[dragoon500ly]

GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYERS: Advanced Destroyer Design DD(X) Units Fiscal Year Status 1 ship 05 Planned 1 ship 06 Planned 1 ship 07 Planned 2 ships 08 Planned 3 ships 09 Planned 8 ships per year 10-13 Planned 8 ships per year 14-18 Planned

Displacement: approx. 14,000 tons full load

Length: approx. 183.0m overall Beam: approx.24.0m

Draft: approx. 8.4m

Propulsion: 4 Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines; approx. 100,000+shp;
electric drive; 2 shafts

Speed: approx. 30+kts Personnel: approx. 127-175

Aircraft: 1 or 2 MH-60R Seahawk; 3 Vertical Take-off Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (VTUAVs)

Weapons: Peripheral VLS for SM2MR/TLAM (approx. 80 missiles); (1)2 155mm Advanced Gun Systems (AGS); 2 Mk110 57mm/70-caliber Radars: SPY-3 multifunction Sonar: not determined

Note: The planned follow-up to the ARLEIGH BURKE call as the Navy’s primary surface combatant. The lead design agent for the program if Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipyard and includes Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Bath Iron Works as subcontractors. The contract for $2.9 billion is for the design, construction and testing of eleven major subsystems of the ship. Construction of the lead ship is not included in the award. This is a departure from the aborted ZUMWALT/DD 21 program, whose construction of the lead ship, series production, service-life maintenance and other cost-reduction features.

The DD(X) design has a wave-piercing, tumblehome hull configuration and a block, low-radar-cross-section superstructure. The guns will have two AGS with a reported 600-round magazine per gun. The design will have ‘peripheral’ VLS cells rather than the usual centerline ‘blocks; configuration of the Mk 41 VLS. Also referred to as the AVLS, it differs from the Mk41 in having four-cell modules installed along the perimeter of the ship rather. This arrangement will reduce the ship’s vulnerability to a single missile, shell or bomb hit.

All previous USN gas-turbine destroyers, as well as the TICONDEROGA class cruisers, had General Electric LM2500 gas turbines. DD(X) will be the first modern US warship with an all-electric drive and an integrated power architecture. Employing electric drive is expected to: reduce ship costs; reduce ship signatures, especially noise; reduce fuel consumption; reduce maintenance requirements; reduce manpower requirements and increase available power for sensors and weapons.
The key element of the integrated power architecture is a single-source generator for all of the ship’s power requirements. Instead of a reduction gear to convert the turbine power into propulsive power as in previous cruisers /destroyers the DD(X) engine will power an electric generator, the electricity produced is then carried via cable to a motor drive, this eliminates the requirement for the gas turbines to be aligned with propellor shafts, permitting considerable flexibility in ship design. In addition, the turbines can be operated at their most fuel-efficient speeds with the motor drive making changes in shaft turns/speed.