The U.S. Navy's Second Stealth Destroyer Passes Muster, But Some Big Question Lay Ahead
The good: USS Michael Monsoor completed acceptance trials. The bad: The fate of the multi-billion dollar Zumwalt warship program is still very much in the air.
By Kyle Mizokami
The USS Michael Monsoor, the second of three Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers, has passed its acceptance trials on its way to joining the rest of the U.S. Navy. But the fate of the three stealth destroyers, the most advanced ships ever designed, remains up in the air as the Navy ponders how to move forward without ammunition for their main guns.
The USS Monsoor is named after US Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor. Monsoor was killed in action in Iraq in 2006 after throwing himself on an enemy grenade. Michael Monsoor passed its trials off the coast of Maine on February 1. The ship has returned to General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine.
The Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) oversees the testing of news ships to determine the quality of construction, the compliance with Navy regulations, and more. "Grueling" is the word most often used to describe INSURV inspections. According to USNI News, the Monsoor's navigation, damage control, mechanical, electrical, combat, communications, and propulsion systems all passed with flying colors.
But as the Michael Monsoor prepares to enter service, bigger questions about the Zumwalt-class destroyers remain unresolved. The Zumwalt-class destroyers were supposed to use their stealthy profiles to creep up on enemy coastlines and bombard targets as far as 83 miles inland with the precision-guided Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP). The Navy originally wanted 32 Zumwalt destroyers to provide naval gunfire support for the Marine Corps during amphibious landings, and so the Navy could bring something to the table for the land-based Global War on Terror.
Ultimately, though, the Navy cut the number of Zumwalt vessels from 32 to just 3, raising the total cost, including development costs, of the three ships to a whopping $23 billion. That's 50 percent more than the overall cost of the brand-new, first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.
Meanwhile, the cost of the LRLAP guided round exploded from $50,000 each to $800,000 each, making the new ammunition completely unaffordable. That's a big problem, because the whole point of the Zumwalts was their 155-millimeter Advanced Gun Systems, of which each destroyer has two. The Navy has cancelled LRLAP and for a while it looked like the service might adopt the Army's Excalibur GPS-guided artillery round for the Armored Gun System. That would have cost $250 million, or approximately 312 LRLAP rounds, but the Navy has scrapped those plans, too.
By the way, whatever happened to the Navy's railgun? The service had been planning to install electromagnetic railguns on the second or third Zumwalt destroyer, or to retrofit railguns onto all three ships later on. The U.S. Navy has been testing a railgun at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, in Virginia since 2012. The gun works, and the Navy was working to improve the weapon's rate of fire and barrel lifespan. But the Navy's enthusiasm for the railgun has slackened in recent months, as spending an enormous amount of money just to arm three ships was less than appealing.
For now, the Navy is eyeing the new Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a projectile the Pentagon is planning for the Army's 155-millimeter howitzers and Navy 127-millimeter deck guns. The HVP can reach speeds of up to 5,600 miles per hour and can knock down ballistic missiles. Whether or not it can sling a "projo" anywhere as fast or as far as the railgun or LRLAP is unknown. Meanwhile, China appears to be charging ahead with its own railgun, which was spotted last week mounted on a landing craft on the Yangtze River.
Finally, the Navy is also changing the primary mission of the Zumwalt destroyers from attacking land targets to sinking ships. Missiles, with their long ranges are much better at so-called "surface strike" missions than guns, making the two Advanced Gun Systems white elephants in the ship's new role. Exactly how the Navy salvages these three $7 billion ships and their gun armament and successfully adapts them to a new mission—any mission—remains to be seen.
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