Haroon Baloch
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WASHINGTON — The advanced destroyer Zumwalt (DDG 1000) is scheduled to put to sea next week to begin a series of sea trials. It will be the first time the 610-foot-long ship meets the ocean, the culmination of concept and design work that began in the 1990s.
The Zumwalt and her two sister ships are built with a tumblehome hull, where the sides slope outward rather than inward or at a straight vertical as in most ship designs. The configuration, part of the ship’s low-cross section or stealth characteristics, is reminiscent of some designs of more than a century ago, but the DDG 1000 takes tumblehome to a new extreme. Essentially, no one has ever been to sea on a full-sized ship of this type.
As the ship approaches the moment when she finally meets the ocean’s rise and fall, some media stories have appeared questioning the design. There are no new questions here, however — they’ve been around since the tumblehome configuration was adopted in the late 1990s.
The Navy has built scale models to test the DDG 1000 design, including a 150-foot quarter-scale steel hull that was “extraordinarily stable,” said one industry source.
The industry source said that throughout the design process, “decisions about systems to leave or replace, changes in weight and displacement were a continuing consideration. Whatever they shifted or removed did not affect the stability of the hull form.”
The Zumwalt’s designers have developed a new automated firefighting system, a critical need in a ship with a crew of only 125 sailors. But fighting floods is more difficult without muscle power, and that worries surface officers.
The Zumwalt and her two sister ships are built with a tumblehome hull, where the sides slope outward rather than inward or at a straight vertical as in most ship designs. The configuration, part of the ship’s low-cross section or stealth characteristics, is reminiscent of some designs of more than a century ago, but the DDG 1000 takes tumblehome to a new extreme. Essentially, no one has ever been to sea on a full-sized ship of this type.
As the ship approaches the moment when she finally meets the ocean’s rise and fall, some media stories have appeared questioning the design. There are no new questions here, however — they’ve been around since the tumblehome configuration was adopted in the late 1990s.
The Navy has built scale models to test the DDG 1000 design, including a 150-foot quarter-scale steel hull that was “extraordinarily stable,” said one industry source.
The industry source said that throughout the design process, “decisions about systems to leave or replace, changes in weight and displacement were a continuing consideration. Whatever they shifted or removed did not affect the stability of the hull form.”
The Zumwalt’s designers have developed a new automated firefighting system, a critical need in a ship with a crew of only 125 sailors. But fighting floods is more difficult without muscle power, and that worries surface officers.
