USN Burke Class - News, Reports, Data, etc.

Brumby

Major
My own personal hope is that the Flight IIIs can be a stop gap of say 8-12 vessels and that a new Admin and Congress will go ahead and develop a CG(X) on the Zumwalt hull with even more powerful radar...with even more power...and with more PVLS to set it up to be the true replacement for the Ticos.

Then build 24 of those.

That would be the logical path but given the priority of the Ohio replacement program and it being a drag on funding, we will have to see how the US economy and a new POTUS pan out.

Just on the idea of even more powerful radar progressively being put on successive new ships, I do have a view that this might not necessarily be the singular pathway of future USN consideration. I see an environment progressively moving towards network sensors and in particular the reliance on off board aerial sensors as part of the CEC architecture and CONOPS.

An interesting article just appeared today on DARPA working towards aerial sensors to be distributed across naval vessels.

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Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
That would be the logical path but given the priority of the Ohio replacement program and it being a drag on funding, we will have to see how the US economy and a new POTUS pan out.
Look for a BIG turnaround in the economy...ala Reagan in his first four years.

Just on the idea of even more powerful radar progressively being put on successive new ships, I do have a view that this might not necessarily be the singular pathway of future USN consideration. I see an environment progressively moving towards network sensors and in particular the reliance on off board aerial sensors as part of the CEC architecture and CONOPS.
All of which would be very imminently possible with the Zumwalt hull form. Plenty of room for that type of innovation and more.
 

Scratch

Captain
Once all the new concepts and technologies have been tested and martured, maybe the three Zumwalts can become for the large surface fleet what the Seawolves were for the sub fleet two decades ago.
A new DDG(X) slightly below 10.000t as a multi-mission destroyer, produced in large numbers, combining AAW, ASW and ASuW capability and adding some kind of an amphibious fire support capacity over the Burkes.
And the ability, of course, to contribute to BMD.

And then some true BMD CG(X)s with the full AMDR follow on and proper fleet command capacity.
Or maybe those classes will merge into one, with the SCC based FF below and a LPD-17 based BMD vessel above.
 
hope this passes as
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
(dated November 12, 2015; sorry if it's a repost):
Navy, Industry Working Through DDG-51 Flight III Detail Design; Draft RFP For Ship Construction Released
The Navy and two shipbuilders are moving forward with the Flight III upgrade to the Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers (DDG-51), which adds an air and missile defense radar to the ship class starting this fiscal year.

General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding are collaborating on detail design of the Flight III upgrade, which should be complete by the summer of 2017, and both have responded to the Navy’s draft request for proposals (RFP) for Fiscal Year 2016 ship construction, DDG-51 program manager Capt. Mark Vandroff told USNI News in a Nov. 12 interview.

The two yards have taken the Navy’s preliminary design for Flight III, which was broken into 17 individual statements of work, and are working together to develop a 3D model of the ship that includes all equipment and distributed systems.

“We always planned to complete that some time in the late summer of 2017 because a ship that’s appropriated in FY ’16 generally spends about a year [procuring materials],” Vandroff said.
“A typical FY ‘16 ship wouldn’t start until the later part of 2017, and we would want the detail design to be done about the same time.”

The air and missile defense radar, Raytheon’s AN/SPY-6, is in the engineering and manufacturing development phase but is on track to be ready in time for ship construction, Vandroff said. The radar development is run out of the Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, which has passed information to the shipyards through Vandroff’s office to support the Flight III detail design.

Virtually all the changes in Flight III support the addition of the SPY-6 radar. Vandroff said the primary requirements for the flight upgrade were to add additional power, cooling and weight margins for the ship’s service life.

“I could put a SPY-6 onto a DDG Flight IIA today with the power plant it has today, and it would work fine,” he said.
“There would be enough power. But there would be no growth margin for a 40-year service life. And if we’re building a new ship, we want to have similar growth margins on the Flight III that we’ve had historically on DDG-51s.”

To achieve sufficient power margins, Vandroff said the program office chose to replace the three Rolls Royce 3-megawatt generators on the Flight IIA ships with Rolls Royce’s 4-megawatt generator used on the Zumwalt-class destroyers (DDG-1000), which take up the same footprint on the ship and therefore give more power without forcing any ship design changes.

The new generators, however, make power at 4,160 volts instead of 450 volts – which Vandroff said is more efficient and safer, but necessitates more expensive switch gears. The America-class amphibious assault ship (LHA-6) uses the 4,160-volt power plant as well, so the DDG-51 program took the big deck’s electrical distribution system to support the new larger generators.

