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USS Zumwalt (first stealth destroyer) leaves dry dock

Sea Shadow, 1985.
1920px-US_Navy_Sea_Shadow_stealth_craft.jpg


USS Freedom, 2008.
800px-USS-Freedom-130222-N-DR144-174-crop.jpg


Easo said:
Except that Zumwalt is far more advanced, and, well, stealthy. Ah yes, one is corvette, second one is destroyer close in size to the first dreadnoughts.
Also Burke's are using stealth tech too (and buuuuuuunch of other ships from various countries).
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You forgot huge. It's 600 feet long. Visby is 239 feet and USS Freedom is 378 ft. Zumwalt is 80.7 ft wide compared to Freedom's 57.4 ft. FYI, despite USS Freedom being a lot bigger than Visby, it's also much faster at 47 knots versus 35 because Freedom is a semi-planing ship. Visby would not want to encounter an unfriendly Freedom-class, nevermind Zumwalt-class.

Zumwalt was put behind because the US Navy was hoping LASER and rail gun technologies would keep up (program started in 1994). They eventually decided they couldn't wait anymore but the ship's turbines and electrical systems are designed to take the electrical load of next generation weapon systems.


GorbazTheDragon said:
It's an interesting piece of engineering, but sadly it is strategically and tactically utterly pointless.
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a) Rail guns can shell, at very low cost, targets 100+ miles away.
b) It has a large deck for take off and retrieval of helicopters and a hangar to hide them away so they don't break the stealthy profile.
c) It has a massive compliment of missile launchers for reaching out even further than the rail guns can reach.
d) The RADAR cross-section of that 600 foot long ship isn't much larger than a fishing boat. Most radio waves that hit it are reflected into space.
e) It's as quiet to sonar as the USS Los Angeles, torpedos will have trouble finding it and sonar will have difficulty tracking it.
f) It is designed to have a very low infrared radiation signature as well making it very difficult for heat seeking missiles to target it.
g) It's RADAR and sonar systems are the best in the world with a supercomputer backing them up.

All combined, it's not only nearly invisible to everything except the naked eye (to which it is deceptive due to the tumblehome hull), it can see and engage targets before they're even aware it exists. Excepting the aircraft carriers, it is the most deadly ship prowling the oceans.
 
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Easy Rhino said:
Yea but Europe is filled with a bunch of pansies who cry to the USA to do their dirty work. Honestly, europeans are the biggest load of hypocrites on the planet.
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Spoiling for a flame war sorry but i don't posses any oil reserves So pointless trying to start a flamewar so you can Invade in the name of freedom:p
 
Chevalr1c said:
It does not have apt, as it is obviously not Debian based but custom (I bet there is a lot of use of Linux for Embeded due all the microcontrolers and so on).
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Missed this back when the thread was created. It runs Red Hat on IBM blade servers.


Edit: Random Googling lead me to LRASM which is a long range (580 miles), stealthy, cruise missile specifically for anti-ship use. It'll be compatible with Zumwalt among many other ships in the fleet. The new missile will be much harder to intercept compared to the near 40-year old Harpoon missile used now.
 
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FordGT90Concept said:
Missed this back when the thread was created. It runs Red Hat on IBM blade servers.
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Interesting. I would have thought that, in the name of security, all code would have been reviewed and manually compiled.
I suppose it still could have been.

Think I could pull off a bit of social engineering? "Greetings, this is Admiral XVI. I'm going to need you to run 'yum install boinc-client'. Mmhmm. Yes. Uh huh. Yeah, I can help you set it up."
 
Now to find out how i can fit it in the basement :).
 
"35 feet long, 8 feet high, and 12 feet wide"

Go measure. ;)
 
I didn't reply to these the first time around, but the thread came back up and my pedantry is acting up.
lilhasselhoffer said:
As to the question of ammunition, anything from carbon blocks to metal cylinders. The material has to be relatively conductive, but that's the only requirement.

A railgun works by producing a huge magnetic field within coils, then inducing an opposing field in the projectile. The projectile is not fixed, so rather than heat up the opposing magnetic field yields a substantial linear motion.
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RCoon said:
Not to mention it isnt quite as conductive as other metals. I remember making a Rail Gun during my college days. A car battery, several industrial capacitors, a huge copper coil wrapped around a plumbing pipe with a bore no bigger than a screwdriver head, and chopped up screwdriver heads.

