The Zumwalt-class destroyer is a class of three United States Navy guided-missile destroyers designed as multi-mission stealth ships with a focus on land attack. The class was designed with a primary role of naval gunfire support and secondary roles of surface warfare and anti-aircraft warfare. The class design emerged from the DD-21 "land attack destroyer" program as "DD(X)" and was intended to take the role of battleships in meeting a congressional mandate for naval fire support.Section 1011 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996 (Public Law 104-106; 110 Stat. 421) The ship was designed around its two Advanced Gun Systems (AGS), utilizing unique Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) ammunition. LRLAP procurement was canceled, rendering the guns unusable, so the Navy re-purposed the ships for surface warfare. In 2023, the Navy began removing the AGS from the ships and replaced them with hypersonic missiles.
The ships are classed as destroyers, but they are now the largest surface combatants in the US Navy, much larger than any other active destroyers or cruisers. The vessels' distinctive appearance results from the design requirement for a low radar cross-section (RCS). The Zumwalt class has a wave-piercing tumblehome hull form whose sides slope inward above the waterline, dramatically reducing RCS by returning much less energy than a conventional flare hull form.
The class has an integrated electric propulsion (IEP) system that can send electricity from its turbo-generators to the electric drive motors or weapons, the Total Ship Computing Environment Infrastructure (TSCEI), automated fire-fighting systems, and automated piping rupture isolation. The class is designed to require a smaller crew and to be less expensive to operate than comparable warships.
The lead ship is named for Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and carries the hull number DDG-1000. Originally, 32 ships were planned, with $9.6 billion research and development costs spread across the class. As costs overran estimates, the number was reduced to 24, then to 7; finally, in July 2008, the Navy requested that Congress stop procuring Zumwalts and revert to building more Arleigh Burke destroyers. Only three Zumwalts were ultimately built. The average costs of construction accordingly increased, to $4.24 billion, well exceeding the per-unit cost of a nuclear-powered ($2.688 billion),The US Navy's budget request for two Virginias in fiscal year 2016 (FY2016) was $5,376.9 million, including $2,030.4M for advance funding from previous years. and with the program's large development costs now attributable to only three ships, rather than the 32 originally planned, the total program cost per ship jumped. In April 2016 the total program cost was $22.5 billion, $7.5 billion per ship. The per-ship increases triggered a Nunn–McCurdy Amendment breach."Root Cause Analyses of Nunn-McCurdy Breaches – Zumwalt-Class Destroyer, Joint Strike Fighter, Longbow Apache, and Wideband Global Satellite," Rand Corporation (2011); see Vol. 1, Ch. 3 via http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1171z1.html
History
Background and funding Many of the features were developed under the DD-21 program ("21st Century Destroyer"), which was originally designed around the Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS). In 2001, Congress cut the DD-21 program by half as part of the SC21 program; to save it, the acquisition program was renamed DD(X) and heavily reworked.
Originally, the Navy had hoped to build 32 destroyers. That number was reduced to 24, then to 7, due to the high cost of new and experimental technologies. On 23 November 2005, the Defense Acquisition Board approved a plan for simultaneous construction of the first two ships at Northrop Grumman's Ingalls yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. However, at that date, funding had yet to be authorized by Congress.
In late December 2005, the House and Senate agreed to continue funding the program. The US House of Representatives allotted the Navy only enough money to begin construction on one destroyer as a "technology demonstrator". The initial funding allocation was included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2007. However, this was increased to two ships by the 2007 appropriations bill approved in September 2006, which allotted US$2.568 billion to the DDG-1000 program.
On 31 July 2008, US Navy acquisition officials told Congress that the service needed to purchase more s and no longer needed the next-generation DDG-1000 class; only the two approved destroyers would be built. The Navy said the world threat picture had changed in such a way that it made more sense to build at least eight more Burkes rather than DDG-1000s. The Navy concluded from fifteen classified intelligence reports that the DDG-1000s would be vulnerable to forms of missile attacks. Many Congressional subcommittee members questioned that the Navy completed 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 development of the surface ship program known as DD-21, then DD(X), and finally DDG-1000. Subsequently, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead cited the need to provide area air defense and specific new threats such as ballistic missiles and the possession of anti-ship missiles by groups such as Hezbollah. The mooted structural problems have not been discussed in public. Navy Secretary Donald Winter said on 4 September, "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".
On 19 August 2008, Secretary Winter said that a third Zumwalt would be built at Bath Iron Works, citing concerns about maintaining shipbuilding capacity. House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha said on 23 September 2008 that he had agreed to partial funding of the third DDG-1000 in the 2009 Defense authorization bill.
A 26 January 2009 memo from John Young, the US Department of Defense's (DoD) top acquisition official, stated that the per ship price for the Zumwalt-class destroyers had reached $5.964 billion, 81 percent over the Navy's original estimate used in proposing the program, resulting in a breach of the Nunn–McCurdy Amendment, requiring the Navy to re-certify and re-justify the program to Congress or to cancel its production.