The SPY-6 radar is much bigger than the old SPY-1D(V), which means it makes more heat and requires more cooling capacity. The Flight IIA ships could handle the bigger radar, Vandroff said, but would again leave no margin. The Flight IIA ships use five air conditioning plants that produce 200 tons of cooling each – but the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock (LPD-17) program was already in the middle of an effort to improve those AC units. By developing advances in the magnetic bearings, motor control of the compressor and more, the LPD program and Naval Sea System Command’s (NAVSEA) engineering directorate were able to get the AC plants to put out 300 tons of cooling each, rather than 200.

Vandroff said the improved plants cost a bit more, but “for us it came along at the right time so we could provide the additional cooling we needed without increasing foot space.”

“Frankly, if we didn’t have the radar, I would still be doing this just because, I would be doing it as a savings of lifecycle money because these AC plants produce cooling more efficiently than the current ones,” he said.
“They’re slightly more expensive, but over a 40-year service life of the ship, what you pay to get a more expensive AC plant you more than make up for in fuel savings over the life of the ship.”

The new SPY-6 radar is not any heavier than the old SPY-1D(V), but the weight is distributed on the ship differently. The old radar has a separate signal generator, which is a heavy piece of equipment and is located lower in the ship for its own protection and for shipkeeping purposes. The SPY-6 is an active array radar, which means the signal is generated on the array itself – meaning the array is heavier but must still be placed at the top of the ship, throwing off the ship’s overall balance.

To bring the ship’s center of gravity back down, Vandroff said he wanted to make the hull thicker in some places and to thicken the scantlings, which has the added advantage of creating a more survivable hull in the event of an underwater explosion. A ship can only be so heavy and still be safe to steam, and Vandroff said that adding steel to the hull and scantlings stayed within the weight margins but left little room for growth in the future.

“To get back that growth margin, we changed the hull form a little bit in the stern, and I mean a little bit,” he said.
“So the stern is slightly wider and slightly less flared. That gives you a little more volume that the ship will displace, and that volume change gives you another few hundred tons of service life in the weight.”

By adding weight to the bottom of the ship and then adding back in some margin for growth, Vandroff said the Flight III configuration has a center of gravity “roughly where it was on a IIA.”

Overall, Vandroff said of the Flight III configuration, “the radar is new, the radar is a new thing, but everything else I described to you is not new – it’s the 1000’s generators, it’s the LPD-17’s AC plants, it’s LHA-6’s electrical distribution system. It’s all things we’ve used before, we just said, I’m going to go use what I’ve got on hand. And then steel and the shape of the ship.”

Aside from those must-haves to support the new radar, Vandroff said he’s working with the shipbuilders to add in a couple nice-to-haves as well.

First, he said, “if you’re going to have a ship with this much BMD (ballistic missile defense) capability, it would be really good perhaps to put your BMD commander on this ship as opposed to the carrier or somewhere else in the battle group. So do I need a few extra racks for a BMD commander and his flyaway team? So we’re moving around to get a little extra berthing. Would it be helpful if they had two or three extra consoles in [combat information center] in order to plan BMD missions from? Yes, that would be helpful. It doesn’t really change the ship, so we’ve redesigned the consoles.”

And second, the Navy learned when it upgraded USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) that tearing out the Aegis Combat System to upgrade the hardware was a more challenging task than it ought to be.

“It should be easier to swap out equipment than it was with John Paul Jones. For John Paul Jones, we buried the vital combat system equipment on purpose in the Arleigh Burke design deep inside the hull, inside lots of steel and lots of structure because that makes it more survivable in damage condition,” he said.
“It also makes it harder to get out. 30 years ago when we first designed Aegis, there wasn’t the concept that, wow, information technology is going to change really fast and we’re going to want to swap out hardware on a more regular basis. You built a ship for a 30-year life. So we’re looking at … rapid removal routes. Things where we’re going to place combat system equipment so it’s still protected, but every one of them will have kind of an easy way off the ship, either by unbolting plates or by making sure there’s areas where distributed systems are not run so its’ an easier hull cut, so we can get things on and off the ship in the combat system faster.”

For all the changes going into the Flight III design, Vandroff said the Navy will get a ship with “tremendous capability” in the SPY-6 that is not only a “huge leap forward” in integrated air and missile defense but also is much better prepared to ward off jamming attacks; has the margins to support future weapons; and still feels the same to the average sailor walking through the ship.

