"Trend Toward All Destroyer Navy" Topic

The US Navy has been on a path toward an all (or mostly) destroyer navy (outside of carriers, subs, amphibious ships and support ships, of course), and those destroyers are getting bigger. The current Arleigh Burke Class is just shy of 10,000 Tons and the planned Zumwalt class is projected at 14564 Tons. The USS Maine Battleship (that blew up in Cuba at the end of the 19th century) was 13,700 Tons.

With the C21/CG(X) class in doubt, it appears that by 2020, the US will be an all destroyer navy. The existing cruisers will have retired by then, and frigates have already been all scrapped or sold off (Poland got some).

I'm curious as to what people think of the whys and wherefores of this trend. Obviously the mission of the modern destroyer is very different than the mission of the destroyer of 1900. The Arleigh Burke has firepower that rivals entire flotillas of rival navy ships. The Zumwalt is planned as a simply devastating follow on class. Why go to destroyers, though? Why not all cruisers or all frigates? Why destroyers?

Will this trend continue? What will fleets look like in 20 years and why?

I only used the US fleet as an example, but you are seeing similar trends in other fleets, especially the Royal Navy, but also in China and Russia to some extent.

Here's some stats to compare- all USN (comparing size only, not firepower):

Near Future Ships-
CG-21/CG(X)- 16,000 Tons, Length Unknown
DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class- 14564 Tons, 600 Feet Long

Contemporary-
Ticonderoga Class CG- 9957 Tons, 567 Feet Long
Arleigh Burke Class DDG- Flight I- 8300 Tons 505 Feet Long, Flight II (up to) 9217 Tons 509 Feet Long
---
DDG-993 Kidd- 9783 Tons, 563 Feet Long
FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry- 4100 Tons 453 Feet Long

WWII-
CA-68 Baltimore – 17,031 Tons, 673 Feet Long
CL-40 Brooklyn- 12,300 Tons, 608 Feet Long
DD-445 Fletcher- 2924 Tons, 376 Feet Long
DE-5 Evarts- 1360 Tons, 289 Feet Long

Dawn of the 20th Century-
BB-10 Maine- 13700 Tons, 394 Feet Long
Armored Cruiser Olympia- 5,870 Tons, 344 Feet Long
DD-1 Bainbridge- 592 Tons, 250 Feet Long

The decrease in cost and the increase in capability. A smaller ship is cheaper to build and maintain. The weapons systems of today keep getting more effecient and require fewer personnel to maintain. Toss in interchangeability of spare support and you wind up with a less expensive, total weapons system that requires less personnel, maintenance of spare support and probably faster fleet.

These days, a patrol craft can have the capability of taking out a large, expensive capital ship! Why would a country still desire to invest into expensive heavy (battle) cruisers or classical "battleships" when the job can be accomplished by smaller, more agile and cheaper to maintain vessels?

If you want to invest in such expensive ships, aircraft carriers is the way to go. It can project power farther and remain at sea longer (these days) than ever before.

I suggest these to be the main reasons why you are seeing this trend.

Best,
Tom Dye
GFI

Smaller crew sizes would be what I would suspect, at least for the DD vs CG question. I would bet we will see a new DE/FF class soon though – there are a lot of small ship missions that just dont need a normal DD, much less a Zumwalt super-DD.

Uhh, guys, if you compare the tonnage, I think you'll see that what we're really getting is a cruiser navy that calls itself a destroyer navy. I think this all really started with the Spruance class destroyers which came out at 7000+ tons, while most navies were still running around with 3-4000 ton destroyers. There were navies back then whose light cruisers were smaller than the Spruances. Let's face it guys, its just semantics.

Rob

"Destroyer" really is a fairly arbitrary designation these days anyway. They sure as heck don't spend their time "destroying" very many torpedo boats any more, and they don't do much smokescreening or suicidal torpedo runs against enemy capital ships. Today's DDs still have an escort (of merchants and carriers) and patrol role, but I have to agree with Rob. They're cruisers (in the sense of being general multirole military ships) in everything but name.

I know that the Canadian Halifax class frigates (FFH) are 5200 tons, while our remaining Iroquois destroyers are 5100 tons. The main differences are in a larger missile bay for the DD, and increased C&C facilities.

British DD's are in the 4200 ton range, Russians up to 8700 and Chinese up to 4200. These are definitely in the Cruiser weight class from the last war. I feel that destroyers are today's cruisers.

SMc.

