Admiral WALTERS. The Aegis radar has been developed to take into consideration a longstanding deficiency that we have in many of our radars, the fact they cannot be turned off and on quickly and the Aegis has been designed to do that without harm to the radar. It can be brought up and secured from its radiating status almost instantaneously. Senator HART. That process can be repeated a number of times with no damage to the radar or any of the associated equipment? Admiral WALTERS. Repeated processes should not cause any damage to the system. It was designed to stand that. Senator HART. It should not? Admiral WALTERS. Should not. I am always hesitant to make any absolute statement, Senator, but it should not. Senator COHEN. I wish we could follow that same principle. We are not allowed that freedom. Senator HART. What has been the highest sea state so far that the CG-47 has encountered in sea trials? Admiral WALTERS. I don't know, Senator. My initial impression would be about sea state four. That is probably the maximum. I will provide that answer for the record. [The information follows:] To date the highest sustained sea state encountered by Ticonderoga is sea state four with intermittent periods of sea state five. As expected, the ship rode well and encountered no problems. Admiral WALTERS. She not been in mountainous seas yet because she has mostly been operating in the Gulf of Mexico and is now operating in the western Atlantic. it? Senator HART. Have you encountered any icing in the sea trials? Admiral WALTERS. No, sir. Senator HART. Is that because of where you have been operating Admiral WALTERS. Yes. Senator HART. What will happen to the ship or do you have any predicted effects on this ship of a combination of high sea state and heavy icing? Admiral WALTERS. We are certain that the ship is stable under high sea states. Under icing conditions we have built anti-icing equipment in all of the major systems to make sure they will operate under the adverse conditions of icing-type weather. On almost all of our ships, however, we have to manually remove some ice from the ships. Mr. SAWYER. Could I impose one thing here on ship stability? I think it is important to understand what a limiting stability margin is, because from the drift of the questions basically, the question appears to be the ships stability in seaworthiness conditions. U.S. Navy ships have the most stringent design standards in the world with regard to subdivision and stability after damage. The important thing to note is that the CG limit, the margins we are talking about with regard to this ship is not based on an intact stability, but damaged stability. It considers a ship that has two compartments flooded and up to 15 percent of her length essentially breached—ar the stability margin is designed assuming the break occurs across a watertight subdivision. She then is subjected to a high-wind condition, above 30 knots, and must be able, after a permanent list of 20°, to right herself. There is no margin put in, as such, in that calculation for icing. I think the point is, as you can gather, that would be a very severely damaged ship that has to survive under extensive damage conditions. Obviously, it is by far the most stringent design standard and far outweighs the question of stability of the ship in a high sea state in an intact condition. Senator COHEN. You say if it is under attack and has a hole in it, it still meets your standard and if it is not under attack, it will survive any high seas condition? Admiral WALTERS. We fully anticipate this ship will be a performer under any conditions in the North Atlantic or in any seas that may be imposed on her. Senator HART. Even though you haven't done any sea trials under those conditions? Admiral WALTERS. That is correct. We have not done any sea trials in icing conditions. Senator HART. And heavy sea states, Admiral WALTERS. Not yet; no, sir. Senator HART. When will those be done? Admiral WALTERS. Those will probably occur during the first deployment. Since we are approaching summer weather, my estimation is that the first really heavy seas, unless she gets caught in hurricane-type conditions this summer, would be on her deployment to the Mediterranean or the North Atlantic this fall when she starts deployment. That is characteristic of conditions under which most of our ships operate. Rarely do we have any of the new ships exposed on their first trials in the kind of weather that we have designed them for simply because of the local conditions where they operate. Admiral FowLER. We have been so confident of our design parameters over the years that we have never planned to trial a ship under severe weather conditions just to determine whether design conditions were correct. Senator HART. I hate to be thick about this, but as a layman I have to ask the question. I take it that the kind of damage hypothesis that you subject the design to represents essentially the same or worse operating conditions than if the ship were intact and operating in the North Atlantic under very heavy sea state and under heavy icing conditions? Mr. SAWYER. Considerably worse. Senator HART. I have some questions about the DDG-51. Senator COHEN. You can say that your testing procedures would be similar to taking a new aircraft out. During the first trials you don't put it to its limit. You put it through tests of its basic functions without trying to crack the envelope. Is that essentially what you do with ships? Admiral WALTERS. We test all the systems to their limit, their machinery, weapon systems and all of that is tested to the limit. But the hull design and stability are not tested to their limits. That just has not been one of our problems because of the safety that is designed inherently into the ship. Senator COHEN. Do you put it in a model? Admiral WALTERS. Extensive tests are done on these ships at the David Taylor Model Basin at Carderock prior to the first laying of steel. Senator COHEN. What kind of testing is that? What does that testing involve? Admiral WALTERS. At Carderock? Senator CоHEN. Yes. Admiral WALTERS. They involve testing of the hull shapes and the designs of the ships. Then they are tested under various wind and sea conditions that they can generate in the model basin out there. They have different scales of models they can use. They do put them in the test tank and they can run at different speeds and under different sea conditions. They can generate these kinds of storm conditions that Senator Hart has been talking about. Senator COHEN. I have some questions also on the Aegis radar system, but we can move on with the