Largest destroyer, named after admiral who fought sexism, racism in the navy

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The late Admiral Zumwalt, who served in WWII and Vietnam was the former chief of naval operations. He had a namesake in the form of the recently-launched Zumwalt class destroyer (or cruiser due to its size and weaponry). The modern warship is packed with innovative electronics, sensors, weapons including a radical hull design reminiscent of the dreadnought battleships of WWI. Not only did he serve in those 2 wars but he also fought the established order within the navy itself. He advocated for the rights of active members of the navy including its veterans, its women and its minorities. As a reformer and innovator, he clearly symbolized this new class of warship. :yyeess:

ph.news.yahoo.com/warships-namesake-zumwalt-fought-racism-055522158.html
 
I was stationed on a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam when he was selected to be the new Chief of Naval Operations. He issued a flood of messages concerning his beliefs and intentions, which we named “Z-Grams”.
 
At dang near as much cost as a Nimitz class nuclear powered supercarrier, it had better be one seriously good ship. Especially since, unlike a Nimitz, it’s going to suck old fashioned dinosaur juice by the metric ton for propulsion.

63 miles is impressive gun range. The shells must sprout wings or something. Historically, the Navy could get about 25 miles from it’s leftover WWII battleships with 16" guns (all finally now retired) and rather less from the 5 and 6 inch shells of its newer ships. So if the target was over 20 miles from shore, you had to either shoot pricey Tomahawks or risk pilot lives on a fighter/bomber raid. You can afford an awful lot of Tomahawks for $3,000,000,000 though.

Even Tomahawks need a launcher, I suppose.
But the Burke class destroyers run about $500M each. You can STILL buy a lot of Tomahawks for $2.5B!

Much as I like cool new high tech stuff, one has to wonder what the point is here. If one of these new ships is really better than SIX of the old design, they’d better prove that somewhere. I’m open to the argument that the US Navy willingly pays a premium to be the best afloat, but I’m not sure I’m ready for 6 times the cost unless the capability is at least triple. Given the size of the oceans, we might be better off spreading the capability out among a greater number of ships of lesser cost, presuming overall survivability ends up comparable when concentrated. Maybe the manpower costs they cite will help, but I have my doubts. The LCS ships made extravagant claims on that end too that aren’t holding up to real life wear & tear.

Probably the biggest reason this class died at three ships total is that cost. For the foreseeable future, one of the primary roles of destroyers will be the screening of a carrier battle group. As bad guy missile capabilities improve, it might be better to have six Burkes in the screen than one of these. One lucky missile making it through can still sink a DD-1000. One lucky missile getting through the old way left you 5 remaining Burkes to protect against the next missile wave! With destroyers, one missile hit is pretty much all it takes for a mission kill, if not a sinking. Fighting through the hits went out with 1960’s missile tech and subsequent ship design (no longer bothering to try to design to soak up hits and keep fighting).
 
The thing I remember about Admiral Zumwalt was that his son, a Navy officer in Vietnam, died of cancer thought to be caused by the Agent Orange ordered sprayed by the Admiral. It was certainly tragic.
 
I met Admiral Zumwalt on two occasions.

First was at a diplomatic function In Washington D.C. when he was Director, Systems Analysis Division for the Chief of Naval Operations and the second was at an intelligence briefing after he had become Chief of Naval Operations.

i was stunned because he remembered me…later I learned that was an attribute of Flag Officers and Generals.

On both occasions I was taken by his eyebrows. They were like forests…and he seemed to comb them.

Admiral Zumwalt revised Naval uniform and grooming standards and that endeared him to most junior enlisted people. This, of course, did not sit well with senior enlisted and senior Commissioned Officers as well as the Chief Petty Officer community.

He did do much to end the racial prejudices that had plagued the Navy for over a century and championed equal rights and opportunities for women.

Thats about all…

Uniform regulations and grooming standards have reverted beck to the classic pre Zumwalt days

Hey he was a good guy…but no Halsey, Nimitz or Spruance. Those were Naval warriors. That breed died out with “Tail-hook”
 
manualman said:
At dang near as much cost as a Nimitz class nuclear powered supercarrier, it had better be one seriously good ship. Especially since, unlike a Nimitz, it’s going to suck old fashioned dinosaur juice by the metric ton for propulsion.
Click to expand...
CVN-77 cost $6.2B. CVN-78 is at $12.8 (First in class though). DDG 1000 is $3.5B. Even the newer '51s are pushing $1.8B.

The main issue on cost is the Navy is only buying three 1000s, so there’s no economy of scale. If they’d bought more than three the cost per unit would go down.
 
globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-build.htm

I may not have dug deep enough, but my info says that the last 51 is DDG112 and came in at $562M. Previous budget allocations showed one period where about $1.8B was approved for THREE Burkes, but I’m not seeing any of them costing that much individually.

Granted, I suspect that’s a bare ship before the ammo and stores are aboard, but I’m sure the same goes for the Zumwalt costs quoted.
 
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