Originally published Sunday,
June 3, 2012 at 11:53 PM
A
super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. Navy's China strategy
will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets
with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.
SINGAPORE —
China is now
working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing
missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea
lanes.
A super-stealthy
warship that could underpin the U.S. Navy's China strategy will be able to
sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with
electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.
But at more than $3
billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that
could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One
outspoken admiral in China
has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an
armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the
new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily
promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history - a silver
bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington
now considers the most strategically important region in the world - Asia and the Pacific.
Though it could come
in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions
both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important
in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China 's long
Pacific coast.
"With its
stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning
requirements - this is our future," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval
operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are
being built.
On a visit to a major
regional security conference in Singapore
that ended Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be
deploying 60 percent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though
he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big
part of its shift.
The DDG-1000 and
other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that
leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and
missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers - but will have
half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a
small fishing boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the
ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic
field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of
sound.
But cost overruns and
technical delays have left many defense experts wondering if the whole endeavor
was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.
They point to the
problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced
fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its
successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most
expensive procurement program in Defense Department history.
"Whether the
Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for
over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it,"
said Dean Cheng, a China
expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington . "Buying
hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the
job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more
irresponsible."
The Navy says it's
money well spent. The rise of China
has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat,
although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced.
Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably
be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.
But the destroyers' $3.1
billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and
balloons to $7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly
sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut
to 24, then seven.
Now, just three are
in the works.
"Costs spiraled
- surprise, surprise - and the program basically fell in on itself," said
Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore 's
Nanyang Technological University .
"The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but
it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."
The U.S. Defense
Department is concerned that China
is modernizing its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying U.S. intervention in conflicts over disputed
territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan ,
which China
considers a renegade province.
The U.S. has a big advantage on the high seas, but
improvements in China 's navy
could make it harder for U.S.
ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers
are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller
Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore
later this year.
Officially, China has been
quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.
But Rear Adm. Zhang
Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China 's
National Defense University ,
scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech
design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with
explosives. If enough boats were mobilized some could get through to blow a
hole in its hull, he said.
"It would be a
goner," he said recently on state broadcaster CCTV's military channel.
---
AP writer Christopher
Bodeen contributed to this report from Beijing .
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