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Behind the Navy's Stealth Destroyer Shuffle

Last month, seemingly out of the blue, the Navy decided to cut its $5-billion-a-copy DDG-1000 stealth destroyer from seven copies to just two, and buy an extra 12, older DDG-51 Burke-class ships instead. When challenged, the Navy justified its decision a number of ways, citing the DDG-1000’s skyrocketing cost and its supposed inability to defend […]

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Last month, seemingly out of the blue, the Navy decided to cut its $5-billion-a-copy DDG-1000 stealth destroyer from seven copies to just two, and buy an extra 12, older DDG-51 Burke-class ships instead.

When challenged, the Navy justified its decision a number of ways, citing the DDG-1000's skyrocketing cost and its supposed inability to defend against certain threats, including the latest anti-ship missiles.

"It has a lot of technology, but it cannot perform broader, integrated air and missile defense," Adm.
Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, tells the Los Angeles Times, in his first interview since the controversial move to cancel the destroyer program.

Still, when some Congresscritters protested to the cuts, the Navy said it might tack an extra stealth ship onto the order, while still keeping all or most of the new Burkes.

Meanwhile, the company that makes the DDG-1000's radar says that the Navy is wrong. The new destroyer can use air-defense missiles after a few, relatively cheap modifications, Raytheon claims. The company is lobbying hard to keep the ship class alive. Despite this, the DDG-1000 program is unlikely to extend beyond the three vessels. That third ship was the Navy's consolation prize to Congress and the defense industry.

Follow?

In truth, this whole warship affair has been awfully befuddling even to long-time Pentagon trackers. To draw some sense out of the confusion, DANGER ROOM spoke to naval analyst Bob Work, from Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, about the planning and politics behind the warship shuffle.

Work, a highly respected expert on naval issues in the Washington,
D.C. area, seems to side with the Navy over Congress and industry. He may be wrong, but his opinion is worth hearing.

The root of the problem, Work says, is the threat from ballistic missiles. In addition to the looming threat of nuclear-tipped missiles from Iran and North Korea, China has been moving fast on new ballistic anti-ship missiles.

The SM-3 Standard missile, fired only by warships, is by far the
Pentagon's most successful missile-defense system, having passed several important trials while other BMD weapons are stuck in testing limbo.

Such was the ballistic-missile threat that the Navy decided it needed 89 ships capable of firing the SM-3. At the same time, Work explains, the Navy realized the DDG-1000 realistically would never be able to fire and guide the SM-3. The stealth destroyer is optimized for firing land-attack missiles; adding Standard missiles would cost big bucks, according to the Navy. (This is a major point of contention.)

There are currently 84 large surface combatants, split between *Burke *destroyers and Ticonderoga cruisers, capable of carrying the combo of Standard missiles and the BMD-capable Aegis radar. But the seven oldest Ticos, like the new DDG-1000s, can't affordably be modified to fire SM-3s. So the Navy needs another 12 SM-3
"shooters" to meet the requirement for missile defense, and there's no time to wait for the future CG-X cruiser. More Burkes are the only option.

But with new amphibious ships, submarines, carriers and
Littoral Combat Ships in production alongside the DDG-1000s, there was just no room in the budget for Burkes and DDG-1000s. Something had to give, and that meant axing the five DDG-1000s we haven't paid for yet, including one in Fiscal Year 2009.

Bottom line: missile defense emerged as a major naval mission at the same time that the DDG-1000's alleged design limitations and rising costs converged, all while shipbuilding budgets were getting squeezed. In this environment, the stealth destroyer seemed both pointless and over-priced.

But politics have a way of overriding even the clearest fiscal and strategic realities, the way Work describes it.

Enter Raytheon, which builds the DDG-1000's SPY-3 radar, and Bath Iron Works, the Maine shipyard building the DDG-1000. "Raytheon was beside themselves with this decision [to cut DDG-1000s]," Work says. "Raytheon saw the
SPY-3 as a way of breaking the Aegis mafia in the
Navy.
Raytheon convinced Senator [Edward] Kennedy, who represents their district, to say 'not so fast'
on the FY09 ship, and Senator [Susan] Collins [of Maine] said, 'Not so fast, I want to see what this does to Bath.' So the Navy said, 'We’ll concede on this ship.'"

By granting Collins and Kennedy a third DDG-1000, the Navy effectively bought off the major opposition to its new warship plan. Now the sea service can move forward on buying more Burke-class BMD shooters.

But didn't it seem like the Navy changed its mind fast on the
DDG-1000s?

Only from the outside, Work contends. He says that Deputy
Defense Secretary Gordon England, chief weapons buyer John Young and Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike
Mullen were all "long-time, big DDG-1000 supporters." But new Navy boss
Admiral Gary Roughead hated the ship from the day he assumed command in
September. "Behind the scenes, Roughead trying to convince those guys they made a bad decision. It looks like the Navy turned on a dime, but Roughead's been working behind the scenes for a year."

(Art: BAE)

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