.

 

Publicly the Navy has long resisted the notion of building more DDG 51s, noting no more of the ships were needed — the class had been planned to end with the 62nd ship — and significant improvements to the design were hard to come by. But in March acting Navy acquisition chief John Thackrah told an audience that the service was looking at working in to the design a new SPY-3 radar to replace the current SPY-1 Aegis arrays, and the Navy also has studied fitting the 155mm Advanced Gun System into the DDG 51 hull. Both systems are part of the DDG 1000 design.

 

While it is not clear how many more 51s will be built, all sides seem in agreement that the majority of the hulls will go to Bath, which builds only destroyers. Northrop’s Ingalls yard, in addition to destroyer construction, remains busy building three classes of amphibious ships and the Coast Guard’s new National Security Cutter, and is still working to rebuild its infrastructure following damage from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

 

“Bath will have to get the majority of these DDG 51s,” said one source familiar with the situation. “They won’t be able to go 50-50 with Pascagoula. Ingalls doesn’t have the work force right now and Bath needs them.”

 

Depending on the price of the new 51s, anywhere from 8 to 11 ships could be provided over the six-year future years defense plan. “They may continue to build these for the foreseeable future,” the source said. “Nothing wrong with the hull, that is a good ship.”

 

Find Navy Times article here.

From DefenseNews

 

Navy: No Need to Add DDG 1000s After All

By philip ewing

Published: 1 Aug 08:18 EDT (12:18 GMT)

 

Top Navy acquisition officials dramatically reversed course during a congressional hearing July 31, saying the service needed to purchase more Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 destroyers, and no longer needs the next-generation destroyer it has been pushing for over the past 13 years.

 

This, after years of vigorously claiming the service needed to move beyond the 1980s technology in the Burkes and leap ahead with the new ship, the DDG 1000 Zumwalt class. Now, they're saying the Zumwalts just won't cut it, citing the planned ship's inability to fire advanced versions of the Standard Missile, contradicting previous industry claims.

 

They also said there was a new "classified threat" for which the Burkes are better suited but would not go into specifics. Speaking for the Navy were Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of resources and capabilities; and Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for ship programs.

 

"Now, we're turning on a dime," mused Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, after hearing their testimony.

 

In earlier congressional and public discussions, the sticking point for the DDG 1000 had been its cost, which is now estimated to be $3.2 billion per copy. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the House Armed Service's Seapower subcommittee earlier this year struck the third Zumwalt from the Navy's budget request because he said ballooning costs for the advanced warships would bankrupt the Navy's acquisitions budget.

 

Navy leaders confirmed last week that they would end the ship class at two hulls, nixing earlier plans to build seven ships. Before that, the Navy had called for 32 hulls.

 

At the hearing, Taylor maintained his stance that cost was the biggest problem with the program. But the Navy's stated position July 31 wasn't that officials couldn't control the costs for its future ships but that the world threat picture had changed in such a way that it now makes more sense to build at least eight more Burkes. Precise details were still unclear for when the ships would be built and how they'd be outfitted.

 

"Why not go with the Zumwalt if you don't care about affordability?" Sestak asked.

 

Taylor, interjecting, said affordability may not have been a consideration for Navy planners, but it remained important to the subcommittee.

 

But McCullough maintained that more Burkes are needed to counter: a bigger threat from ballistic missiles; sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles; and quiet diesel-electric submarines.

 

They also told subcommittee members that the Marine Corps no longer needs the long-range fire support from the Zumwalts' 155mm Advanced Gun System, because such fire support could be provided by Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles and precision airstrikes. McCullough said the Marine Corps agreed, although a spokesman for Headquarters Marine Corps, Capt. Carl Redding, said he could not immediately confirm there had been a new accord with the Navy.

 

A second panel of congressional Navy experts, including Ron O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service and Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers they hadn't heard before McCullough mentioned it July 31 that the Marine Corps had withdrawn its requirement for long-range fire support from offshore naval guns.

 

Reporters weren't able to ask McCullough or Stiller for details about the acquisition plan for the new Burkes or the Marine Corps fire support issue. Surrounded by a phalanx of aides, McCullough and Stiller jogged from the hearing room and out the door of the Rayburn House Office Building into a waiting motorcade, ignoring shouted questions from journalists. It was a departure from previous hearings, where it's not out of the ordinary for witnesses to stop and answer reporters' questions after giving testimony.

