Today, the United States has the most powerful and most efficient naval forces in the world. Maybe the Chinese Navy will be able to compete with them in the future. However, taking into account the engineering and technical difficulties and the huge costs of building aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, real rivalry can be expected no earlier than the 2050s. This is if we assume that the PRC will not face severe political and economic crises characteristic of authoritarian models of government.
However, the US Navy also has dark sides. One of them is the newest Zamvolt-class destroyers. Separately, it should be said about the "childhood diseases" of the ship. Light and not so. Recall that in December last year, USS Zumwalt had to interrupt testing and return to the shipyards located in Maine. The reason was the breakdown of the ship. There has been a problem with equipment that protects sensitive electrical equipment from unwanted power fluctuations. And as recently as last summer it became known that the second Zumwalt destroyer - Michael Monsour - needed to replace one of the turbines due to the fact that during the acceptance tests of the ship its blades were damaged.
In general, such problems, with all the desire, cannot be called “critical” for the program. They, in one form or another, accompany any sample of new military equipment, and even more so - a revolutionary one. And the Zamvolt is a truly revolutionary ship. Sooner or later, the difficulties described above are likely to be resolved. Nevertheless, the destroyer risks going down in naval history as a symbol of total failure. And that's why.
1. Early program errors
Of course, political changes cannot be unambiguously attributed to the shortcomings of a particular type of military equipment. However, in our case, it was the strengthening of the global role of the United States that had a decisive effect. Recall that the new destroyer appeared as part of the SC-21 (Surface Combatant for the 21st century) program, which implied the supply of a number of new generation invisible surface ships to the fleet. This also included the promising cruiser CG (X), which was abandoned altogether. The most surprising thing is that such a large-scale program appeared in 1994, after the Cold War. And it was conceived as an instrument of a new policy. In simple terms, the SC-21 was supposed to be economical, but it didn't.
It's hard to believe now, but at first the military wanted 32 of the latest destroyers, making the Zumwalt one of the workhorses of the US Navy. Then this number was reduced to 24, then to seven, and ultimately to three units altogether. That is, there are only three Zumwalt-class ships: the lead one - USS Zumwalt, USS Michael Monsoor and USS Lyndon B. Johnson. The latter was launched in 2017.
At the same time, only on research and development work, as of 2016, the United States spent about $ 5 billion, and the cost of the entire program back in 2015 was estimated at $ 22 billion. The price of one ship for such a small batch exceeded a fantastic four billion dollars: to put it mildly, a dubious result for that kind of money. We will not go into detail now about the technical stuffing of the Zamvolt, but it is clear that the three destroyers will not be able to fundamentally increase the combat potential of the US Navy. But they can become a problem in operation.
Thus, it is safe to say that the SC-21 program did not fit into the new policy of the Americans. Because at first the United States overestimated external threats, and then underestimated them. Perhaps, had it appeared now, when the Chinese began to sharply strengthen their naval forces, the fate of the program would have been different.
2. The concept of stealth ships
It makes no sense to remind about all the innovations of Zamvolt once again. We only note that the concept is based on a decrease in visibility. The specific shape of the body allows it to be hidden from detection by radar stations. It is estimated that the destroyer has stealth capabilities that reduce its effective scattering area by about 50 times compared to other warships and ships of similar size.
It would seem that this is a colossal achievement. But. No ship can be considered a "superhero". This is not a lone fighter, but part of the naval component, which includes ships of a wide variety of types. Perhaps the best example is an aircraft carrier strike group or AUG. It is known to include an aircraft carrier (or aircraft carriers), cruisers, destroyers, nuclear submarines, frigates and other ships and vessels. AUG of the US Navy, for example, may include one aircraft carrier, up to ten escort ships (cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines) and support ships.
Imagine that the Americans really managed to make the most inconspicuous cruiser and destroyer, as well as produce dozens of such ships. What's next? In principle, it would not have been possible to make an aircraft carrier strike group inconspicuous. This is a gigantic noisy "colossus", the main advantage of which is not stealth, but tactical strike potential in combination with very powerful air defense. By the way, this is quite enough for now. And it will be enough, as already mentioned, until the appearance of several AUG in China.
At the same time, no one says that stealth is not needed for carrier-based aircraft. For them, this is just about a key indicator: in the current conditions of the abrupt development of the capabilities of medium-range air-to-air missiles and air defense systems. But this is a completely different conversation, not directly related to Zamvolt.
3. Poorly designed look of the destroyer
The aforementioned problems forced the Americans to "rush" from side to side: where to attach three very large and very expensive ships? A cruise missile launch site? A destroyer can indeed have a lot of them - up to 80 pieces. But the US Navy has no shortage of tactical strike weapons. Suffice it to say that each of the converted Ohio submarines can carry up to 154 cruise missiles.
In the fall of 2018, it became known that the US Navy still found a task for Zamvolt - the destruction of ships far from the coast. To do this, the US military intends to slightly change the nomenclature of weapons, including anti-ship versions of Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles to protect against air attacks.
De facto, this means that the ship was simply not needed: it is very difficult to imagine the strikes of Zumwalt on the flood formations of a potential enemy. Here it is necessary to take into account the colossal potential of the US carrier-based aviation, in which such a solution, most likely, will never be needed at all. Recall that the US military has already begun to receive anti-ship missiles AGM-158 LRASM: they will be used by both the Navy and the Air Force.
At the same time, there are very serious questions to the artillery installation. Last year it became known that the US Navy would not purchase new ammunition for the Zamwalt destroyers. The fact is that the cost of one guided LRLAP projectile for its weapon exceeded one million dollars: in other words, it approached the price of the Tomahawk missile. The railgun, which they wanted to equip the ship with, is all the more reluctant to remember: it has long been abandoned.
Summarizing all of the above, it cannot be ruled out that the Zamvolt destroyers will face the fate of the Virginia-class nuclear-powered missile cruisers, which the Americans wrote off much earlier than the expected date.