What about the new "Littoral Combat Ships" (LCS) class of ships.

link

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instapinch.com/?p=1085

"Why would a country still desire to invest into expensive heavy (battle) cruisers or classical "battleships" when the job can be accomplished by smaller, more agile and cheaper to maintain vessels?"

Because we could, if we put the floating museum Iowa classes back into service!

Nothing says "Love ya'.. Mean it!" like parking a battleship off of someone's coastline close enough for them to see it hulking around out there.

I agree with Tom and Rob.

Essentially, they can be taken out by fast-movers (aircraft), or SSM's rather easily, if the weapons can get through the defensive weapons umbrella.

Frigates are a bit too small to carry a decent self-protection weapons array, so destroyers, including very large destroyers (cruisers if you like), are the next logical step.

They provide the ability to work independently to perform a multitude of tasks, and with long range SSM's and cruise missiles, can project power as well, without risking valuable aircraft, or aircrews.

Besides, "Destroyer" sounds a bit more intimidating than "Cruiser", especially when the latter are now a brand of diapers.

All else being equal, longer ships are faster. Might it be that todays destroyers are the length that they are so that they can keep up the speed needed to fly aircraft off ship? In other words, OUR destroyers need to keep up with nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

Just speculating.

They'll probably come up with some type of cruiser, for "keeping the industry going" work if nothing else. I think they LCS is supposed to fill that patrol boat-frigate role but with the way it was managed who knows how many of those will be around.

Maybe it is easier to get funding for a Destroyer than a cruiser. So now all of the ships are destroyers now.

Actually… the Maine that blew up in 1898 was 6682 tons. It was the next Maine (BB10) of 1902, that was 13,700 tons, and that was her fully loaded weight.

So, 55 LCS expected? Given trends expect yo actually get 26 at double the cost. Yes, that may be optimistic…

Gracias,

Glenn

Yes Virtual is right. I did confuse the Maine that blew up in Cuba (a second class armored battleship commissioned in 1895) with the later BB10 Maine (a Battleship commissioned in 1899) . Sorry about that. I think the point remains the same, which is more of what Kalzbalger states in his post.

These ships are huge, and the Zumwalt will be gigantic by destroyer terms. They are basically the modern battlecruisers, with a destroyer like crew thanks to automation. I do suspect that part of it is funding. To congressfolk, Destroyers probably are easier to fund than Cruisers (and the Royal Navy once found that it was easier to build 'through-deck cruisers' than aircraft carriers).

Indeed, the new CG-21/CG(X) is in trouble and may not happen. The LCS (which was to be a new type of brown water frigate / 'omni' class ship) is in a lot of trouble due to a combination of funding shenanigans and constant changes to the design which ratchet up costs.

I do agree that even gun boats can take out a big ship (look at the USS Cole, and that wasn't even a weapon platform, just a bunch of nuts with a bomb on board).

Will this trend continue? Will we see Carriers, Destroyers, Small Ships (LCS/Missileboats) as the three predominant combat classes for the foreseeable future?

Most of the world seems to be moving to an "all frigate" navy… We have a lot of money, so it's "all destroyer" for us.

-Kle.

In the 50's and early-mid 60's, all the USN's new cruiser-sized ships were called frigates. Then they changed their classification to cruisers.

The hull and engineering plant of the Spruance-class destroyers was the starting point for the Tico-class cruisers. Roughly the same size and speed, different armament, different class.

So what's in a name? They can call these ships destroyers, or frigates, or cruisers, or carrier escorts. The terms that were based on tonnage don't mean anything anymore. Now, they're more a description of role than of size.

Call them what you will, a Navy with a a worldwide capability needs most of its ships to match a certain criteria – mostly, endurance. A 'cruiser' matched that, modern 'destroyers' the same.

By the way, for endurance read 'crew comfort'. If your crew has to be on station for long periods of time you need them to be fit for action at the end of that time. That means the ship has to be within a certain size range.

Perhaps that is why most American ships are the size they are.

Nah, we just build em big because we can. I was in the Navy and you'd be suprised at how little living space you get even on a carrier, though carrier duty is much nicer than frigate duty, for sure.

Still, I'm mostly interested in what people think navies are going toward. What will be seeing in 20 years? 30? Any opinions?

I want to game some future navy possibilities and wanted to see what opinions were out there.