 

Earlier in the hearing, many subcommittee members appeared incredulous that the Navy could have conducted such a sweeping re-evaluation of the world threat picture in just a few weeks, after spending some 13 years and $10 billion on the surface ship program known as DD 21, then DD(X) and finally, DDG 1000. That figure does not include the money spent for the two hulls.

 

Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., noted that in March, McCullough told Congress that DDG 1000 was critical the Navy's future missions. Did he still stand by his testimony?

 

McCullough and Stiller said they still thought the ship would be highly capable, but more Burkes would be better for today's asymmetrical threats. McCullough cited the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah's anti-ship missile attack on an Israeli patrol boat in 2006.

 

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., asked why the Navy had made such an about-face after it had already asked for a third DDG 1000 in this year's budget request. Had the Navy done an analysis of alternatives, or consulted with other military commanders, before deciding to stop building DDG 1000 after two ships?

 

No, McCullough said, adding that when Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead started his job last October, the new Navy leader pointed out an "asymmetric mismatch" in what the Navy would need and the types of ships it was building. The service had "excess capacity in fire support," so it didn't need more of the new ships it has been planning, in various stages, since 1995. McCullough and Stiller added that Roughead still has not given his final approval on eliminating the five ships beyond the two the Navy has already ordered.

 

In the second panel, Paul Francis, an acquisitions expert with the Government Accountability Office, said the fire support issue came as a "surprise" to him.

 

Sestak said he was worried about what he called the recent "sea change" the Navy had apparently undergone in the threats it perceived over the next few years.

 

"My issue today is one of credibility. Not of an individual but of a process. I don't know what the strategic sense of the Navy is today," he said. "Whither the Navy of the future?"

 

Staff writer Bryan Mitchell contributed to this report.

 

[CV32: Emphasis mine. It all sounds remotely familiar, no? ]

From DefenseNews

 

...They also said there was a new "classified threat" for which the Burkes are better suited but would not go into specifics...

 

Hmm...

 

...But McCullough maintained that more Burkes are needed to counter: a bigger threat from ballistic missiles; sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles; and quiet diesel-electric submarines...

 

OK.

 

...They also told subcommittee members that the Marine Corps no longer needs the long-range fire support from the Zumwalts' 155mm Advanced Gun System, because such fire support could be provided by Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles and precision airstrikes. McCullough said the Marine Corps agreed, although a spokesman for Headquarters Marine Corps, Capt. Carl Redding, said he could not immediately confirm there had been a new accord with the Navy.

 

A second panel of congressional Navy experts, including Ron O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service and Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers they hadn't heard before McCullough mentioned it July 31 that the Marine Corps had withdrawn its requirement for long-range fire support from offshore naval guns

 

Reporters weren't able to ask McCullough or Stiller for details about the acquisition plan for the new Burkes or the Marine Corps fire support issue...

 

Interesting.

Any guesses as to the identity of the "classified threat"? Anti-ship ballistic missiles?

Any guesses as to the identity of the "classified threat"? Anti-ship ballistic missiles?

 

Hey, seems I might be right. Imagine that.

 

From DefenseNews

 

Missile Threat Helped Drive DDG Cut

Zumwalt Class Could Not Down Chinese Weapons

By christopher p. cavas

Published: 4 August 2008

 

The threat posed by a super-secret new Chinese ballistic missile is among the factors driving the U.S. Navy's decision to "truncate" the planned seven-ship DDG 1000 Zumwalt class of advanced destroyers and build more DDG 51-class ships.

 

Navy officials say the primary advantage of DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class ships equipped with the Lockheed Martin Aegis combat system is that they can shoot down ballistic missiles - a capability the Navy never asked for in its high-technology and high-priced Zumwalts and its new Raytheon-developed combat system.

 

A program to upgrade 15 existing DDG 51 destroyers, along with three Aegis cruisers, will be complete by year's end. But the new missile threat is causing combatant commanders - the "cocoms" who lead regional commands such as U.S. Pacific Command and European Command - to demand more ships that can handle ballistic missile defense (BMD). The Navy's solution is to drastically reduce the number of Zumwalts to two ships that critics say will be simply technology demonstrators.

 

"The DDG 1000 … is incapable of conducting ballistic missile defense," Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for Integration of Resources and Capabilities, told Congress July 31 during a hearing called to address the destroyer issue.