Pretty much anyone can make a railgun with household items and a little physics know how.
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Coilguns. You're both talking about coilguns.

For comparison: Link

A basic railgun neither has nor needs coils in the propulsion of the projectile. It uses the intrinsic properties of the physics surrounding the flow of current electricity (the Lorentz Force, in this case) to impart movement via a magnetic field created directly by the flow of current (neccesarily, from one rail to the other through the projectile or a sabot or carrier device) and force the projectile to travel along the rails (hence, rail gun). In concept, super mechanically simple if you've got the ability to produce a LOT of power. In reality, well.... we're talking millions of amps to impart the kind of acceleration and muzzle velocities that come into play for kinetic energy projectiles to be an effective replacement for conventionals, in terms of firepower. Rail erosion has always been one of the main limiting factor of railguns (arcing, friction, heat, and other factors) and as such the need for rail and even barrel replacement is a serious issue in terms of the speed, reliability, repeatability, and sustainability of the weapon's firing.

If this is indeed a railgun and not a coilgun or hybrid of some sort, I wonder what they've done to solve (mitigate) the rail erosion issue; cryogenic cooling? new materials? rapidly replaceable rails? Rapidly replaceable rails seems the most realistic solution, barring some serious advancement in materials science by the navy; perhaps along with even something like an altered-atmosphere "barrel" to reduce friction and arcing in order to prolong rail life. As far as a combat sustainable rapidly replaceable rail system, I'm imagining some sort of magazine of rails whereby after a set number of shots, the rails are ejected and automatically replaced along with the next projectile, perhaps?

Mainly because that sounds like it would look REALLY cool in operation.

A number of cycles of high-pitched electronic whine of charging capacitors followed by sonic boom as each projectile leaves the barrel, then after the current rail set is spent beyond usability a set of ejection ports opens allowing the spent rails to be ejected to sea and new ones loaded from a magazine; burning white hot with smoke and brief spontaneous flame as they're exposed to atmosphere and then a screeching hiss and cloud of steam as they land in the ocean and vaporize a significant amount of seawater on their descent.
 
It has:
2 x Rolls-Royce MT30 35.4 MW
2 x Rolls-Royce RR4500 3.9 MW

78 MW total output. Bare in mind that we don't have to consider just the power requirements of the gun itself but also the requirements of gyroscopes for stabilizing the gun (presumably much larger than for a cannon).

I think the reason why they selected turbine engines is because they can power up and down to meet the requirements of the ship (including the guns). It should theoretically eliminate the need for huge battery capacity.


Your questions about the rails I suspect are highly classified. Once it is leaked out how they are made, USA won't be the only country with them.


It would be a "hyper boom." :roll:
 
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...and craft propulsion and LaWS missile defence and RADAR and... but yes, you're very likely correct on all points.

Though, regardless of power generation system you couldn't even use a battery for powering something like this. Due to the Equivalent Series Resistance of current battery tech, any battery wouldn't discharge fast enough unless MASSIVELY parallel, and I do mean massively. You'd effectively need supercapacitors. You'd still need a lot as supercapacitors can discharge very fast but can't store very much compared to a battery. Generating the power on demand therefore would be the best option, if it's possible.

When I said millions of amperes of current, that was just a guess taken straight from the article I linked, and even so - to my knowledge voltage has little effect on the strength of the Lorentz force (perhaps besides speed of the propagation of the magnetic field?) and if so, then it could easily be a very low voltage yet very high amperage system. The railgun itself, after all, is effectively a short circuit.

If indeed amperage is all that affects the strength of the Lorentz force then the lower they can make the DC resistance of the system, the lower the voltage they can use to get a fixed amperage, for a significant wattage savings on the operation of the device (as well as less risk of arcing although once a current that large is flowing it will ionize the atmosphere and sustain the arc even with voltage otherwise insufficient for arcing).

Lets say the railgun requires 5MA (arbitrary made up number) at 500mV then the total wattage is "only" 2.5MW; even at 1V it's 5MW, 2V it's 10MW, 3V its 15MW... voltage therefore would be the enemy, given my earlier assumption. The way you get voltage to be lower and still maintain the 5MA is simple: reduce resistance. Moar conductive everything, parallel everything possible... maybe even SUPERCONDUCTERS wao and such

As far as the info being classified: Obviously, but I still wanna know!
 
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Hello, gorgeous!

