Zumwalt Fiasco Looking Worse!

The Navy is attempting to explain away the Zumwalt fiasco but is only looking more culpable while doing so.

As you know by now, the Zumwalt’s Advanced Gun System (AGS) was designed in such a way that it could only use one, unique munition – the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP).  The idiocy of that decision has become manifestly clear now that the cost of the LRLAP has risen to nearly a million dollars per projectile and the munition development project has been cancelled.  The Zumwalt is now left without a munition for its main weapon, the AGS.

“Even at the high cost, we still weren’t really getting what we had asked for,” he said. “So what we’ve elected to do is to separate the gun effort from the ship effort because we really got to the point where now we’re holding up the ship.”

“Holding up the ship”????  The ship IS the AGS.  The entire ship was designed around the AGS.  The ship’s reason for existence is to carry the AGS.  The ship IS the AGS.

You’re not holding up the ship – without the AGS, there is no ship.  The ship has no purpose or use.

You never, never, never, never design and build a ship around non-existent technology.  It’s failed every time it’s been tried and the Zumwalt was no exception.

Whoever approved the design concept for the Zumwalt program needs to be court-martialed for dereliction of duty and utter stupidity.  If stupefying stupidity is not a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it should be!

Did you also catch the part about not getting what was asked for?

“…the system was also failing to achieve the range it wanted …”

So, not only was the cost on an exploding, runaway trajectory (unlike the munition itself!) but the performance was inadequate.  The system couldn't achieve the claimed range.  What have I said, repeatedly?  - No system ever achieves its claimed performance.  Despite the 100% certainty of the truth of this statement, people will still wholeheartedly believe the claims for the next great weapon or system.

Take any performance/cost claim and double the cost and halve the performance and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark of reality.

There’s no explaining this one away, Navy.  You screwed the pooch in a big way.

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(1)Defense News website, “US Navy takes ownership of its second stealth destroyer”, David B. Larter, 24-Apr-2018,

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/04/24/us-navy-just-took-ownership-of-its-second-stealth-destroyer/

AGS-Zumwalt Colossal Failure

The Navy has now confirmed that the Zumwalt’s Advanced Gun System (AGS), the entire reason the Zumwalt class was built, will not be getting any new ammunition round.  After the gun’s Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) was cancelled due to the cost per round reaching $1M (see, "A Ship With No Ammunition"), the Navy indicated that they would adapt the Army’s 155 mm Excalibur artillery shell for use in the AGS (see, "Excalibur - LRLAP Replacement").  This would have provided a range of around 20 miles or so – woefully short compared to the LRLAP’s reported range of 70+ miles.  Now, even this option has been dropped by the Navy.  Instead, the Navy will monitor industry over the coming years and wait to see if some new, suitable round happens to appear.  Unfortunately, given the AGS gun barrel’s unique twist arrangement, that’s a pretty unlikely occurrence. (1)

“A year after the Navy decided to abandon the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) for the Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyer, there is no plan in place for a replacement round for the Advanced Gun System (AGS) the ships are built around, service officials said on Wednesday.” (1)

What will the Navy do with the Zumwalts?

The Navy’s new plan is to focus the Zumwalts on deep strike land attack (Tomahawks) and anti-surface (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile – LRASM, maybe?) warfare by using the ship’s 80 Mk54 peripheral VLS cells.  I guess that makes the Zumwalt’s each an $8B+, lightly loaded arsenal ship?

Also, recall that the Zumwalt’s unique tumblehome hull form has some inherent sea keeping problems due to its shape (see, "Zumwalt Tumblehome Tests").  That was considered acceptable since the ship’s mission was intended to be shallow water littoral warfare rather than open ocean sailing.  Now, with the mission switched to largely open ocean work, the ship will have significant sailing issues to deal with.  The Navy had previously issued limitations on sailing in certain quartering seas.  This may be a mission that the ship has difficulty executing.

So, the Navy has built a $24B+ class of three ships whose entire reason for existence was the AGS and now the AGS is a non-functional, ocean-going, paperweight and the fall-back mission is one that the ship’s flawed sea keeping may render difficult or impossible to execute in common sea conditions.  Just plain, WOW !

Someone has got to be fired!  - or, as the Navy refers to it, promoted.

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(1)USNI News website, “No New Round Planned For Zumwalt Destroyer Gun System; Navy Monitoring Industry”, Sam LaGrone, 11-Jan-2018, retrieved 11-Jan-2018,

https://news.usni.org/2018/01/11/no-new-round-planned-zumwalt-destroyer-gun-system-navy-monitoring-industry

Excalibur - LRLAP Replacement

The Navy recently cancelled the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) that was the sole ammunition for the Zumwalt’s 155 mm Advanced Gun System (AGS).  We’ve previously discussed the utter stupidity of designing an entire gun system that is totally incompatible with any other military munition and is dependent on a single, unique, expensive rocket assisted shell.  That lack of commonality turned around and bit the Navy in the ass when they cancelled the LRLAP program due to runaway costs.  Now they have a gun with no munition. 