 

McCullough, in his written testimony, also revealed that the DDG 1000 cannot perform area air defense - the ability to shoot down enemy planes and missiles over a wide region. The Zumwalts, McCullough said, "cannot successfully 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.

 

A Navy source said the ships could carry and launch Standard missiles, but the DDG 1000 combat system can't guide those missiles onward to a target.

 

The new information contrasts with a DDG 1000 briefing provided this spring by the Naval Sea Systems Command, which listed Standard missiles as among the Zumwalt's weapons, and with well-known sources such as Jane's Fighting Ships, which lists the new ships as carrying the SM-2 missile.

 

BMD Issue Grew

 

The BMD issue gained prominence with Navy planners over the winter as intelligence assessments described the new threat. McCullough, in response to a question at the hearing by the House Seapower subcommittee, said work to rejigger the destroyer program began "four and a half to five months" ago, making it late February or early March.

 

Although a "secret, classified" threat was discussed during the hearing, neither Navy officials nor lawmakers would reveal any details.

 

One source familiar with the classified briefing said that while anti-ship cruise missiles and other threats were known to exist, "those aren't the worst." The new threat, which "didn't exist a couple years ago," is a "land-launched ballistic missile that converts to a cruise missile." [CV32: Emphasis mine]

 

Other sources confirmed that 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."

 

Information on the new threat remains closely held.

 

"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."

 

Several experts on Chinese missiles contacted for this story said they weren't sure which specific threat drove the Navy to change its destroyer plans. 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.

 

Retired Rear Adm. Eric Vadon, a consultant on East Asian defense affairs, thought the weapon sounded like a Dong Feng 21 (DF-21) missile, also known by its western designation CSS-5. Although the basic missile has been in service since the 1970s, the Chinese are known to be working to turn it into a homing ballistic missile.

 

"There's a possibility that what we're seeing is that somebody is calling this thing a cruise missile because it has some of those characteristics," Vadon said. "It maneuvers and it homes in. But a cruise missile breathes air."

 

The Chinese targetable ballistic missile threat has long worried U.S. Navy planners and military professionals.

 

"We're pretty certain the Chinese have been working on this for some time," said Bernard Cole, a professor at National Defense University in Washington and an expert on the Chinese military. "It would pose a threat. I don't know how you would counter that missile."

 

But Cole said the description of a ballistic missile turning into a cruise missile is new: "I've never heard this described this way."

 

Sources in the Pentagon said the U.S. Navy has not yet moved to add the BMD upgrade to any more existing Aegis ships. But a senior defense official confirmed the Navy is embracing BMD as a mission for Aegis surface combatants - and that all the new DDG 51s the Navy is asking for will be BMD-capable.

 

McCullough also said that 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 ships more easily upgradeable should the service choose to add the BMD upgrade.

 

Even if the Pentagon and Congress approve the request to build more DDG 51s, the new ships won't start to come on line until at last 2015, estimated Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office, who also testified at the July 31 hearing.

 

A Controversial Move

 

Navy leaders received permission July 22 to ask the Pentagon to build only two DDG 1000s and instead ask for at least nine more DDG 51s. While observers have known for months that support for the DDG 1000 program inside the Navy was weak, the move nevertheless surprised Raytheon, which is developing the combat system and numerous subsystems for the Zumwalts, and a number of lawmakers who support the DDG 1000 program.

 

"Wow. We're turning on a dime," Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, said July 31 about the Navy's decision to halt DDG 1000 construction. "Where's the analysis, the strategic thought, the 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 an 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.

 

Navy officials have been reluctant to explain the program shift publicly. Although senior Navy leaders began briefing Congress July 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 declined to speak with the media afterward, instead hurrying to a waiting van which sped off before the doors closed.

From Navy Times

 

Troubled DDG 1000 faces shipyard problems

Source: Navy concerned contractor can’t build key deckhouse structure

By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer

 

One month after the Defense Department signaled that it was changing the Navy’s position on whether to build a third Zumwalt-class destroyer, confusion remains as to why the Navy backed off the program in the first place — and now whether the Navy will be able to build the first two ships.

 

Sources familiar with the issue say that problems have arisen in guaranteeing the seals between the composite construction panels of the ship’s huge deckhouse. The structure — one of 10 key engineering development models — is to be built by Northrop Grumman’s dedicated composite facility at Gulfport, Miss.

