These are the voyages of the warship Zumwalt

September 8, 2016 3:21 PM

Massive, futuristic Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer sets sail to join U.S. Navy fleet under command of Captain James Kirk.
posted by prize bull octorok (67 comments total)

That ship looks like the final boss in an Amiga game.
posted by theodolite at 3:28 PM on September 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's kind of strange how ship classes have been inflating over the years. This ship displaces 15,000 tons; there were heavy cruisers in WWII which were smaller than that, and USS Oregon (a WWI-era battleship) displaced ten and a half thousand tons.

The Japanese have been particularly adept at this. The Japanese constitution forbids Japan from building or operating aircraft carriers. So now they build them anyway, but they call them "Destroyers". (Such as JMSDF Hyuuga, which displaces 19,000 tons full load.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:39 PM on September 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

$22.5 billion program cost.

Such cool tech... *sigh*
posted by adept256 at 3:52 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

They're building 3 of these, at a total cost of $22 billion.

Just think what else they could have done with $22 billion.
posted by miyabo at 3:53 PM on September 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

Massive, futuristic Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer...

[cue] imperial march[/cue]
posted by ennui.bz at 3:53 PM on September 8, 2016

Does anyone else feel that the "Ronald Reagan Strike Group" should be deployed predominantly against the homeless, mentally ill, poor, Black, and gay populations?

Just to live up to the name?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:54 PM on September 8, 2016 [30 favorites]

FAS report on this multi-10-billion dollar clusterfuck.
posted by lalochezia at 3:59 PM on September 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

but multibillion clusterfuck ships are vital for the future of our multitrillion clusterfuck military engagements
posted by phooky at 4:01 PM on September 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

Also, I mean, it's a stealth ship. You can still see it, it's huge, and it doesn't go anywhere particularly fast. The only reason for the massive investment in stealth technology is to avoid radar-homing missiles, but there are all kinds of non-radar-homing missiles and airplanes that would work just fine to blow it up.
posted by miyabo at 4:01 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just think what else they could have done with $22 billion.

Direct cash payments would've been a whole lot more effective at keeping people out of poverty than a makework program for another Navy boondoggle. Alas, it wouldn't have bought second horse farms in northern Virginia for a bunch of defense contractors.
posted by indubitable at 4:02 PM on September 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Also, I mean, it's a stealth ship. You can still see it, it's huge, and it doesn't go anywhere particularly fast. The only reason for the massive investment in stealth technology is to avoid radar-homing missiles, but there are all kinds of non-radar-homing missiles and airplanes that would work just fine to blow it up.

You have to get the airplane to the ship for that to happen. Nobody in the world could do that against the United States. Remember, the United States could get rid of the United States Air Force and it would still have the largest air force in the world because of the planes operated by the other services.

The big danger are beyond-the-horizon missiles like the British found in the Falklands. That's what these ships are supposed to hide from. It could still be a boondoggle of course but it's not a patently-absurd-on-its-face idea.
posted by Justinian at 4:07 PM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Also I'm pulling for this guy to do a great job so he can take command of CVN-80 when it is launched in 2025.
posted by Justinian at 4:08 PM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

You can't afford this anymore. If you want to spend big on cool hi-tech stuff, go to space again. Everyone loved that! The moon landing did more for international unity and common humanity than any stupid weapon. You have enough weapons.

I will withdraw my objection if it is christened Boaty McBoatface. I believe the name isn't taken.
posted by adept256 at 4:11 PM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I will withdraw my objection if it is christened Boaty McBoatface. I believe the name isn't taken.

Better check with Boaty McBoatface first.
posted by effbot at 4:19 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

This one doesn't have the railgun. The USS Lyndon B. Johnson may have a railgun when it launches in two years. A fucking railgun, on a ship named after a president famous for waving his big dick around.

A fictionalized Zumwalt-with-a-railgun features heavily in the novel Ghost Fleet, last year's military porn potboiler. A technowar thriller set in the near future after the evil Russkies Chinese attack America. If you like 24 and Tom Clancy novels, and can stomach the politics, it's a fun read.
posted by Nelson at 4:19 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

The Zumwalt was a disaster of execution for sure, but it or something like it makes a lot more sense to me as a long term investment than more carriers. If the goals of mounting railguns and lasers on them are ever realized in the form of reliable rapid fire weapons, it would be a game changer on a nearly unprecedented level to the point where it wouldn't surprise me to see future nuclear carrier hulls converted to Zumwalt-style ships in the same way battleships were converted to carriers during WW2. If you can protect it from submarines, nothing could get near it and it could destroy any target within a huge range virtually at will.
posted by feloniousmonk at 4:20 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

They're building 3 of these, at a total cost of $22 billion.

