Should Burke Flight III DDG move out?

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Navy Matters: Burke Flt III

The Navy is now committed to fielding a down-sized AMDR which it acknowledges is too small to meet the desired performance criteria.  This is admission of an odd situation.  The Navy is, essentially, acknowledging that it is going to build a ship that is inadequate for the intended mission.

The other disturbing aspect of the Flt III is the growth margin.  The Navy is going to have to squeeze the AMDR and its attendant resources into an already overloaded hull.  The resultant ship will have no growth margins during a future in which the Navy anticipates lasers and rail guns reaching the fleet.  We’ll set aside whether that anticipation is realistic and simply consider what the Navy believes.  Why would you begin building the future backbone of the fleet with no significant growth margins for the developments you believe are coming in the relatively near term and which you know are going to require substantial weight, volume, and ship’s utilities, especially for the early versions?

Opinion: Navy Should Avoid a Flight III Arleigh Burke - USNI News

In a classified memo, the details of which were revealed last week in Defense News, Vice Adm. Tom Copeman, commander U.S. Naval Surface Forces told Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert not to build a new version of the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer (DDG-51).
The Flight III DDG-51 is the planned successor to the current Flight IIA design and the planned landing platform for the Navy’s air and missile defense radar (AMDR). 
Instead of Flight III, the memo recommended continuing to build Flight IIA DDGs, while moving to a large, ballistic-missile-defense-centric ship that would presumably house a larger, more powerful instantiation of the AMDR than is possible in the DDG-51 class.

DDG 51 Flight III Archives - USNI News

Once development of the AMDR radar is completed, it will be fitted on to the second Burke-class destroyer built in fiscal year 2016. The 14-foot AMDR radar, which will fit into the ship’s deckhouse in much the same ways at the current SPY-1D radar, is expected to be revolutionary in many ways.
Constructed as an active electronically scanned array radar using Gallium Nitride-based transmit/receive modules, the Navy expects the system to be 30 times more power than the SPY-1 for about twice the electrical power input. It is Gallium Nitride technology that is enabling Raytheon to build the Flight III with the AMDR without straining the power and cooling capacity of the Burke-class hull.
The AMDR’s active electronically scanned array design will also enable digital beam forming, leading to a much more precise tracking. Further, the system could potentially be used to perform electronic attacks—a capability not found on any current Navy warship.

Adding Arleigh Burkes: H.I.I. Steps Forward for DDG-51 Restart

With the DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class ended at 3 ships, the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Class ships will become more important to the future navy. The Navy’s FY 2011 budget also terminated the planned CG (X) cruiser program as unaffordable. Instead, the US Navy would field an updated DDG-51 Flight III version, starting in FY 2016.
That date has been pushed back, owing to technical issues with the Flight III ships. Under the current plan, the DDG-51 Flight IIA Restart version would remain in production from FY 2010-2017, buying 13 ships in total (DDG 113 – 125) under a multi-year buy program. Huntington Ingalls Industries ships ordered to date are both named after Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, and include:

• DDG 113 John Finn
• DDG 114 Ralph Johnson

Both Bath Iron Works and HII will continue to build ships of class, but lead yard status for the “DDG-51 restart” ships shifted to Northrop Grumman (now HII) during the restructuring. GD Bath Iron Works is currently contracted to build DDG 115 Rafael Peralta and & DDG 116 Thomas Hudner, as the DDG-51 follow-yard.

 



Navy Advances Design for New Destroyer Radar | DoD Buzz
The Navy is making progress developing a more sensitive, next-generation radar system engineered to integrate onto new Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers by 2023, service officials said.
The Air and Missile Defense Radar, or AMDR, is said to be at least 30-times more sensitive than radars configured on existing DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
Among other things, the additional power and sensitivity will allow the ship to detect a much wider range of threats at much greater distances, said Capt. Mark Vandroff, program manager DDG 51 Shipbuilding.