On 6 April 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that the DoD's proposed 2010 budget would end the DDG-1000 program at a maximum of three ships. In April, the Pentagon awarded a fixed-price contract with General Dynamics to build the three destroyers, replacing a cost-plus-fee contract that had been awarded to Northrop Grumman. At that time, the first DDG-1000 destroyer was expected to cost $3.5 billion, the second approximately $2.5 billion, and the third even less.
What had once been seen as the backbone of the Navy's future surface fleet with a planned production run of 32 has since been replaced by destroyer production reverting to the Arleigh Burke class after ordering three Zumwalts. In April 2016, the US Naval Institute stated that the total cost of the three Zumwalt ships is about $22.5 billion with research and development costs, which is an average of $7.5 billion per ship.
Construction
In late 2005, the program entered the detailed design and integration phase, for which Raytheon was the Mission Systems Integrator. Both Northrop Grumman Ship Systems and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shared dual-lead for the hull, mechanical, and electrical detailed design. BAE Systems Inc. had the advanced gun system and the Mk 57 Vertical Launching System (VLS). Almost every major defense contractor (including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine, and L-3 Communications) and subcontractors from nearly every state in the U.S. were involved to some extent in this project, which was the largest single line item in the Navy's budget. During the previous contract, the development and testing of 11 Engineering Development Models (EDMs) took place: Advanced Gun System, Autonomic Fire Suppression System, Dual Band Radar [X-band and L-band], Infrared, Integrated Deckhouse & Apertures, Integrated Power System, Integrated Undersea Warfare, Peripheral Vertical Launch System, Total Ship Computing Environment Infrastructure (TSCEI), Tumblehome Hull Form. The decision in September 2006 to fund two ships meant that one could be built by the Bath Iron Works in Maine and one by Northrop Grumman's Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi.
Northrop Grumman was awarded a $90M contract modification for materials and production planning on 13 November 2007. On 14 February 2008, Bath Iron Works was awarded a contract for the construction of , and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding was awarded a contract for the construction of at a cost of $1.4 billion each.
On 11 February 2009, full-rate production officially began on the first Zumwalt-class destroyer. Construction on the second ship of the class, Michael Monsoor, began in March 2010. The keel for the first Zumwalt-class destroyer was laid on 17 November 2011. This first vessel was launched from the shipyard at Bath, Maine, on 29 October 2013.
The construction timetable in July 2008 was: October 2008: DDG-1000 starts construction at Bath Iron Works September 2009: DDG-1001 starts construction at Bath Iron Works. April 2012: DDG-1002 starts construction at Bath Iron Works April 2013: DDG-1000 initial delivery May 2014: DDG-1001 initial delivery March 2015: DDG-1001 Initial operating capability December 2018: DDG-1002 initial delivery
The Navy planned for Zumwalt to reach initial operating capability (IOC) in 2016. The second ship, Michael Monsoor, was commissioned in 2019, and the third ship, , was to have reached IOC in 2021.
Ships in class In April 2006, the Navy announced plans to name the first ship of the class Zumwalt after former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. "Bud" Zumwalt Jr. The vessel's hull number would be DDG-1000, which abandoned the guided-missile destroyer sequence used by the Arleigh Burke class destroyers (DDG-51–) and continued the previous "gun destroyer" sequence from the last of the , .
The Navy announced on 29 October 2008 that DDG-1001 would be named for Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, the second Navy SEAL to receive the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Ramadi (2006) in the Iraq War. Monsoor had deliberately fallen upon a grenade to reduce danger to his SEAL teammates.
On 16 April 2012, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that DDG-1002 would be named for former naval officer and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Navy chose to use an unusual two-part commissioning scheme for the ships. The initial commissioning was done prior to weapons systems integration, and the ships were placed in the status of "in commission, special" before sailing to San Diego for weapons installation and final acceptance. The first two ships used this approach, while the last one will use the more traditional approach with formal commissioning after final acceptance.
+ Ships of the Zumwalt destroyer class Name Hull no. Laid down Launched Commissioned Accepted Homeport Status DDG-1000 17 November 2011 28 October 2013 15 October 2016 24 April 2020 San Diego, California Active DDG-1001 23 May 2013 20 June 2016 26 January 2019 27 August 2024 San Diego, California Active DDG-1002 30 January 2017 9 December 2018 Planned for 2027 Pascagoula, Mississippi Under sea trials
Design
In January 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that four out of twelve of the critical technologies in the ship's design were fully mature. Six of the critical technologies were "approaching maturity", but five of those would not be fully mature until after installation."GAO Assessments of Major Weapon Programs. " Government Accountability Office
Stealth