By Geoff Fein
After more than a decade, the Navy and its industry partners are preparing to begin construction on “the largest investment ever made in surface naval capability”–DDG-1000, a Navy official said last week.
Last week, General Dynamics [GD] Bath Iron Works and Northrop Grumman [NOC] Shipbuilding were awarded construction contracts for the Navy’s multi-mission combat ship. DDG-1000 will be built under a unique dual-lead ship acquisition effort where both yards will build portions of each ship.
The cost of the lead ships, DDG-1000 and DDG-1001, are just under $3.3 billion, according to Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy research, development and acquisition ship program. The third ship is just under $2.5 billion, she added.
The fifth ship of the seven-ship class is cost capped at $2.3 billion, said Capt. Jim Syring, DDG-1000 program manager.
The original plan called for the Navy to purchase 32 DDG-1000s. However, over time that number has been dwindled down to seven. Stiller told reporters during a Pentagon briefing Friday that the Defense Acquisition Board has asked the Navy to recalculate the total program cost for seven ships. The Navy had estimated the cost to buy 10 DDG-1000s to be approximately $36 billion, she said.
DDG-1000, to be built by Bath, will be delivered to the Navy in April 2013. DDG-1001, to be built by Northrop Grumman, will be delivered in June 2014, Syring said.
Fabrication on both ships will begin in August.
Initial Operational Capability for DDG-1000 is planned for late 2014, and the ship will deploy in 2015, two years after delivery, he added.
DDG-1000 will be equipped with the latest radar and weapon technologies, some which are still under development. Chief among the new systems is the volume search radar (VSR), or S-band radar, and the ship’s dual band radar or X-band radar.
The advanced radar and vertical launch system could make DDG-1000 a good fit for missile defense. However, there is no requirement for that mission.
“The VSR on the ship is physically sized to 12 feet,” Syring said. “Currently in the design, to meet the validated requirements, which do not include missile defense for DDG- 1000, we are populated to about 8-feet, so there is growth capability.”
Any increase in the size of the VSR would likely require new algorithms and software modifications, he added.
To build a radar beyond the current 12-foot limit would require a redesign of the ship’s deck house, Rear Adm. Charles Goddard, program executive officer ships, said.
“Obviously those are some of the studies we have been doing as part of the CG(X) AoA (Analysis of Alternatives), for example,” he said. “From just a pure growth capability, it will be delivered with a 10 percent service life allowance. In terms of weight growth, [that] equates to 1,400 tons of growth that can go on the ship. It also has the capacity to grow one foot in [its] center of gravity.”