overview. GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYER - DDG 51 Mission: To destroy enemy aircraft, missiles, submarines and surface ships. The DDG 51 will be employed as a part of a Carrier Battle Group, Surface Action Group, Underway Replenishment Group or Amphibious Group. WEAPONS: AEGIS Combat System, Vertical Launch System, TOMAHAWK, SM-2 MR, CHAFFROC, VLA, SEAFIRE /Guided Projectile. HARPOON, Torpedoes, 1 5"/54 gun. Admiral WALTERS. The DDG-51 is next. This is the ship scheduled as a fiscal year 1985 lead ship. Therefore, this year we are asking only for money for advanced procurement. I know that this ship has had lot of interest in the Senate. I thought that I would discuss it a little bit more in detail without taking too much time, to just give you an overview of where we stand on this ship today. We have just completed the preliminary design of the ship. I would like to just leave this slide up. It is the ship as it appears today, having completed preliminary design. This ship is immensely important to the Navy because we have gone through a period of several years in which we have built a lot of frigates. We have essentially now under construction and authorized by the Congress those frigates necessary to provide our force level objectives. So, we need now to be building battle group capable destroyers to replace over 30 destroyers that will reach their 30 years of age starting in 1989 and then rapidly going through them in the next 2 or 3 years. Those are the ships of the DDG-2 Adams class and Dewey class, the DDG-37 class. There are 34 of those ships, 29 of which have not been modernized to the point nor would the ships in general sustain the kind of modernization at that period in their life to permit them to continue to be modernized. The DDG-51, therefore, is very essential to maintaining the carrier battle group capable ships that we need to keep the full capability of destroyers; this is, the ASW and AAW surface warfare aspect to serve not only the carrier battle groups, but the surface action groups, to operate with amphibious forces and replenishment groups or as independent units, as these ships would be capable of with their three-dimensional capability. The CNO's priority on this ship since it has been under development has been consistent in support of combat system capability first, with speed and endurance being a factor because many of these ships will operate with the carriers and some of the carriers being nuclear have high speed and endurance and we have to design a very capable destroyer to stay with it because we do not have sufficient nuclear capable escorts to go with these carriers. So, speed and endurance in these new ships are important. Survivability is an important factor. That has been addressed by Senator Hart's questions. As a matter of fact, it has been of concern in the Congress for several years regarding what we are doing in survivability, to improve the survivability of the ships. We have specifically made that a very important part of our priorities in the design of this ship. Habitability, of course. We have to keep the ships habitable for our sailors because they live in them, and finally, to provide design flexibility, but flexibility for future growth has been less than combat capability in our priorities. There have been several issues that have come up in the past years that I have briefed you about on this ship, but fundamentally we have not changed the ship a great deal from what Secretary Lehman informed the Senate last year that the ship would be. I would like to briefly go over those changes that we have had. We are looking at the collective protection system which is the positive pressure you put on the inside of the ship to keep chemical, and biological, and nuclear contamination out. We are still looking at that. That is on the basis of whether it should be a full system, to include the engineering spaces or partial system that would include all the people and the primary control functions. Either way we would design it, it would be on a full-time basis. Whatever you design in the ship would be used full time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The question is how many of the spaces in the ship we want to cover. We are still examining that. We have made no changes to the survivability factor, the blast protection, EMP protection, shock factors, or any of that sort of thing. We have not changed the combat suite. It still has the SPY-1D radar. It still has useful cells of vertical launch system for missiles. It has a gun. We have now made the decision on one of the controversial issues of last year, whether or not we are going to pursue the guided projectile and the Seafire system. The guided projectile is being placed under contract now and we are preparing an RFP to go competitive for the procurement of Seafire. So, those concerns have been addressed and are included in the base line design of the ship. We have decided again that Racer, which is one of the energy efficiencies that we want in our ships, is not ready for the lead ship, the DDG-51. We have a well-funded, well-planned development program for the Racer system, which is an energy conservation part of the main propulsion gas-turbine plant, and we expect that program to proceed and to be tested both ashore and at sea. At such time as it proves to be effective and we can realize the efficiencies that have been advertised for it, then we are prepared to put it in the second flight of these ships. Outside of that the ship remains as presented to you previously. It is shown here with the general characteristics that could be expected to change only slightly as we enter the contract-design phase. I think it is important also to understand that we have been very cost conscious on this ship because, unlike the cruisers that have specific missions to perform, the destroyer is more of a general-purpose ship that is used throughout the Navy for a lot of missions. We need a minimum of 29 of these to replace the ships I mentioned earlier. So it has to be an affordable ship. So, we have been very cost conscious in the way we are going about it and we intend to be that way. At this stage of the game we think we can produce a ship that will be 30 percent less costly than the CG-47. People have questioned that: "Why do you think you can provide this kind of capability and have it 30 percent less?" DDG 51 AS COMPARED TO CG 47 Equipments/systems evolved from current inventory. AAW: Fewer illuminators, smaller radar, and fewer missiles. No staff accommodations. Lower cost (700m vs 1091m fiscal year 1983 dollars follow ship). Less manning (336 vs 361). |