By Dave Ahearn
Raytheon [RTN] has a proposal on the table with the Navy to make the emergent Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 destroyers missile defense platforms, according to a company official.
In an interview yesterday with sister publication Space and Missile Defense Report, Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems, noted that the Zumwalt-class destroyers have stealth capabilities, able to move in close to enemy shores without being detected by enemy radar.
“The good thing about Zumwalt is, it’s really the advanced ship, with the advanced combat system, and the advanced components of missiles and everything that brings it together to give it…the best capability that the Navy could have for the next few years,” Lawrence said.
Currently, the Navy sea-based missile defense is centered on advanced Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers equipped with the Aegis weapons control system built by Lockheed Martin [LMT], along with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptor by Raytheon.
His comments came after the Navy at one time proposed building more than 30 of the Zumwalt-class ships (also called DD-21 or DD(X) or DDG 1000), then scaled that back to 24, then down to seven ships, and then to just the two ships already under contract, while building eight or more of the older Arleigh Burke-class ships. The Navy said Arleigh Burkes have missile defense capabilities that are critically needed to counter terrorists and rogue states.
Without building those extra Arleigh Burkes, the Navy still would have more than 60 of those ships, and more than 20 Ticonderoga cruisers. Some 18 of them have been upgraded to Aegis missile defense platforms, and others could be.
Since then, however, the Navy has said it wishes to build a third Zumwalt, and then some more Arleigh Burkes.
Navy surface ships are built byGeneral Dynamics [GD] unit Bath Iron Works, and by Northrop Grumman [NOC] unit Ship Systems.
“The thing we’re talking about right now is even more over and above some of the capabilities that is in its [the Zumwalt] current requirements…specifically about missile defense,” Lawrence said.
“Is it a missile-defense-capable ship? And our answer–and we put proposals on the table–is, it could be.”
A Zumwalt missile defense system would be equipped with the same family of missiles that Raytheon built for the Aegis system, Lawrence added.
But, he added, the Zumwalt “would be a far more capable missile defense ship.”
Additionally, he said, “our proposal says let’s do some things that basically enhance the missiles so that they’re compatible across, say, the Aegis system and the Zumwalt class and then even our coalition partners.”
That would be accomplished, he said, by putting a data link on board the ships that “could talk to either one … can talk to Aegis, talk to Zumwalt, talk to our coalition partners. We think that that’s really the future. You make the missile interoperable across all those configurations. If you do that, then if the Navy chooses to make Zumwalt a missile-defense-capable ship, it becomes very easy to do–and we think very affordable.”
The Zumwalt combat system could track an enemy missile, and “the Zumwalt could be, then, a missile-defense-capable ship, with an SM-3 [interceptor], or SM-6, by itself,” with a dual data link on the missile.
Thus far, the Navy hasn’t accepted the Raytheon offer, deciding that the Zumwalt “is not a missile-defense-capable ship because they’ve decided, so far, not to buy that capability,” Lawrence said.
But the same could be said of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers until they are upgraded with the Aegis/SM-3 ballistic missile defense capability, he said. “These are…enhancements to the baseline destroyers, and you can do the enhancement to either one.”
Where all that comes down is a decision as to how many of each type of ship the Navy wishes to procure. “The big debate is, how much of either one do you want to do,” Lawrence said. “We believe that we have a proposal on the table that would make the Zumwalt the most capable missile defense destroyer in the fleet. But [first] you need to do a few things to the [interceptor] missiles, you need to do a few things to the combat system, you need to buy that incremental capability.”
As well, Zumwalts could function well in area air warfare, taking out incoming enemy air threats, Lawrence added.
“You put the SM-2s on board, eventually SM-6s, you got a very, very capable area air warfare defense destroyer,” he said.
The Zumwalt is the destroyer of the future, Lawrence said, able to get in closer to enemy territory without detection and being hit by enemy fire, to address emergent threats posed by rogue states.
He noted that the Zumwalt has “an incredible reduced signature” that on enemy radar makes the huge ship appear to be “a tiny boat, so it can get a lot closer, so it can project fire power a lot closer in, in some of these conflicts, and we believe there’s an affordable plan to add a missile defense capability to it, should the Navy decide to do that.”
“It could be a lot closer in” to enemy missile launching sites “than anything else we’ve got” in the fleet, he said, and more survivable in close-in scenarios.