There are only two options:

1. Rip out the AGS and install a conventional gun or missile system.  Interestingly, the Zumwalt, with its cruiser size dimensions, might be able to accommodate the 8” Mk 71 and still fulfill its land attack mission albeit with reduced ranges (around 18 miles with standard rounds – an extended range guided round was proposed but not developed).  Alternatively, the AGS could be replaced with standard VLS cells and Tomahawk missiles, however, this makes the “round” just as expensive as the cancelled LRLAP.

2. Adapt some other munition to the AGS.

The Navy has selected option 2. and the chosen munition appears to be the Army’s 155 mm Excalibur round.  Excalibur is a GPS guided, gliding projectile.

LRLAP - Too Expensive To Use

On the positive side, this brings the Zumwalt/AGS into line with the rest of the military’s 155 mm weapons and may allow the Zumwalt/AGS to use the Army inventory of 155 mm shells.

On the minus side, a host of problems must be overcome.

• The AGS will have to be adapted to fire the Excalibur round.  This will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars and probably take several years to accomplish.

“One defense official told USNI News it might take up to $250 million in engineering costs to modify the three ship class for Excalibur.” (1)

You know those kind of off-the-cuff cost estimates are always ridiculously low.

Additionally, it’s not just the gun barrel that has to be modified but the entire gun and munition handling system.  The Zumwalt was, literally, built around the AGS and its munition handling system which was precisely sized for the LRLAP.  Manual handling is not even an option without extensive modifications because the system was designed from scratch to be fully automated.

• The AGS’ selling point was the extended range of the rocket munition.  The Excalibur, lacking a rocket assist and dependent only on gliding fins for its range, doesn’t even come close to the LRLAP.

“The GPS-guided round – developed by Raytheon and BAE-Systems Bofors – has about half the range of the 60-mile LRLAP ...” (1)

DOT&E cites a range for the Excalibur 1a-2 of 25 miles (40 km) (2).  Of course, this almost invalidates the Zumwalt’s reason for being!

• While less expensive than the LRLAP it will replace, the Excalibur is not cheap.

“… The GPS-guided round … costs about a quarter of LRLAP’s estimated $1 million per round price tag.” (1)

Defense Industry Daily website cites contract costs of around $70,000 per round (3).  A Department of Defense Selected Acquisition Report shows Average Procurement Unit Costs (APUC) of around $100,000 per round (4).

• Excalibur is GPS guided.  If GPS is jammed, the round is rendered ineffective.  To be fair, that’s true of many military weapons.  Further, GPS requires fixed targets so the AGS/Excalibur will have limited utility – the enemy is not going to sit in one spot waiting for us to shoot.  Again, to be fair, this was also true of the LRLAP.  GPS guidance for a deep inland munition was always a bit of a head scratcher.

  

Excalibur - LRLAP Replacement

So, after spending around $30B for the Zumwalt/AGS program, we’re going to wind up with three ships (maybe only two – the last is being looked at as a rail gun test bed) that can fire a 6” round a few miles further than a WWII era battleship’s 16” shells?  For $30B we could have reactivated and operated the battleships for many years.

The AGS/LRLAP is yet another in the seemingly unending list of programs that the Navy committed to before they were technically proven and determined to be cost effective.  The lesson keeps getting hammered home and the Navy keeps refusing to learn.

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(1)USNI News website, “Raytheon Excalibur Round Set to Replace LRLAP on Zumwalts”, Sam LaGrone, 13-Dec-2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/12/13/raytheon-excalibur-round-set-replace-lrlap-zumwalts

(2)http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2007/pdf/army/2007excalibur.pdf

(3)http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/1726M-for-GPS-guided-Excalibur-155mm-Shells-06835/

(4)http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/15-F-0540_Excalibur_SAR_Dec_2014.PDF

A Ship With No Ammunition

Regular readers know that ComNavOps is highly critical of Navy leadership and their decision making.  I’d like to give them credit from time to time but, good grief, it’s very difficult to do so.  Every time I think they’ve hit rock bottom, they surprise me with yet another stunningly incompetent effort.  Honestly, if I was writing a fictional book and included all the things that Navy leadership has done wrong before they did them, no one would believe me and the book would be ridiculed as utterly unrealistic.  In other words, you can’t make this stuff up!

• Would anyone have believed that a professional, competent Navy would build a class of small warship before the vessel’s modular equipment, its main armament, was ready – resulting in a third or more of the ships sailing with no functional capability?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would build a bigger aircraft carrier while the air wing it would carry was shrinking to half the design size?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would commission an aircraft carrier with damaged main turbines and non-functional arresting gear?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would literally sink an entire class of the best ASW destroyer ever made?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would early retire the most powerful AAW ship class ever built?