Just think what else they could have done with $22 billion.

A wall between the US and Canada? Surveillance cameras on every street corner? APCs, armed drones and grenade launchers for every police force? What?
posted by happyroach at 4:21 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Zumwalt-with-a-railgun

User name! Get your user name! Only $10 billion!

User name!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:23 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

"James A. Kirk"

So close...
posted by Automocar at 4:29 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

prize bull octorok: "under command of Captain James Kirk."

If that were my name, and I were the commander of a futuristic destroyer, I would put at the bottom of my official Navy bio something like "Yes, I've heard that joke before."
posted by chavenet at 4:29 PM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'd put "Boldly been there before."
posted by notyou at 4:35 PM on September 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

"James A. Kirk"

So close...

"And some day, I hope to be James The Kirk."
posted by Etrigan at 4:40 PM on September 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

The Zumwalt, Daly said, has the smallest crew size since the Farragut-class built in the 1930s, which featured a similar complement of sailors. And those ships were tiny in comparison to the Zumwalt, he added.

From Wikipedia:
Displacement of USS Farragut (DD-348) : 1,365 tons
Displacement of USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000): 14,564 tons
posted by ckape at 4:48 PM on September 8, 2016

I suspect this is like the Seawolf series of submarines. Three were built, and then Congress pulled the plug on the program because it was too damned expensive. The successor to the USS Seawolf was USS Virginia, a much better boat and lots less expensive.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:59 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

There were initially going to be 32 of these things.
posted by rockindata at 5:00 PM on September 8, 2016

It's my firm belief that similar to Catch-22's Major Major Major Major, Captain Kirk was given his rank due to an autocorrect malfunction that assumed a Star Trek reference where none was intended.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:05 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

This provided tons of work of all sorts for all kinds of shipbuilding professionals who will now have to find other ways to support their families in an otherwise economically depressed state of Maine.

Unfortunately many of the skills don't translate very well to an "information-based" economy. Also all of the semiconductor factories which possibly could absorb some of these people are all sending work offshore.
posted by BarcelonaRed at 5:23 PM on September 8, 2016

I realize that there are sound military reasons for it, but the lack of windows in that thing would be depressing over time.

The lines are not at all elegant, but perhaps the functionality makes up for it. I would love to see a video of it in heavy seas to see how it compares to a more traditional design.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:24 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Zumwalt-with-a-railgun

I know, I know
It's serious...
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:26 PM on September 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

Is that a reference to Girfriend in a coma?
posted by adept256 at 5:29 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

So, organizations tend to learn from the mistakes and successes of the last iteration of an initiative. The ship's predecessor appears, from nearly three minutes of Wikipedia research, to be a successor to the very capable Arleigh Burke class, whereas the Zumwalts went from 32 ships built to 3.

So is this just the warship version of an odd-numbered Star Trek movie?
posted by The Gaffer at 5:31 PM on September 8, 2016

It's my firm belief that similar to Catch-22's...

So his first name is "Captain," eh?
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:34 PM on September 8, 2016

I haven't got it to hand, but the biography of Mr Lockheed Skunkworks threw some respectable shade on the US Navy and its approach to technology. As in - "do anything you like, son, but never ever ever work for the USN". It's been a while, but ISTR that one 'stealth battleship' project got totes torpedoed because the FOOLS said something like "You can't really stealth a big ship, because it's huge and slow and metal and goes in straight lines in two dimensions, but the same level of automation means you can run one with like five people".

Wrong answer.
posted by Devonian at 5:37 PM on September 8, 2016

similar to Catch-22's Major Major Major Major

This would be better in German where he could be Mr. Major Doctor Doctor Professor Professor Major Major Major if he were sufficiently accomplished. (I assume those would be in a different order in real life)
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:40 PM on September 8, 2016

It's serious...

...and earworm.

Ta.
posted by pompomtom at 5:44 PM on September 8, 2016

I am no military buff so my exposure is limited but this is easily one of the most menacing, evil looking pieces of modern machinery I've ever come across.
posted by Tevin at 5:47 PM on September 8, 2016

"In Soviet Union, Walt zooms you!"
posted by sneebler at 6:00 PM on September 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I do not like that hull design, the waterline is all wrong. It looks like a sub.

