Zumwalt Destroyers: Three Next-Generation US Stealth Ships (That Kind of Look Like Ironclads)

Hello everyone, welcome back to another mega projects video, this one is about the Zuma class destroyer, but before we get into that, today's sponsor is Did you know that two out of

three

guys are going to experience some form of daring with a male pattern? When they were 35 I had no idea I have no idea at all I'm 33. My hair was gone What the hell was that Don't worry, they were just ghosts No, I'm a little scared Oh, what was I saying? I lost my hair when I was 25 years old. Luckily, it's 20 21 and you don't have to end up

look

ing like me.

Thanks Chase, who wrote the copy for this ad. Thanks very much buddy. I wish it had been around when he was younger, really. I wish I wanted to say that I like being bald, don't get me wrong, I like it, I mean, I accepted it, but I also liked having hair monomers versus science because now there are treatments like this that I have in my hand right now. It can combat the symptoms of hair loss and help you maintain the hair you have. It's too late for me. My hair doesn't come back. But you don't have to be like me.

You can stop hair loss early thanks to Keep Keeps. as generic versions of the only two FDA-approved drugs to treat hair loss, so you may have tried them before, but never at such a low price, that's right, you're thinking, oh, this is a drug , this is going to be expensive, well, it couldn't be. plus incorrect maintenance starts at just 10 a month, amazing, no need to visit a doctor's office, quick online consultation and boom a few days later, this arrives in discreet packaging, so for a limited time you can visit Keeps .com, slash making projects or click the link in the description below and you will receive 50 off your first order.

Every now and then a piece of military hardware emerges that sets a precedent for what is to come, often controversial, usually quite strange

look

ing, these machines are designed to push human warfare even further, the b-2 known as The

stealth

bomber was a perfect example of such a sleek and deadly futuristic machine covered in mega projects previously, this was an aircraft that changed aviation, but why should the skies have all the fun? Well, they don't. The

three

and what class of

ships

in the United States Navy are as close to a maritime version of the

stealth

aircraft as you're going to get.

With her sleek and understated features, you might be confused into thinking this boat was a bit boring, but behind them. Within its stealthy exterior lies a fearsome vessel capable of launching a chaotic bombardment without you even knowing it was there, but like many forward-thinking military machines, the process of designing, building and deploying the Zumwalt

destroyers

has been far from be easy navigation. many mega project videos about experimental things, what I will say now is that this does not surprise me in any way, the initial planned number has been drastically reduced in recent years, the US navy has been forced to adapt the Zumwalts for a type of mission profile different from the one that was originally designed.

This may well be the

next

generation

of war

ships

, but it is certainly struggling to find a place at the moment. Well, before I delve into his background, let me start by telling you a little. about this strange and strange looking ship is exactly the word you would use to describe one of these if you saw it at sea. I don't know, it would be more like if I moved my ship away from that military ship. Yes there are more. Class ships such as the p2 bombers were designed in a way to reduce their radar cross section as much as possible, so that a symbol destroyer looked more like a small fishing boat on a radar screen than a naval vessel. state-of-the-art marina at 190 meters.

In length they are slightly longer than the Washington Monument and have a beam of 24.6 meters and a draft of 8.4 meters. Zimwalts come with a wave-piercing hull shape, meaning the sides of the hull slope inward above the water line. rather than outward as is traditional, a feature that dramatically reduces the radar cross-section, these were primarily designed to be guided missile

destroyers

that would focus on land attacks, although their role in the US Navy has changed. changed since then, which we will get to a little later. Later in the video these are destroyers that can pack a powerful punch when needed, although there is a huge problem with the cannons which again is coming too soon and there have long been murmurs that they could one day carry railgun technology which would make these ships some. of the most feared on the high seas but I'm getting too far ahead of myself to begin the history of the symbol class we need to go back to a different time a seemingly calmer era before cobit before 9/11 the banking crisis the presidency of donald j trump such Maybe I'm just looking back with rose-tinted specs, but the 1990s seemed to be a bit of a quieter time, I don't know, a lot of wars in the 1990s were like ah, they're further away, we remember them less Era in the that our biggest presidential concern in the United States was what Bill Clinton was doing with his favorite cigars.

Everything seemed fine. The United States had emerged as the only remaining world superpower. Yeah, I mean, the Soviet Union collapsed in the '90s. It wasn't a quiet decade. the stock market was up and the US Navy was beginning to look to the future safe in the knowledge that the defense budget appeared to be a bottomless pit of staggering riches. I mean, what could go wrong? This was a time when the US government was making adjustments. with banking regulations that were implemented after the great depression to muzzle greedy bankers and prevent another calamitous global recession and I think we all know what comes

next

so I'll leave with these sarcastic undertones, in 1994 the US Navy established its sc21 , which is a service combatant for the 21st century research and development program to design a land attack ship for the new millennium, after numerous designs, they decided on the dd21, a design that closely resembles these and the current Walt ships, but was technically canceled in 2001 for political reasons.

