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posted by CoolHand on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the everyone's-a-superhero-everyone's-a-captain-kirk dept.

David Sharp reports at the Boston Globe that the the futuristic 600-foot, 15,000-ton USS Zumwalt, the largest destroyer ever built for the US Navy is heading out to sea for the first time for sea trials. The ship has electric propulsion, new radar and sonar, powerful missiles and guns, and a stealthy design to reduce its radar signature. Advanced automation will allow the warship to operate with a much smaller crew size than current destroyers. ''We are absolutely fired up to see Zumwalt get underway. For the crew and all those involved in designing, building, and readying this fantastic ship, this is a huge milestone,'' says the ship's skipper, Navy Capt. James Kirk. With an inverse bow jutting forward to slice through the waves. and sharp angles to deflect enemy radar signals, the Zumwalt-class destroyer looks like nothing ever built before. The Zumwalt — which will receive its "USS" designation when it is christened — also is to be a test-bed for one of the Navy's most futuristic weapons, an electromagnetic rail gun under development by the Office of Naval Research. It uses electromagnetic pulses to launch projectiles at Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound, at targets up to 110 miles away.

However critics say the ''tumblehome'' hull's sloping shape makes it less stable than conventional hulls, although it contributes to the ship's stealth and the Navy is confident in the design. Doubts about the radical hull form emerged as soon as the shape was revealed in the competitive stage for what was first called DD-21, then DD(X). Ken Brower, a civilian naval architect with decades of naval experience says the ship will capsize in a following sea at the wrong speed if a wave at an appropriate wavelength hits it at an appropriate angle. "The trouble is that as a ship pitches and heaves at sea, if you have tumblehome instead of flare, you have no righting energy to make the ship come back up. On the DDG 1000, with the waves coming at you from behind, when a ship pitches down, it can lose transverse stability as the stern comes out of the water — and basically roll over."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:22AM

    by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Thursday December 10 2015, @07:22AM (#274309)

    There's centuries of experience with tumblehome hulls. There are tradeoffs, but they don't sink in the first storm.

    Keep in mind too that it's a warship. If it's more vulnerable to weather but less likely to be found by an enemy, that might be a good tradeoff for the requirements.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:48AM (#274341)

    Keep in mind too that it's a warship. If it's more vulnerable to weather but less likely to be found by an enemy, that might be a good tradeoff for the requirements.

    There's been few naval battles in recent decades. I would weather-proof first.

    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:38PM

      by isostatic (365) on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:38PM (#274395) Journal

      So why build ships?

      • (Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:12PM

        by Osamabobama (5842) on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:12PM (#274558)

        It's a good way to park a missile battery in a strategic location. Both cruise missiles and air defense missiles are carried by destroyers.

        There is also some value in the embarked helicopter and the deck gun, although these have more limited strategic implications.

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  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:24PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:24PM (#274438)

    There's centuries of experience with tumblehome hulls. There are tradeoffs, but they don't sink in the first storm.

    Nelson's ships had tumblehome to make being boarded harder and they thought it looked more elegant But it is a matter of degree - if you have extreme tumblehome it is almost like having no freeboard at all.

    At 15,000 tons and 620ft length, I'd have described Zumwalt (where did they get that name?) as a heavy cruiser. The first destroyers (c1900) were only about 200 tons, and a typical WW2 one would have been 2000 tons. Since WW2 Navies have called cruisers "destroyers" because politicians tend to say "We can't afford cruisers, only destroyers".

    Anyway, it reminds me of the CSS Virginia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Virginia [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:00PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:00PM (#274457) Journal

    "There's centuries of experience with tumblehome hulls."

    That was back in the day of wooden ships, and iron men. When we switched over to iron ships, and wooden men, we quickly learned that the tradeoffs weren't so very good.