The US Navy needs a large surface warship to maintain any edge that it might still have over China in the Western Pacific. For nearly thirty years the Navy has been trying to acquire such a warship, with minimal luck thus far. The latest iteration of this effort is the DDG (X), expected to first enter service sometime in the late 2030s.
DDG(X) Explained
The DDG(X) is expected to be a class of twenty-eight large warships that will eventually replace the first two flights of the DDG-51 “Arleigh Burke” class destroyers.
The oldest Arleigh Burkes are approaching thirty-five years old and have experienced considerable wear and tear.
The new destroyer is expected to displace some 13,500 tons, about a third larger than the Arleigh Burkes and the Ticonderoga class cruisers.
The design remains in flux, but the ships are expected to carry three thirty-two cell vertical launch system (VLS) modules along with an assortment of defensive and anti-submarine weaponry.
Designers expect that the VLS modules can be replaced with newer, larger VLS cells that can carry hyper-sonic missiles and other large weapons.
The engineering plant of the DDG(X), largely adopted from the model of the Zumwalt class destroyers, will be able to provide multiples of the power available to the DDG-51s.
In addition to greater range, this will give the ships the capacity to use higher powered direct energy weapons (lasers) that may become important to the vessel’s air defense missions. The ship is currently expected to carry a standard 5” gun, although recent mock-ups have omitted the gun (undoubtedly to the frustration of the Navy’s old hands…).
The extra power and extra size are intended to provide room for improvement and modification, both to individual ships across the course of their careers and to new construction.
How DDG(X) Was ‘Born’
Many, many failures have brought us to this point. The CG (X) program was intended to deliver a fleet of 25000 ton nuclear propelled cruisers as replacements for the Ticonderoga class. It was cancelled in 2010 in favor of an additional flight of DDG-51 destroyers.
The DDG-1000 (Zumwalt) class destroyers were initially part of the CG (X) program but were hived off as requirements diverged (the Zumwalts are specialized for a land attack role and the CG(X) was intended to operate with carrier battle groups).
The bulk of the Zumwalt-class was cancelled even before the CG(X) met its end, although three ships survive as technology demonstrators.
What Are the Challenges?
Why these failures? The main challenge is that the Navy has of late struggled mightily at getting ships designed and built. Part of this has to do with the US shipbuilding industry, which has workforce, infrastructure, and continuity issues that have limited its capacity over the past quarter century.
But for the most part the fault lies with the Navy. The Navy’s process for designing new ships and getting them to the point of construction is fundamentally broken.
The Constellation class frigate, chosen in large part because of its simplicity of design and construction, has developed into a monster because of the Navy’s ever-changing demands.
One of the keys of ship design, much like drinking or counting, is knowing when to stop; the Navy has consistently failed in this, creating headaches for planners and builders alike.
Part of this stems from conceptual problems in determining the nature of the strategic environment. Warships take a long time to build and the maritime strategic environment has been in flux since the 1990s.
Just in the 20th century the Navy witnessed four major technological revolutionary waves in which large parts of the fleet suddenly became obsolete (1906, 1921, 1945, and 1991). Avoiding the spectacle of retiring large numbers of youthful hulls (especially in the context of limited funding expansion and limited shipbuilding assets) has produced a cautious attitude towards new design and construction.
DDG(X). Image Credit: U.S. Navy.
Yet, the Navy chased niche projects such as the Littoral Combat Ship and the DDG-1000 out of a perceived need to contribute to a new security environment. The future of war was in the littorals, so future warships must be optimized for operations in the littoral.
When that environment (a permissive maritime space in which the USN could go and do what it wanted, allowing it to focus on delivering effects against land rather than maritime targets) went away, the relevance of those ships degraded.
DDG(X) Sails Into a Stormy Future
No one has solved the problem of accelerated decrepitude for naval warships. Experience in the Black Sea and the Red Sea is still being incorporated into new doctrine and new construction.
On the one hand this is a good thing, as it keeps the ships as current as possible; on the other delays can accumulate to the point at which they become fatal. The real key may be to build a ship that can be easily augmented based on improvements in technology, a “software defined warship” in the terminology of Artem Sherbinin and Austin Gray.
However frustrating the limits of hardware may be, at some point, it becomes necessary to put something in the water that can float, carry seamen, and launch weapons.
With luck, the DDG(X) may become that vessel.
About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley
Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.