Holy crap that's small...much smaller than I thought. It accelerates the projectile to mach 7 in 10ms. It is probably actually much lighter than a cannon because there is no heavy breach. It also clearly uses a sabot so maybe the sabot is designed to take the wear instead of the barrel.


Edit: Here's a model a few months newer:
http://news.usni.org/2015/07/28/navy-pursuing-upgraded-railgun-higher-power-laser-gun-by-2020
140708-N-ZK869-003.jpg


The current weaponized LASERs are 30kW; they want a 100kW and 150kW model. Switching to railgun:
A manual-load version will go to sea on a Joint High Speed Vessel next year, but the Navy is already working on a version that would allow for 10 shots per minute. This “rep rate” version, despite challenges including thermal management in the barrel, is expected to go to sea by FY 2019.
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Mach 7 = 5370.88 MPH

If my math is right and there wasn't an arch, that shell would hit a target 110 miles away (the effective range of it) in 75 seconds.
 
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Steevo said:
Not sure what its use is in the age where there are drones, ICBM's, and subs.
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This is a destroyer. What do destroyers hunt?

I'll give you a hint, it starts with an "S" (and is bolded above)
 
Zumwalt, in the future, may even be able to destroy ICBMs and drones using the railguns.


FYI, the Army is looking into railguns too. That might be the reason why Abrams and Paladin are still around and all plans to replace them have been scraped.
 
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R-T-B said:
This is a destroyer. What do destroyers hunt?

I'll give you a hint, it starts with an "S" (and is bolded above)
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Crabs mostly XD
 
There's apparently two railguns floating around the internet: one made by BAE Systems (V shaped near the breach) and one made by General Atomics (big circular structure near the breach).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...oncrete-100-MILES-away-shown-public-Navy.html
Two prototypes of the weapon have been developed for the US Navy – one by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems and the second by a US firm.
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"US firm" is General Atomics. Was wondering why I kept seeing two different guns related to the US Navy. That's why.
 
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Navy released a video of LCS-5 USS Milwaukee (Freedom class littoral combat ship) going balls out:
Freedom-class littoral combat ships (similar in size to frigates) has the same turbine engines in it (Rolls-Royce MT30) as Zumwalt-class destroyers producing about 74 MW total in both ships. :eek: Zumwalt channels that to firepower where Freedom channels it to speed.
 
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FordGT90Concept said:
Navy released a video of USS Milwaukee (Freedom class littoral combat ship) going balls out:

It's longer than a football field (378').


Freedom-class littoral combat ships (similar in size to frigates) has the same turbine engines in it (Rolls-Royce MT30) as Zumwalt-class destroyers producing about 74 MW total in both ships. :eek: Zumwalt channels that to firepower where Freedom channels it to speed.
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Holy crap. That's like a speedboat, but about 100 times bigger and heavier. Talk about out-manoeuvre
 
Slightly slower (44 knots versus 47 knots) but bigger (418' long versus 378') LCS-2 USS Independence (skip to 3:30):
Freedom and Independence are practically cousins. USA Navy ordered two them to compete with each other and decided they liked them so much, they ordered 10 more of each.
 
The largest destroyer ever built for the U.S. Navy began its sea trials yesterday.

The $4.3bn ship departed from shipbuilder Bath Iron Works in Maine and carefully navigated the winding Kennebec River before reaching the open ocean where the ship will undergo sea trials.


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TOP SECRET VIDEO (on youtube) :D

The Zumwalt is the first of three ships in the class.

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a top secret railgun video.

@Easy Rhino i am proud to be European and a friend to Americans :toast: and their stealthy "secret" stuff
 
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Looks like no other ship on the seas, that's for sure.
 
Navy stealth destroyer rescues fisherman
CNN said:
The advanced guided missile destroyer, which boasts stealth capabilities and will one day help support Special Operations forces, responded on Saturday to a distress call from a fishing boat off the coast of Maine, rescuing a fisherman who was experiencing chest pains.

The stealth destroyer's crew -- a combination of Navy personnel and employees of Bath Iron Works, which is testing the ship -- deployed to the fishing vessel on an inflatable boat to hoist the distressed fisherman aboard the Zumwalt.

"After medical evaluation, the patient was transferred from Zumwalt to a Coast Guard helicopter and then to an area hospital," U.S. Navy spokesperson Thurraya Kent said in a statement.
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That lucky bastard!
 
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