Excluding the lead Flight III ship, Vandroff said the new ships won’t cost much more than the older ones. The average Flight IIA destroyer during the last three years of two-a-year construction across two shipyards cost $1.5 billion per destroyer. Vandroff said his office was in the midst of updating its cost estimate, but NAVSEA has estimated that the Flight III follow-on ships, under the same type of two-a-year multiyear buy, would cost $1.75 billion each and could drop in price as the radars become cheaper to build.

Vandroff could not, however, discuss the timing of the new Flight III ships. The draft RFP is out and the Navy has already responded to comments from industry, but Vandroff said he could not discuss any future actions in the competitive bidding process, including a release date for the final RFP.

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Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
hope this passes as
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
(dated November 12, 2015; sorry if it's a repost):
Navy, Industry Working Through DDG-51 Flight III Detail Design; Draft RFP For Ship Construction Released


source:
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Thanks for posting this, Jura. This is EXCELLENT detailed information about the Flight III Bukres. Really interesting and good reading.

Oh...I am such a nerd!
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
It's been largely overlooked...but the US Navy put three Burkes in the water in 2015.

What is amazing is that Ingalls showed it can do two ships in nine months.

Here are the three

DDG-113 in March by Ingalls

113.jpg

DDG-114 in December by Ingalls

114.jpg

DDG-115 in October by Bath

115.jpg

So far, 37 Burke IIAs have been put in the water, and 28 Burke I and II before that. 65 Burkes currently in the water and that was done since 1989, or in 26 years.

A phenomenal run.

Eight more Burke IIAs are on order (with two of them already under construction. That will make 45 Burke IIAs altogether, and 73 all told.

Three Burke IIs are already approved, funded, and ordered. Probably 17 more of them will be built after that.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
I'd love to see all of the Burkes get the following upgrades:

- Move the Phalanx CIWS forward.
- Add a RAM CIWS launcher aft where that Phalanx CIWS was
- A 127mm rail gun forward
- VLS LRASM ASAP

Short of the Rail Gun right now, they could do all of this. In fact, if I were tasked with making a decision like this, I would love to see Raytheon do a combo Phalanx Gun/RAM Missile system

They already use the Phalanx sensors for the SeaRAM, why not have a full-up RAM System, with 21 missiles AND the 20mm Gatlin Gun? They could slave the missiles to intercept at a certain range, and then bring on the gun too at the requisite range. It would be one nifty CIWS system...and then they could have one of those fore and aft providing the maximum and best of both worlds.

Could you imagine? BMD Standard missiles for intercepts out to the edge of the atmosphere, Standard Missile for long to medium range, ESSM missiles for medium to short range, and then the RAM/Phalanx combo for Close in work.

This would provide for 42 missiles and two 20mm cannons for CIWS, load eight four packs for ESSM and 32 missiles. Then have another 48 Standard missiles for medium to long range intercepts. This would still leave 40 missiles silos for either land attack or LRASM (Say 16 LRASMs and 24 LACMs). Heck of a powerful multi-role load out.

42 RAM
32 ESSM
48 Standard
16 LRASM
24 LACM

That's 162 missiles per Burke!
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
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Burke-1st-SeaRAM.jpg

USNI said:
The Navy successfully launched the Raytheon SeaRAM Anti-Ship Missile Defense System from an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer for the first time ever on March 4, a final step in rapidly fielding a self-defense capability on the Mediterranean-based USS Porter (DDG-78) through an unconventional acquisition process.

Porter last week went through structural test firings to ensure a shield would properly protect the ship from the SeaRAM blast, followed by tracking exercises to verify the accuracy of the detect-to-engage sequence. Finally, on Friday the Navy had its first-ever live fire test of a SeaRAM from a DDG, which took place on a Spanish Navy test range in the Mediterranean.

USNI News understands the qualification test was successful and Porter will soon be able to use SeaRAM operationally, according to a source familiar with the test event. Additionally, the SeaRAM system has recently been tested successfully in another location against supersonic targets, expanding the utility of the system meant to address close-in threats such as helicopters and cruise missiles.

The SeaRAM, which replaces the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System’s 20mm gun with a Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Block II launcher, is in production for use on the Littoral Combat Ship.

Last spring an emergent need arose in the Mediterranean – a new Russian threat, the details of which remain classified, put the four Spain-based DDGs at risk as the ships focused on a ballistic missile defense target.

After looking at the threat and several possible options to address it, the Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, U.S. 6th Fleet, the Surface Warfare Directorate and other organizations selected SeaRAM as the solution and got to work on the “quick reaction capability.”

