CDR Salamander - ...but what about the MK-57 VLS?

In both comments and via a couple of email/DMs yesterday, there were some sincere questions about why no one is talking about installing the “newer” design MK-57 VLS cells that we see in the three ships of the Zumwalt Class.

In isolation they appear to be fine VLS cells, but are creatures of the time and place in which they were designed.

Let’s go back to their first name: the MK-57 Peripheral Vertical Launch System (PVLS).

They are a custom solution for the DDG-1000 Class designed in the Age of Transformation™ in the first decade of this century. It is an evolutionary dead-end riding on a white elephant.

The MK-57 has a common problem found on most designs from this decade of error: it was built around novel ideas about warship construction and design that time proved wrong. Critique and best practices were hand-waved away, and entire systems were designed around weapons that simply never showed up.

That left the future with all the costs of compromise without the promised delivery of new systems. Seriously, whatever happened to those “larger missiles” that were supposed to fit in there that couldn’t fit in a MK-41?

Here are three major downsides from my seat that explain why we will not see them again:

1. Inefficient use of volume: The Mk-57 is built in 4-cell modules rather than the traditional 8-cell grids, which isn’t too much of an issue. However, they take up significantly more interior hull space per missile. If you need a 1x4, the nice sales representative at LMT can get that for you in a MK-41.

2. Not worth the additional cost: For the price and deck space it demands, it did not offer a proportionally higher return in firepower. Though they were designed to accommodate larger, next-generation missiles, that design limits the flexibility of what can be loaded. It has a slightly wider cell diameter than the MK-41, but is still not large enough to house the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) / hypersonic missiles.

3. Exceptionally FPV vulnerable: Though I am sure they can be installed elsewhere, with the Zumwalts they were installed next to the skin of the ship. Everyone is worried about small drones (FPV), especially nearshore and in port. They carry small warheads, which are not too much of a concern to a big ship (however, the shaped-charge warhead of an RPG-7 many seem to be strapped with will cut right through our thin-skinned warships)...but when you have a big missile just an external bulkhead away from the side of the ship...you can figure it out from there....not to mention a Fitzgerald/McCain like collision or Cole attack.

At the end of the day—larger with no additional gain, more expensive without any value, expanded vulnerability without any enhansed lethality.

That is why we don’t see them.

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