The Navy is on track to procure its newest, most advanced flight of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, with a Defense Acquisition Board in early fiscal year 2016 paving the way for construction awards to follow later that year, a program official said April 15.
The most significant capability introduced in the DDG-51 class flight III is the AN/SPY 6V air and missile defense radar by Raytheon [RTN], which is replacing the SPY-1D, Cmdr. Seth Miller, assistant program manager for the DDG-51 program, said at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space exposition.
“Very simply put, you can see an object half the size and twice the distance,” as well as control additional missiles in flight, he said. “Another unique capability of this radar is it has an open system ability to scale and adapt, so you can basically add all these small modules and get to greater power as we move forward with future platforms.”
The AN/SPQ-9B radar, manufactured by Northrop Grumman [NOC], is another new addition to the ship, Miller said. The radar will boost DDG-51’s on-the-horizon, anti-air warfare capability as well as its ability to detect periscopes and mines.
The Navy is also making changes to the hull design to accommodate the radars’ increased power and cooling requirements, he said.The new DDGs will be equipped with 3 megawatt generators that can fit roughly in the same footprint as current ones, as well as a 300-ton cooling plant to replace the 200-ton systems on current systems.
Because the new radar adds weight to top of the ship, the Navy had to modify the vessel’s stern and bottom to increase stability, Miller said. The service fortified the ship’s inner bottom structure with additional steel, which not only brings down its center of gravity, it also increases hull strength against underwater explosions and reduce the effects of corrosion. The width of the stern was increased by four feet on each side, adding volume to the ship.
Flight III also incorporates a combat system software upgrade, new computing hardware and new firefighting equipment, he said.
After a capabilities development document was signed last October, the Navy awarded flight III detailed design contracts to Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works [GD], Miller said.
Both companies are currently building the flight IIA destroyers that are leading off the DDG-51 restart program. The Navy on March 28 launched the first of those ships, the USS John Finn (DDG-113) made by HII.