World Business

PORTLAND, Maine Growing costs and vulnerability to anti-ship missiles sank the Navy’s once-heralded “stealth destroyer,” a highly advanced warship designed to slip close to the shore unnoticed and whack targets with big guns.

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Faced with cost estimates upward of $5 billion per ship, the Navy had no choice but to let its prized DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer program end after the first two ships are built, analysts said Wednesday.

Congressional investigators long had been concerned that the Navy tried to not incorporated too many new technologies on each untested platform. The originally envisioned 32 ships dipped to 12 and at another time seven for example costs grew.

“I don’t think this action was a shock instead of fundamentally the sound program was a self-sufficient fat target with respect to divers years,” said Jay Korman, defense analyst at The Avascent Group.

Sen. Susan Collins, a component of the Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that the Navy instead plans to build nine more of its current Arleigh Burke destroyers, possibly with some added capabilities that went into the newer warship.

The DDG-1000’s augmenting cost came as the Navy is painful to expand to a 313-ship fleet. Officially, the unused ships are to cost roughly double the $1.3 billion price of a Burke destroyer. But estimates for the first brace run as high as $5 billion.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst through the Lexington Institute, said the Navy can’t afford the DDG-1000 but it can’t afford to stop construction ships, both, if it wants to achieve its shipbuilding goals and maintain a shipbuilding infrastructure.

Another problem by the DDG-1000 design was its potential vulnerableness. Bombarding the shore with guns is cheaper than using missiles, but the ship would have existence weak to attack if it came within 100 miles of shore to use its 155-millimeter guns, Thompson said.

“The Navy should have understood a long time ago that putting a $3 billion destroyer right side the coast of a hostile country so that it could use gunfire was a hazardous proposition,” he said.

Finally, there was no known threat to justify the warship, experts said.

“Please tell me what this thing would do today, if it were available in Iraq or Afghanistan?” said Winslow Wheeler from the Center for Defense Information. “Talk about event that’s totally out of command. This thing is a national embarrassment, that’s what it is.”

For years, the Zumwalt has been one of the Navy’s prized programs. It has a low profile and composites in its superstructure for slyness. It also features a form of electric drive propulsion, new contend systems and a new hull form.