USS ‘Zumwalt.’ Photo via Wikipedia
Roll Call: Zombie Zumwalt: The Ship Program That Never Dies
Two ships have been ‘delivered’ but don’t exactly work as planned
In 2006, Congress started funding construction of the first of three Navy destroyers named after the late famed Navy chief Adm. Elmo Zumwalt. But nearly a dozen years later, none of the Zumwalt ships is ready to fight.
None will be for years. And hundreds of millions more dollars will be required to get there. The ships, known as DDG 1000s, may yet become capable and, with enough additional money, they may even become warships of unprecedented lethality. But the extent of the program’s problems to date — and the remaining cost to make things right — has not been fully appreciated even among many defense experts.
For starters, no Zumwalt-class ship is ever expected to perform the primary mission it was built for: striking land targets with artillery. The guns the Navy and its contractor built the ships around do not work well enough and the rounds they would fire cost too much.
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WNU Editor: At $8.5 billion a ship .... with all the problems that have yet to be addressed .... what more can I say.
