Security

Stealth Destroyer Might Stop Missiles, for Cheap

In July, the Navy cut short plans to buy seven DDG-1000 "stealth destroyers," opting to buy more older DDG-51s instead. The move came as a surprise to Congress — and even to some senior Pentagon officials. Even more surprising was the Navy’s rationale. The sea service said the $3-billion-apiece destroyers could not fully operate SM-2 […]

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In July, the Navy cut short plans to buy seven DDG-1000 "stealth destroyers," opting to buy more older DDG-51s instead. The move came as a surprise to Congress -- and even to some senior Pentagon officials. Even more surprising was the Navy's rationale. The sea service said the $3-billion-apiece destroyers could not fully operate SM-2 air-defense missile and the SM-3 missile interceptor, this at a time when anti-ship missiles are a growing threat to warships.

Never mind that Navy Captain Jim Syring, the DDG-1000 program manager, claimed in March that the DDG-1000 would use such missiles, and use them better than any previous warship. The stealth destroyer decision has been awfully confusing to a lot of people -- none more than Dan Smith, a vice president at Raytheon, which builds the DDG-1000's dual-band radar. For a piece in The Washington Independent, I asked Smith what it would take to make the DDG-1000 an air- and missile-defender.

Not much, was his reply.__
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Smith said that for the DDG-1000 to fire SM-2s, the Navy needs only to fund the completion of an electronic data-link that allows the missile and the ship’s primary S-band radar to talk to each other. The Navy said that data-link would cost $80 million. And with an extra few hundred million
— “three times” the cost of the data-link, according to Smith — the Navy could link SM-2 missiles to the DDG-1000’s second radar, a futuristic X-band system, making the vessel an even better “air defender” than the current DDG-51.

As for missile defense with the SM-3, Smith said it would cost $550 million to do the R&D to give the DDG-1000 BMD capability, plus $110 million per ship outfitted. That might actually be cheaper than the cost of adding missile defense to DDG-51s.

There are still more questions than answers in the Navy's warship plan. Under Congressional pressure, the Navy has added back a third
DDG-1000 to the two it had already funded. And with a new administration taking office in January, you can bet a lot of people will be taking a fresh, hard look at what ships to buy, and how many.

[Image: via DID]__
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