Admiral explains destroyer halt

WASHINGTON – The Navy took the unusual step of abruptly canceling construction of its expensive new class of destroyers this summer because the ships lack abilities that top commanders believe are necessary to protect U.S. interests, according to the service’s senior officer.

Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer does not have crucial missile and air defense capabilities and defending it against enemy submarines would be difficult. The last ship in the class will cost $2.6 billion.

“I started looking at the DDG-1000. It has a lot of technology, but it cannot perform broader, integrated air and missile defense,” Roughead said in his first interview since the controversial move was made to cancel the destroyer program.

The Navy announced its abandonment of the Zumwalt class in July, after purchasing two ships. Under pressure from Congress, the Navy agreed to build a third, but it plans to drop the new destroyer after that, ending a 13-year push and returning to an earlier destroyer model.

The Navy once hoped to build 32 of the destroyers, named for the late Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the officer who served as chief of naval operations in the 1970s. But Navy officials later scaled the destroyer program back to seven and now say they will stop at three.

When conceived, the Zumwalt was envisioned as a high-tech destroyer that would serve the Navy for 50 years. But some analysts have criticized it as a Cold War relic that is of little use to the modern Navy.

The Zumwalt class was designed to operate in coastal waters close to shore, but the Navy is developing a less costly ship for that.

Roughead also noted that design compromises resulted in the removal of some of its torpedoes, making it more vulnerable to submarines.

“Submarines can get very close, and it does not have the ability to take on that threat,” Roughead said.

The destroyer was designed as a ship that could avoid enemy radar, move close to shore and fire its guns in support of ground forces. But Roughead said there is little call for the Navy to fire guns on shore.

“If you go back, from the end of Vietnam to our present time, we have only shot about 1,000 bullets,” he said. “And I look at the world, and I see proliferation of missiles, I see proliferation of submarines. And that is what we have to deal with.”

The Zumwalt class also is designed for stealth, to be difficult for enemy radar to detect. But Roughead said the Navy was evaluating questions about its stealth technology.

Correcting the air defense shortcomings would add billions of dollars to its cost, Roughead said, making it prudent instead to build more of the previous generation of DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class destroyers.