The maneuvers were put into motion because, of course, they were. One word is that the program had become heavily associated with the Clinton administration and the incoming Bush administration didn't like it one bit that, alternatively, the Navy had balked at the rising costs and chosen to go the other way. In any case, the sc-21 program officially ended in november 2001. It probably says a lot about the comings and goings of the government and military that, although a program to build a set of ships that looked remarkably similar to the

zumwalt

s was cancelled, two months after September 11. A few years later, things were reorganized and once again the program to build a group of 21st century ships seemed to be undoubtedly driven by the attacks on the soul of the US, the US Navy made Big plans to build 32.

Zomworld destroyers and in December 2005 the House and Senate agreed to a spending bill to fund the construction of the first two ships, the stage was set for ships that would forever alter destroyer design. of ground attack, but of course, as expected, There were problems immediately before work on the

zumwalt

began, the navy began to back away from the project in the same way it would if it encountered a small child screaming in the supermarket, unfortunately these days that screaming child is mine, not that it's in any supermarket and you can't just walk away from your own screaming child in 2008, the US Navy made the rather extraordinary announcement that, in fact, they needed more Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the predecessor of the Zombot, and no longer needed the next-

generation

ship they had just spent 13 years on.

It was almost 10 billion short of designing it first, I thought it said millions, no, oh no, the token program had become a white elephant and with global stock markets sinking into the good old days of the 1990s, it now seems be a long way from the good old days. In the 1990s, some difficult decisions had to be made. By now, the unit cost of a single and a Walt had reached $5.964 million, $81 more than the Navy's original estimate in the 1990s, resulting in a violation of none. mccurdy amendment which essentially meant the navy had to go back to congress with a new proposal or cancel their production and they chose the latter i.e. sunk costs there good sir 2000 costs in 2009 the final decision was made with a A total of three zumwalts were then on the books, but that was to be the plan which envisaged that a large fleet of 32 state-of-the-art stealth destroyers would have been torpedoed even before it had left port or, rather, before they had the opportunity to build it. could leave port but there would still be three of them, eventually it was said that the work would be shared with Bath Iron Works in Maine which was building the first ship with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding scheduled to build the second work on the first ship of certain class called USS Zumwalt Creative. she did not begin until 2011 and was officially launched two years later on October 28, 2013.

The ship is named after Elmo Russells and Walt Jr, the youngest chief of naval operations in the history of the navy and the man responsible for the Zedgrams list. of initiatives I should say z-grams because they're American but hey, I'm British a list of initiatives started in the 1970s aimed at reducing sexism and racism in the navy, as well as allowing beards, sideburns, mustaches, longer hair and fixed and perhaps most importantly of all the beer vending machines in the barracks this guy sounds like a legend he isn't it's like let's get rid of the sexism and racism and get rid of the beer too it's not hard to see why it was such a popular figure, he had no shame, the first captain of the uss zumwalt attracted a lot of press attention not for anything he did but simply because of his name james kirk by no means another legend, well i know what you all are thinking, so let's get this over with and live long and prosperous, Star Trek fans certainly will.

I got some, I did it, I did it, I got excited about it, well it started on the second zumwalt of the USS Michael Mansour in May 2013 and took almost exactly three years to complete before being launched on June 21, 2016. And in a remarkable way. coincidence the captain of that ship was jean-luc picard no really no really it wasn't it wasn't but it would be cool if it was michael monsoor was a us navy seal who died in iraq in 2006 after throwing himself into a live grenade to save To those around him this episode is full of legends.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Bush in 2008. The final on what class of ship is the USS Lyndon B Johnson, which was launched in January 2017 and launched in December 2018. It does not explain who it is named after and Well, I won't either. More than two years later, the ship is still being fitted out and has not yet been officially commissioned. Well, let's dive in and take a closer look at the ships. By themselves the stealth technology is worth starting with, as I mentioned the Zermot class ships use a wave piercing drop hull form designed to reduce their radar cross section but they don't stop there, the zumwalts almost They look like old ironclad ships from the The turrets on the deck are from the 19th century and almost everything is a uniform gray and carefully hidden.

At first glance, the ship looks like a futuristic sea ship or the dullest ship to ever set sail, but appearances can be deceiving. Everything on the Zimwaltz is carefully constructed. and mostly hidden to keep the radar cross section down, the integrated composite dock looks more like a dull 1970s Soviet tower, but more importantly it only has six flat, smooth surfaces and, in the cases where Since the bridge rests on radar antennas and other electronic devices, it is again intended to maintain that radar cross. -Section as low as possible The fearsome gun battery is located on deck supports at the front of the ship.