The list is endless and I won’t bother continuing to list examples.  Suffice it to say that if you made this stuff up before it happened, no one would believe it.

Well, here’s the latest.  Would you believe that a professional, competent Navy would build a class (albeit a small, 3-ship class) of ship that was totally conceptualized and designed around the ship’s gun system, commission the ship, and then announce that they had no ammunition for the gun and were canceling acquisition of the ammunition?  That’s exactly what the Navy has just done! 

The Zumwalt’s AGS (Advanced Gun System) exclusively uses the LRLAP (Long Range Land Attack Projectile).  This is the only ammunition that can be fired from the gun.  The Navy has just announced that it is canceling procurement of the LRLAP due to escalating costs (1).

“Barely two weeks after the US Navy commissioned its newest and most futuristic warship, armed with two huge guns that can hit targets 80 miles away, the service is moving to cancel the projectiles for the guns, citing excessive costs that run up to $800,000 per round or more. “

“Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher. “That’s probably low,” the Navy official said. “That’s what the acquisition community wanted to get it down to.” The official added that there was no sense the contractor was “overcharging or anything.” 

The decision to accept the LRLAP cancellation is part of the Program Objective Memorandum 2018 (POM18) effort, the Pentagon’s annual budget process. “

So, we’re looking at a round that would likely cost around $1M each if the program were continued.

Because the acquisition program is going to be cancelled, we’ve got a commissioned ship, supposedly ready for war, that has no ammunition it can shoot.

The Navy is now scrambling to find some other munition to use.  The problem is that there is no other existing munition that can fit the gun, as is.  Whatever option is chosen, a new developmental effort will have to be initiated to fit the round to a system that was not designed to handle it.

One also has to wonder what this will do to the range of the system.  Recall that the LRLAP is not actually a traditional shell.  It is a rocket propelled warhead.  Where are we going to find another rocket propelled warhead that can fit in the AGS?  We’re not – not without a massive development effort – and what’s that going to do to the cost of whatever we opt for?

We can always take a smaller shell and fire it with a sabot but the range will be nothing more than a standard gun, presumably, in which case, what is the benefit of the Zumwalt?

“…the Navy is evaluating industry projectile solutions (including conventional and hyper-velocity projectiles) that can also meet the DDG 1000 deployment schedule and could potentially be used as an alternative to LRLAP for DDG 1000.” 

“We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems. 

“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.”

You’ll note that the mentioned alternatives are, themselves, developmental efforts and are not ready for their own use let alone having to undergo further development to be used in the AGS.

There is one more aspect to this story that is interesting.  ComNavOps is on record as stating that the entire Zumwalt gun support concept is flawed and that the gun cannot provide effective gunfire support.  The LRLAP is a guided round and without active guidance is useless.  The likelihood of being able to provide active guidance deep inland is poor.  Unfortunately, the fallback position of blind area bombardment defeats the stated intent of precision fire and is prohibitively costly at $1M per round.  Add to that the small caliber of the round, the limited explosive power, the limitation of only two guns per ship (compared to 9 guns per ship on a WWII cruiser or battleship) and the entire concept is questionable, at best.

With all that in mind, the article offers this tantalizing tidbit.

“While the Navy is stressing that high costs are directly behind the decision to eliminate LRLAP, it is not clear if there are deeper issues at play. The AGS/LRLAP combination was originally developed to provide Marines with a “persistent, precision fire support” capability, able to strike targets far inland with a high degree of accuracy. 

But as the Zumwalt moved from shipyard to sea and to the fleet, the Navy has notably downplayed that attribute, and while the technical achievement of the cutting-edge DDG 1000 has been widely trumpeted this year, its ability to directly support Marines ashore has not.”

What does that mean?  The article offers nothing to substantiate their suspicion but it is exactly in line with ComNavOps thoughts.  Could the Navy be realizing that the entire concept was flawed?

Finally, the article notes the other inherent bit of stupidity about the AGS – it can’t shoot at another ship.  That’s right, the Navy built a ship with a gun that can’t shoot enemy ships!  The LRLAP is a guided round and there is no guidance mechanism for designating enemy ships and linking that guidance to the munition.  The firing software could be modified, as stated, to allow ballistic firing at a ship but that’s a return to WWII salvo accuracy and we can’t afford to be salvo firing $1M projectiles and hoping for a hit.

As I said, if I were to have written this yesterday as fiction, you’d have scoffed at me and, yet, here it is today, as reality.  Navy leadership has added yet another massive screw up to their collective resume.

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(1)Defense News website, “New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets”, Christopher P. Cavas, 6-Nov-2016,

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-have-no-bullets