I bet it will prove useful- it is an offshore missle launcer, that is about it- so all the radar stealth stuff makes sense, I guess.
posted by vrakatar at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2016

I know that a lot of people get off on military hardware, and jobs, and global power, and "defense" nudge nudge wink wink, but I personally find the spectacle of so much money being spent on this sort of thing obscene, in the worst possible stomach turning way.
posted by signal at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

With it's angled sides, lack of windows, and prominent central feature, it kind of hearkens back to the Monitor and the Merrimack -- the very first ironclad ships. While the Monitor was called a "cheesebox on a raft," the Zumwalt is more like a cheese wedge on a ... wedge of cheese.
posted by Modest House at 6:04 PM on September 8, 2016

Why couldn't an adversary keep a handful of stealthy, long-range, long-duration, high-altitude drones in the air and just follow this thing like gulls around a fishing boat?
posted by Auden at 6:10 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Or maybe one of those things called "submarines" that I keep hearing about? I bet you could even launch missiles from some of 'em!
posted by indubitable at 6:13 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Futuristic? Looks more like Brutalism is making a comeback. Seriously it's like a chunk of someone's college campus fell off and floated away.
posted by drinkyclown at 6:25 PM on September 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

What is the prior probability that this thing don't sail any better than the f-35 flies?
posted by bukvich at 6:35 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Cool-looking boat, for sure, but I wonder what fraction of the $22 billion went to the executives and shareholders of Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. If they could get paid off directly, maybe the difference could still be substantial enough to pay for the things that we need: new public schools, hospitals, bridges, transit systems; higher education; healthcare; better wages; etc. Even funnel it to the VA, if every last dollar must be spent on the military. The veterans whose bodies and minds get destroyed fighting our wars overseas could probably use some decent medical care that this boat could have bought.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 6:41 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Certainly I have been ribbed every now and then with someone saying, 'You're going where no man has gone before, on this class of ship,'" Kirk joked.

This makes me think of Fred Willard in Spinal Tap. "Those haircuts definitely wouldn't pass military muster. Although I'm one to talk, I'm getting a little shaggy myself. Better not get too close to you, they'll think I'm part of the band. I'm joking of course."
posted by teponaztli at 6:44 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

... all I can think is the knee-jerk "at least he made O-6"... can you imagine the crap he got as an LTJG?
posted by Seeba at 7:07 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

San Diego Port Authority offers free cruises. The last one I went on there were several weirdo-looking ships along the way and I think one or two were the Zumwalt-weird-looking class.

It's quite a nice cruise and the price can't be beat: more info
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:18 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Does it have big bridge windows with curtains and a ocean whooshing view or a flying submersible shaped like a Manta Ray complete with nuclear war heads?
posted by clavdivs at 7:26 PM on September 8, 2016

Futuristic? Looks more like Brutalism is making a comeback

Brutalism is the future, and always will be. And also Brazil.
posted by Auden at 8:05 PM on September 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Well this is as good a place as any to point out that today -- TODAY -- is the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast episode ("The Man Trap") chronicling of the voyages of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the USS Enterprise.

And here (previously) is an account of a real-life corbomite manouever by a real life (U.S. Army) Captain (Pierre D.) KIrk during the US military involvement in Vietnam.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:09 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of bummed they aren't building more to amortize some of the development costs. But if we don't really need the ship then I guess it's the sunk cost fallacy.
posted by Joe Chip at 8:18 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

San Diego Port Authority offers free cruises.

If the weather starts getting rough, does the tiny ship get tossed, and then set aground on the shore of an uncharted desert isle?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:22 PM on September 8, 2016

In Dai Senryaku VII this class is one of the best units you can have. Of course, it's ludicrously expensive and only solves those problems you can solve by killing people.

Also, vulnerable to far cheaper subs.
posted by pompomtom at 9:01 PM on September 8, 2016

I haven't got it to hand, but the biography of Mr Lockheed Skunkworks

I was trying to figure out who "Mr. Lockheed Skunkworks" is - I'm guessing this guy?
posted by atoxyl at 9:10 PM on September 8, 2016

(Or do you mean Kelly Johnson?)
posted by atoxyl at 9:12 PM on September 8, 2016

what fraction of the $22 billion went to the executives and shareholders of Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics

Profit margins in the defense industry are just under 10%. That's actually not too surprising since many individual contracts set a maximum profit of 10%.

