A Ship With No Ammunition
Regular readers know that ComNavOps is highly critical of Navy leadership and their decision making. I’d like to give them credit from time to time but, good grief, it’s very difficult to do so. Every time I think they’ve hit rock bottom, they surprise me with yet another stunningly incompetent effort. Honestly, if I was writing a fictional book and included all the things that Navy leadership has done wrong before they did them, no one would believe me and the book would be ridiculed as utterly unrealistic. In other words, you can’t make this stuff up!
- Would anyone have believed that a professional, competent Navy would build a class of small warship before the vessel’s modular equipment, its main armament, was ready – resulting in a third or more of the ships sailing with no functional capability?
- Would anyone have believed that a Navy would build a bigger aircraft carrier while the air wing it would carry was shrinking to half the design size?
- Would anyone have believed that a Navy would commission an aircraft carrier with damaged main turbines and non-functional arresting gear?
- Would anyone have believed that a Navy would literally sink an entire class of the best ASW destroyer ever made?
- Would anyone have believed that a Navy would early retire the most powerful AAW ship class ever built?
The list is endless and I won’t bother continuing to list examples. Suffice it to say that if you made this stuff up before it happened, no one would believe it.
Well, here’s the latest. Would you believe that a professional, competent Navy would build a class (albeit a small, 3-ship class) of ship that was totally conceptualized and designed around the ship’s gun system, commission the ship, and then announce that they had no ammunition for the gun and were canceling acquisition of the ammunition? That’s exactly what the Navy has just done!
The Zumwalt’s AGS (Advanced Gun System) exclusively uses the LRLAP (Long Range Land Attack Projectile). This is the only ammunition that can be fired from the gun. The Navy has just announced that it is canceling procurement of the LRLAP due to escalating costs (1).
“Barely two weeks after the US Navy commissioned its newest and most futuristic warship, armed with two huge guns that can hit targets 80 miles away, the service is moving to cancel the projectiles for the guns, citing excessive costs that run up to $800,000 per round or more. “
“Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher. “That’s probably low,” the Navy official said. “That’s what the acquisition community wanted to get it down to.” The official added that there was no sense the contractor was “overcharging or anything.”
The decision to accept the LRLAP cancellation is part of the Program Objective Memorandum 2018 (POM18) effort, the Pentagon’s annual budget process. “
The decision to accept the LRLAP cancellation is part of the Program Objective Memorandum 2018 (POM18) effort, the Pentagon’s annual budget process. “
So, we’re looking at a round that would likely cost around $1M each if the program were continued.
Because the acquisition program is going to be cancelled, we’ve got a commissioned ship, supposedly ready for war, that has no ammunition it can shoot.
The Navy is now scrambling to find some other munition to use. The problem is that there is no other existing munition that can fit the gun, as is. Whatever option is chosen, a new developmental effort will have to be initiated to fit the round to a system that was not designed to handle it.
One also has to wonder what this will do to the range of the system. Recall that the LRLAP is not actually a traditional shell. It is a rocket propelled warhead. Where are we going to find another rocket propelled warhead that can fit in the AGS? We’re not – not without a massive development effort – and what’s that going to do to the cost of whatever we opt for?
We can always take a smaller shell and fire it with a sabot but the range will be nothing more than a standard gun, presumably, in which case, what is the benefit of the Zumwalt?
“…the Navy is evaluating industry projectile solutions (including conventional and hyper-velocity projectiles) that can also meet the DDG 1000 deployment schedule and could potentially be used as an alternative to LRLAP for DDG 1000.”
“We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems.
“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.”
“We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems.
“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.”
You’ll note that the mentioned alternatives are, themselves, developmental efforts and are not ready for their own use let alone having to undergo further development to be used in the AGS.
There is one more aspect to this story that is interesting. ComNavOps is on record as stating that the entire Zumwalt gun support concept is flawed and that the gun cannot provide effective gunfire support. The LRLAP is a guided round and without active guidance is useless. The likelihood of being able to provide active guidance deep inland is poor. Unfortunately, the fallback position of blind area bombardment defeats the stated intent of precision fire and is prohibitively costly at $1M per round. Add to that the small caliber of the round, the limited explosive power, the limitation of only two guns per ship (compared to 9 guns per ship on a WWII cruiser or battleship) and the entire concept is questionable, at best.
With all that in mind, the article offers this tantalizing tidbit.
“While the Navy is stressing that high costs are directly behind the decision to eliminate LRLAP, it is not clear if there are deeper issues at play. The AGS/LRLAP combination was originally developed to provide Marines with a “persistent, precision fire support” capability, able to strike targets far inland with a high degree of accuracy.
But as the Zumwalt moved from shipyard to sea and to the fleet, the Navy has notably downplayed that attribute, and while the technical achievement of the cutting-edge DDG 1000 has been widely trumpeted this year, its ability to directly support Marines ashore has not.”
But as the Zumwalt moved from shipyard to sea and to the fleet, the Navy has notably downplayed that attribute, and while the technical achievement of the cutting-edge DDG 1000 has been widely trumpeted this year, its ability to directly support Marines ashore has not.”
What does that mean? The article offers nothing to substantiate their suspicion but it is exactly in line with ComNavOps thoughts. Could the Navy be realizing that the entire concept was flawed?
Finally, the article notes the other inherent bit of stupidity about the AGS – it can’t shoot at another ship. That’s right, the Navy built a ship with a gun that can’t shoot enemy ships! The LRLAP is a guided round and there is no guidance mechanism for designating enemy ships and linking that guidance to the munition. The firing software could be modified, as stated, to allow ballistic firing at a ship but that’s a return to WWII salvo accuracy and we can’t afford to be salvo firing $1M projectiles and hoping for a hit.
As I said, if I were to have written this yesterday as fiction, you’d have scoffed at me and, yet, here it is today, as reality. Navy leadership has added yet another massive screw up to their collective resume.
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(1)Defense News website, “New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets”, Christopher P. Cavas, 6-Nov-2016 ,
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