Without discussing the nature of the new threat, Program Executive Officer for Integrated Warfare Systems Rear Adm. Jon Hill told USNI News on March 3 that SeaRAM was selected because “it allows them to have that additional layer – it’s a different missile system, it operates in a shorter range regime and it’s much more maneuverable, so it gives them a capability that complements the rest of the layers” of ship self-defense.

To engineer and field this solution as quickly as possible, Raytheon was able to pull SeaRAM systems coming off its production line for the DDGs, and the Navy got busy “making modifications and understanding how it worked with the Aegis Weapon System; the training, logistics, supportability, testing – all of it done in 12 months,” Capt. Michael Ladner, Surface Ship Weapons Office Program Manager at PEO IWS, said March 3 at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual ASNE Day.

“That is what we need to challenges ourselves with, challenge industry with, and our field activities and labs: how do we get to that capability, that kind of example, across the portfolio?” he said of the rapid prototyping and fielding effort.
“It’s not the way that we do business. How do we get to that? How do we get to this kind of flexibility to deliver capability faster?”

Speaking last month at WEST 2016, cohosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA, Ladner said the Navy created its own luck in the case of SeaRAM on DDGs – all the pieces fell into place to act quickly, but Navy leadership acknowledged the severity of the new threat in the Mediterranean and focused on quickly implementing a solution.

Many destroyers have two Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS, pronounced Sea-Wiz) mounts. The idea, Ladner said, was to replace the aft mount with SeaRAM – which would normally take a couple years to engineer, taking into account the effect on the hull, the Aegis Combat System and the logistics and training pipelines. But the Navy didn’t have a couple years, so the service developed some self-imposed requirements: make no changes to the Aegis Combat System, make minimal changes to the ship hull, and find ways to concurrently test from the shore and the ship to speed up the timeline.

Porter will now be protected as it sails the Mediterranean, and the other three Spain-based ships – USS Donald Cook (DDG-75), USS Ross (DDG-71) and USS Carney (DDG-64) – will be outfitted with SeaRAM this calendar year.

Though the threat set – and the reason normal acquisition procedures were bypassed– is specific to these four ships, the surface warfare community may choose to put SeaRAM on other DDGs in the future. Between all the destroyer flights, all the Aegis Combat System baselines and other variances between ships in the class, not all destroyers have equal layered defense.

“We’re big believers in defense in depth. So there are programs of record that give us that layered defense, from (Standard Missile) SM-6 at long range, SM-2 medium range, and then the close-in weapons, either [Evolved SeaSparrow Missile] Block II, RAM or CIWS,” Ladner said last week.
“These Rota DDGs are an older baseline that don’t have ESSM Block II, because that capability doesn’t field until the mid-20s, so they pretty much have that standard missile defense and then CIWS. This gives them that RAM Block II layer, extra layer against those emergent threats.”

Cmdr. Michael Weeldreyer, weapons branch requirements officer at the surface warfare directorate (OPNAV N96), said at WEST 2016 that putting SeaRAM on additional DDGs with fewer layers in their self-defense capability “is something we continue to look at, and we continue to weigh within the cost-benefit analysis, along with the other Aegis baselines and weapons that the ships have for self-defense purposes.”

Weeldreyer told USNI News afterwards that in some cases an upgrade to a newer Aegis baseline would be the simpler way to address a threat but that N96 would make decisions based on operational need and the specific hull’s capabilities.

The DDGs based in Rota, Spain, are:

USS Carney, DDG-64
USS Ross, DDG-71
USS Cook, DDG-75
USS Porter, DDG-78

All of them are either Block I or Block II Burkes. This means they do nt have the helo hanger and usually are armed with two 20mm Phalanx CIWS.

They are going to replace one of those 20mm CIWs with the SeaRAM and thus add that extra layer of defense spoken of in the article.

Apparently they are not going to be upgraded to field the ESSM IIs until a few years from now and it was felt that they needed this additional layer in the Med now.

Interesting.
 
Last edited:

Brumby

Major
With the recent SeaRAM test firing on a Burke and the reason for it, I thought it would be useful to post the following tabular information on the status of BMD capable ships with baseline 9 configuration (Aegis 5.0). Currently the number of ships that have dual mode capability are just three but will increasingly build up over the coming years. Credit of tabular information goes to
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upload_2016-3-10_19-15-52.png
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
New Fl IIa/Austin, 9 in order the first for this year, are ABM i think ?

And in this case according ABM ships number seems right now no ABM capacity planned for the 34 in service only new are able o_O
 
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