What appear to be two anonymous gray blocks can actually become two 155-millimeter naval guns in an instant. This advanced weapons system was designed to use the long-range ground attack projectile weapon, a next-generation weapon capable of firing with incredible accuracy, perhaps up to 185 kilometers, that is, less than 15 miles away, without However, some sources say that this is less military material, it tends to be a bit classified, but inNot really, and it is. This is where the awkward zomwaltz story starts to get a little slapstick: the long-range ground-based projectile program was canceled in 2016 after the costs of the projectiles reached nearly a million dollars each and even the U.S. government The US considered this a bit excessive. and the us government loved to spend money, so they were left with two ships that had weapons designed for something that no longer exists.

As for the third symbol, the USS Lyndon B Johnson, the plan was originally to use the Navy's latest railgun technology, but when push came to shove, the technology wasn't even remotely ready. If you want more on railguns, we actually have a video about it here on megaprojects. Hey, so they installed 155 millimeter cannons. Remember that the cannons cannot actually be used because the projectiles are no longer manufactured because they cost a million dollars each, but that does not mean that these ships are completely defenseless, far from it, in fact, they all have vertical launch mk-57 with a total of 80 launch cells that can use the edge 162 evolved missiles sea sparrow tomorrow missiles and vertical launch anti-submarine missiles there are also two auxiliary cannons that use the brand's 46 mod 2 cannon weapon system 30 millimeters these cannons have long and complicated names the ships also come with the sh- 60 lamps or the MH-60R helicopter and carry several autonomous unmanned helicopters taking into account the radar cross section, all of them are locked in a hangar in the rear of the ship, where there is also a small flight deck, one of the reasons the navy gave some serious thought to using railguns due to the unique way zimwalts gain their powerThe ships come with a system Integrated power supply or IPS that provides power to everything on board and not just the engines.

They use two Rolls-Royce mt-30 main turbine generators, basically an ocean version of what powers the Boeing Triple Seven. Each generator pumps 34.5 megawatts. of power while the ship also has two Rolls-Royce RR4500 auxiliary turbine generators capable of providing 3.9 megawatts each. Now that's a lot of energy, in case you didn't know, the 78 megawatts of electricity from the main generators combined is enough to power 50,700 American homes, and there's certainly plenty left for some energy-hungry experimental technology. It's crazy that that ship can plug in and basically power a reasonably sized city, but of course that experimental technology is railguns and railguns aren't even remotely ready.

Boats have a top. speed of around 13 knots, about the same as the Arleigh Burke class ship that came before and also after it. The sad thing about the Zimmer-class destroyers is that they are, or really could be, really phenomenal ships, but they seem to have just gotten away. It is discovered how a program that cost 23 billion could simply be forgotten, well that is an absolute mystery when the navy began planning the zumwalts which were designed as land attack ships that would carry the most modern weaponry on the planet, unfortunately Things just haven't happened. As it turns out, the cost involved with the program has been absolutely staggering, with each ship costing $7.6 billion, which is half of what a new aircraft carrier costs.

These costs are simply unsustainable and remember the navy was initially hoping to have 32 of these, then there is the matter of weaponry, the ships may have cost a bomb and have no doubt caused many a headache or two due to their next generation design but At least the weapons for which the Zumwalts were designed are finished and ready. Railguns may be the future, but it looks like we still have a ways to go before we have them permanently mounted on the side of a US Navy destroyer, like the other guns that went in their place, well, a million of dollars per projectile is absurdly expensive and it is not difficult to see where the project was canceled.

These are ships that are way ahead of their time, in fact, perhaps too ahead of their time, but all is not lost for these. three friends, it looks like zumwalts will now be used as ship destroyers instead of land attack ships. They will now mainly use the mst maritime attack tomahawk, which can hit targets at a distance of up to a thousand kilometers, while there is also talk of installing the latest navy laser technology. that can be used on smaller targets in close proximity, but experimental technology, let's not hold our breath, okay, so let's start a video.

I talked about how a certain piece of military hardware pushed everything forward. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a waltz that may have gone too far. the

kind

of design that in 30 years we will consider revolutionary and it is perfectly feasible that much of its technology will be used in a wide variety of ships in the future, but at the moment they are three ships that simply slip away. the cracks of time to advance for their own good with weapons that are either too expensive to fire or simply not ready and a mission profile that has been hastily redesigned to try to justify the enormous amount of money that has been spent on them, In the future they will have to wait for the rest of us to catch up, so I really hope you enjoyed today's video.

If you knew, you know what to do. Press the Like button. Don't forget to subscribe. It is important to do so also if I would like to be a legend and support the program. Get some souvenirs to keep your hair smart. Name there. See what they did there. Very good. Thanks for seeing you.