The USS Zumwalt Can't Fire It's Guns... #shorts

#shorts

[jonathanstein]

Fun fact: the first commander of the Zumwalt was named James Kirk.

[TheFlutecart]

Even without the guns, that ship posses some serious capabilities. Was it worth it? Likely not.

[geodkyt]

To be fair to the Navy, when they initially estimated the cost of the ammo, the plan was to field a whole bunch of ships (including a new cruiser class using much of the equipment developed for Zumwalt) with those guns.

The reason they would be $800K per round was cutting the program back to three ships and "Peace Dividend" levels of ammunition stores for those three ships, *all* of the development costs for the unique ammunition has to be covered by a tiny fraction of the shells originally intended.

[leroythespaceman]

There was an important bit of info left out, the plan was to build upwards of 25 Zumwalt class. Destroyers and Congress dropped it down to 3. The initial cost for the round was to be about 25, 000. But fewer ships meant no mass production, causing the sellers to raise the price for each round.

[iTeerRex]

Yea, when it’s public funded, the sky is the limit…

[Tounushi]

While the guns were meant to be the primary shore-attack weapon, it still has VLS cells on the sides. So missiles weren't abandoned.

[coreybenson]

There are three of these. 29 more were planned and then canceled. In April 2016, the total program cost was $22.5 billion. For a reference, that’s roughly enough to run the entire US national park system for a decade.

[TheGhostOfQsLeftEyebrow]

True however all three are currently undergoing refits to add another vls where one of the cannons was in order to start carrying hypersonic missiles

[aabp]

The Zumwalt would be detected at about 200 miles appearing to be a fishing boat traveling very fast at 30 knots.”

[alexlocatelli]

The Zumwalt also has missiles, still the ammunition mistake is a terrible one. 😅

[wstavis]

The Zumwalt does carry Standard SM2 and SM3 missiles as well as Tomahawks and Harpoons. The guns we're supposed to use the LRAP shells and the original cost of the shells was estimated to be approximately one tenth or less of the final cost Lockeed Martin tried to charge. The guns can use other, less capable projectiles and still possess good capabilities, just not the ones promised with the original ammunition. Additionally, the Zumwalts were designed to be upgraded to use developing rail gun technology and energy weapons. The rail gun project has been cancelled but there has been substantial progress on energy weapons. There have also been new, less expensive, projectiles developed a that all naval vessel carrying the 155mm gun systems will be able to use.
While the new projectiles will not help the Zumwalts now, since the Navy has announced yet another design change and refit, they will allow some ships to take the role the Zumwalts were supposed to fill.

[IglooGaming]

Had they built the rest of them they might’ve been cheaper despite the cost overruns. 27 were planned if I remember correctly.

[Kyle_Daniel]

I think the Sims games and their DLC can rival these costs.

[pmnvlm]

SpongeBob: "I don't think it can any worse"
Patrick: "Oh I know! "
Patrick: "Two Zumwalts! "

[ronmaximilian]

The Zumwalt class has 80 VLS tubes for a mix of tomahawk missiles, long range anti-surface missiles, SM-2, SM-6, and quad packed Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. In other words, it can carry anywhere between 80 and 320 missiles depending on loadout. That being said, the destroyers were partially designed to provide gunfire support for Marines and other landing parties with two 155mm Advanced Gun Systems storing a combined 920 rounds. The problem wasn't that the Navy didn't forget to purchase this ammunition, but rather that it was too expensive. Originally, there were supposed to be 32 destroyers. Have there been 32 destroyers and thousands of rounds of ammunition, each round would have cost less than a million dollars. The Navy also majorly screwed up by not working with the Army, which fields 155 mm Mobile artillery units. They could have designed shells to work for both systems, which would further defray costs. They didn't. And so, the shells were too expensive and nothing else worked in them. The US Navy plans to replace these guns with three to four hypersonic cruise missiles in place of each AGS.
To be honest, that's not even the biggest problems with the destroyers. The destroyers were designed to have two new radar systems, the X-Band AN/SPY-3 radar for short and medium range detection and missile guidance, and the S-BAND AN/SPY-4 for long range detection. However, as problems arose with the SPY-4, This radar was shelved and the AN/SPY-3 was modified to do everything, which it couldn't. The US Navy will be fixing this by installing the replacement for the failed SPY-3, the AN/SPY-6. These destroyers were designed to have and will have the most comprehensive radar sets of any surface warfare competent in the US Navy. The only problem being is that they're not designed to include the AEGIS combat management system, but rather an extension of the system designed for the failed littoral combat ships. The good news is that the ships can still be used and the research put into them can be used for our new class of destroyers.

[williamlloyd]

Interesting that 6 years after USS Zumwalt was commissioned, the USN discovered that it would make for a great hypersonic missile platform

[willymac]

Originally the Navy had planned on building 32 Zumwalt class destroyers. This would have required them to build FAR more LRAP shells, which would have brought the projected cost per shell down to $25, 000 each. It was only after cutting the program back to only 3 ships, and therefore drastically reducing the number of LRAP ammunition, that the cost per shell ballooned up to $800, 000 each.

[billwhite]

Not really true. The three ships have plenty of missiles. The guns were "meant" for cheaper shore fire support. The price on the shells from manufacturer was around $100, 000. However, when the navy wisely decided to cut the number to be built at three, instead of planned 32, the shell vendor changed the price, due to projected number of shells to be purchased, to be closer to a million dollars a round. But they did check before building. So two or three things wrong in a quick video. Good research there.

[zephyr]

When you design a warship that looks like the bad guys from Tron.

[shahnxaoc]

As an American citizen, this is one of the thing I've paid for and lost money on.