But I'm not mad about the profit margin, or the relatively high salaries paid to the engineers who designed it. Only a few people are getting filthy rich off this, most are just making good incomes. The problem is the sheer waste of resources to do the project in the first place. Even just in the military hardware domain, the money would have been far better spent on cheap drones or ground vehicles. Outside that domain... an engineer who's smart enough to do R&D on a railgun is also smart enough to work on a hyperloop train or a better wind turbine or a Mars rover, you just have to pay them to do it.
posted by miyabo at 10:02 PM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Question for someone who understands modern warfare tactics: are ships such as these actually useful? I understand the value of aircraft carriers because they act as mobile airbases and can allow you to fight just about anywhere. But given the increased role (and arguably, effectiveness) of unmanned drones, why even bother with a weapons platform like a naval destroyer? And with just three of them, what kind of deployment would you expect? Submarine-launched guided missiles seem like they would be far more effective for that tactic and aircraft carriers have got you covered with the drones and other air-related weapon systems. These things really do seem like disgustingly expensive toys someone wanted just 'cause.
posted by tehjoel at 5:43 AM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

You spend that much on a hammer, and you're going to be looking for a nail.
posted by Beholder at 6:15 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Wikipedia link covers some of it, and a glance at Wikipedia's page on the Arleigh Burke Class, which this was supposed to replace will tell you more, but basically these vessels do a little bit of a lot of different things: anti-aircraft, anti-sub, anti-surface (other ships) some fire support (for, like, the Marines on the beach), and lately, anti-ballistic missile. They support aircraft carriers, and they can operate on their own, where maybe you don't really want or need to send a carrier and assorted vessels.

Someone who has been following the politics and engineering closely may be able to explain why the Navy has apparently given up on this class as a Burke replacement.
posted by notyou at 6:22 AM on September 9, 2016

I think if I were Captain James A. Kirk, I would just start pretending I had never heard of Star Trek and had no idea what it was.

"So you're going to boldly go where no man--"

"Yeah, people keep saying that to me. I don't get it. What's that about?"

"Well, you know, it's what Captain Kirk says in Star Trek."

"Oh, I don't really have time to read much fiction."

"It's not a book, it's a TV series. And a bunch of movies. Like, a dozen of them. You have to know about Star Trek."

"Maybe it was popular when I was getting my Masters Degrees in National Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College. I was pretty busy then. Didn't really have time for TV."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Sorry, I have to get back to my command duties. Lots to do to make sure we're ready for this upcoming five-year-mission."
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:35 AM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

Wonder how this thing would fare against an 'unscripted' speedboat swarm attack?
posted by Happy Dave at 8:09 AM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Question for someone who understands modern warfare tactics: are ships such as these actually useful?

Well for a start, their job would be there to defend the aircraft carrier, which is not all that good at defending itself. So it should have anti-aircraft and anti-submarine systems. Beyond that, it would have the capability to operate independently, just like cruisers are supposed to.

In fact, the Zumwalt and Ashleigh Burke destroyers really could be classified as cruisers. Though in the Navy forums I hear that destroyers aren't as good as cruisers at coordinating air defence. FWIW.

I mean, it's s pain that so much money was wasted for so little results, but that's part of the problem with our military's insistence in pushing the technological envelope in our vehicles. We're basically demanding test bed vehicles as weapon systems, they fail out, and then we go back to using decades old equipment.
posted by happyroach at 9:04 AM on September 9, 2016

It doesn't sound like they built it to go exploring.
posted by biffa at 9:17 AM on September 9, 2016

if I were Captain James A. Kirk, I would just start pretending I had never heard of Star Trek and had no idea what it was.

Later, he got so sick of it that he changed his name -- to "Eric Smoketoomuch".
 
posted by Herodios at 10:30 AM on September 9, 2016

Well for a start, their job would be there to defend the aircraft carrier, which is not all that good at defending itself. So it should have anti-aircraft and anti-submarine systems. Beyond that, it would have the capability to operate independently, just like cruisers are supposed to.

In fact, the Zumwalt and Ashleigh Burke destroyers really could be classified as cruisers. Though in the Navy forums I hear that destroyers aren't as good as cruisers at coordinating air defence. FWIW.

I mean, it's s pain that so much money was wasted for so little results, but that's part of the problem with our military's insistence in pushing the technological envelope in our vehicles. We're basically demanding test bed vehicles as weapon systems, they fail out, and then we go back to using decades old equipment.

I agree-- it seems like a tremendous amount of money for not much return.
posted by tehjoel at 11:08 AM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tiberius
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:03 AM on September 10, 2016