 

The deckhouse is one of the major changes in the DDG 1000 over previous warships. All of the ship’s major sensors — radars, missile guidance systems, electronic warfare and other sensors — are embedded in the structure, and all of the ship above the first superstructure level is contained in the composite structure. A partial test section of the structure has been built, and Northrop and Navy officials have maintained that there are no significant problems with the composite deckhouse.

 

Navy officials hadn’t responded to questions by Sept. 12, but Northrop issued a statement that day.

 

“Our testing program of the composite deck house is very mature and continues to meet the technical requirements of the design,” Northrop said.

 

But one source familiar with the situation said the Navy is so worried about the problem that it has been canvassing other manufacturers of composite structures to see whether an alternate production source could be found.

 

The technical problems add another wrinkle to an already controversial program which, after years of staunch support, the Navy essentially rejected July 31, when top shipbuilding officials told lawmakers that the program was incapable of defeating certain enemy missiles and should be cut short at just two hulls. The officials said the service should instead continue building Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which they said are already designed to counter the threat.

 

Top Defense Department officials then sent letters to lawmakers in mid-August saying the Navy had been “directed” to go back and press for the third ship in the fiscal 2009 budget.

Standard missile controversy

 

One of the key questions provoked by the July 31 testimony was the assertion by Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, the Navy’s requirements chief, that DDG 1000s “cannot successfully employ the Standard Missile-2, SM-3 or SM-6 missile.”

 

The SM-2 is the Navy’s primary area air defense weapon, intended to reach out 40 to 90 nautical miles to destroy enemy aircraft, missiles or ships; SM-3 is a ballistic missile defense weapon; and SM-6 is the SM-2 replacement under development by Raytheon. The missile is what provides the “G” in “DDG.”

 

A DDG, or guided-missile destroyer, is able to provide air defense for other ships such as aircraft carriers, amphibious ships or merchant convoys. A “DD,” or destroyer, might be armed with surface-to-surface missiles such as Harpoons or Tomahawks, or carry point-defense missiles such as Sea Sparrows to defend itself.

 

The DDG 1000 designation, a mix of the DDG classification and the DD hull number series, is viewed with ambiguity by many naval professionals, but the Navy firmly and consistently described the ship as capable of operating the Standard Missile — until July 31.

 

Congress, industry and naval analysts remain confused as to why the Navy now says the DDG 1000 cannot use the Standard Missile.

 

“Our [combat system] design has the SM-2 using the same link as used in all the other ships,” said Dan Smith, president of Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems division. “The Volume Search radar is essentially the same as the SPY-1D” Aegis radar used in all current DDGs and cruisers.

 

“I can’t answer the question as to why the Navy is now asserting that after years of funding and years of documentation that Zumwalt is not equipped with an SM-2 capability,” Smith said.

 

Navy officials have declined to explain the issue, tying it to responses about a ballistic missile defense capability the service did not require the DDG 1000s to have.

‘This whole thing is very strange’

 

Congress continues to consider the 2009 defense budget, which officially requests the third DDG 1000. The Navy, for now, isn’t advocating whether the ship be a 1000 or 51.

 

“Making certain that we have — I’ll just say, a destroyer — in the ’09 budget is more important than whether that’s a DDG 1000 or a DDG 51,” Navy Secretary Donald Winter told Navy Times on Sept. 4.

 

The Navy’s changing rationales and positions have baffled even its staunchest supporters.

 

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in whose state the first DDG 1000 would be built at the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard, is widely viewed as the strongest champion for the ship on Capitol Hill. Yet she says she is still in the dark.

 

“I’ve yet to get an answer to what changed,” Collins told Navy Times on Sept. 9.

 

“If there is a serious new threat from China,” Collins added, “it seems to us the Navy should have come to us and given us a classified briefing. That still hasn’t occurred. There are these vague references to this new Chinese missile, but the Navy’s never given us a briefing. You would think that if this threat was emerging and potent, the Navy would have come and given us a classified briefing.

 

“This whole thing is very strange,” Collins declared. “I’m baffled by the way this has been handled.”

 

The Navy’s industrial partners aren’t entirely sure what’s going on either. Spokesmen for shipbuilders Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics would not comment on the situation, but sources inside the companies said no Navy DDG 1000 briefings have been forthcoming. Raytheon, however, was more forceful.

 

“There’s been zero communication between the Navy and us about this,” Smith said.