DDG-1000 Capabilities Fit Outdated Mission

America’s Newest Destroyer Is Already Outdated | The Diplomat

The truly important DDG-1000 question is a question of purpose. Navies exist first and foremost to win command of the sea, overcoming foes’ efforts to deny it this goal or exercise command themselves. Zumwalt, by contrast, is almost exclusively a shore-bombardment platform, designed to rain projectiles on targets far inland. That means she will either rely on other ships to hold enemy defenses at bay, or perform her mission under near-constant enemy fire. The hard fact confronting mariners is that shore-based defenses — tactical aircraft, anti-ship and anti-air missiles — now outrange the U.S. Navy fleet, while even lesser navies boast an array of submarines and patrol craft able to make trouble for outsiders. Projecting power ashore must await victory in the fight for command. Delay can cost you.

DDG-1000 appears to be a man-of-war built for the halcyon 1990s, when no one contested American command of the commons. The good news is that, with only three ships of the class forthcoming, the navy can treat Zumwalt as a fleet experiment, learning what works in her design and what doesn’t, trying out various tactics, and feeding that insight into future ship classes. In the meantime, upgrading the main guns for action against enemy surface ships is a must, as is hastening the development and deployment of new anti-ship cruise missiles. These are defects we already know about and must act on. If DDG-1000 is a surface-combat platform, let’s equip her to do more than fire into a continent.

The new combatant, is in effect a “flotilla” vessel, to borrow Sir Julian Corbett’s taxonomy of naval fleets. Such ships neither fight for command of the sea — that mission falls to the battle fleet — nor join the “cruiser” contingent to police seas largely scoured of enemies. They do their rather humdrum jobs once others have borne the brunt of combat. In a sense, consequently, the U.S. Navy’s priciest, sexiest warships are now auxiliaries rather than capital ships — the ships that, in Alfred Thayer Mahan’s parlance, dish out and take heavy punishment in action against enemy main forces.