And I was being flippant with that remark, so please don't dwell on it. My own thought is that cost is a major factor. I agree that most of the world is going all Frigate due to cost. For a frigate sized boat you get good ocean keeping ability (and let's face it, how many navies really project globally- frigates are fine if you are defending your coast and occasionally doing tours to other nations to show the flag), and with modern weapons, the ability to pack quite a punch. The newer Norwegian and German frigates are world class, cutting edge ships to be sure, and no one messes with a Royal Navy frigate if they can avoid it.

Even small ships are expensive, though, and cost is a big factor in a globalized world where the common wisdom is that big nation states aren't likely to start an all out war that will wreck their economies. Most Western powers are banking on smaller conflicts being the norm or the foreseeable future, so are trying to maximize bang for buck. I just don't see any big time naval races going on for the near future. Whether that is sound judgment or ignoring a coming nightmare is anyone's guess.

20 years from now, it appears we will have fleets with UAVs flying from smaller ships (even a destroyer could house a couple of middleweight UAVs- the trick is launch and recovery, which is a solvable problem). Eventually I think you'll have an all Frigate/Destroyer force for the most part with the US continuing to (if the economy doesn't tank long term) have big carriers sporting mixed UAV and manned fleets of aircraft and smaller navies having carriers of a similar size to modern smaller carriers with far fairly large numbers of UAVs (relative to their size) and a few manned helicopters.

30 years on, I think you'll see a substantial Chinese fleet with a similar make up to the cold war Soviet Fleet, and a renewed Russian fleet with a mix of mid-size UAV carriers, destroyers and a few outsized Battlecruisers (the Russians like size as much as we Americans).

Automation will make crews smaller, but battle firepower bigger. I only hope all that automation doesn't make people more willing to pull the trigger (since robots killing robots means fewer casualties). Western ships will feature more automation, and Russian, Indian and Chinese ships less (they have more ready manpower, and less of a headstart, but they will catch up quickly- never underestimate the Russians or Chinese- the Indians are a relatively new and unproven force, so who knows how good they can be- they are certainly motivated, and with a growing technical population base).

I see the RN continuing to shrink, due to both less funding and less interest in world power projection. I respect the hell out of the RN, but reality is catching up with them, and the UK population is growing more diverse and less interested in 'foreign entanglements.'

The US, for better or worse, will continue to be world cop for the next 20 years. I just hope it won't end us up in a huge conflict with lots of lives lost. (Lives have been lost in Iraq, yes, but nothing like an all out war would bring. The US has never had a truly Somme-like battle outside of our own Civil War, and I don't think we should be in a rush to get in one).

After that, I think something's got to give. Either everyone realizes that a modern global world requires a peaceful world (the happy-happy joy-joy scenario), or an event happens that spirals out of control and too many forces in too close of quarters triggers a big war that's too hard to pull back from once started. Then we see how much punch those frigate fleets really have, and the world scrambles to rearm after decades of downsizing their militarizes.

The fleets at that time will have rail guns, more complex offensive and defensive missiles, UAVs with amazing artificial intelligence, and USVs that act as modern versions of the amazing Italian frogmen of World War II. Not to mention really, really stealthy surface ships and even more stealthy submarines.

"30 years on, I think you'll see a substantial Chinese fleet with a similar make up to the cold war Soviet Fleet"

Maybe, my understanding is that the Chinese very recently turned some of their attention away from a blue water navy to a brown water navy. The primary focus being on Taiwan.

Bad way to runa navy though. Very much like the French in the pre-dreadnought era where they kept building small batches of ships based on what their latest flavor of enemy-strategy was. Ended up with a very odd (but interesting) collection of ships.

As others have pointed out. . . there's a word for a 10,000 ton destroyer. . . its called a "cruiser." LOL!!

Sadly we'll never see battleships again. . . but if the Navy keeps up with their development of rail gun technology, we might see big ships with big guns again, even if they are not true battleships! :)

The Russian Kirov class is a rather nice vessel…..

No gunboat (or flotilla of speedboats) can take out a Battleship.

Disposable one-shot ships were part of the Cold War model of one apocalyptic battle.

The US Navy of the present and future needs survivable ships.

An interesting trend in the ship information from above. It looks like, on average, that warships are getting bigger and bigger! A 10,000 ton ship armed with an array of missiles, auto-cannon, and artillery is a nasty combatant by any reckoning, and that is the BASIC US warship!

So maybe the fleet's firepower is being distributed over more, smallar hulls.

Besides, arn't all warships 'battleships'? Civvies seem to think so… then again, they are also the people who call Bradley ICVs tanks too. ;)