The Navy’s latest Class of Destroyer, the Zumwalt Class, once on shaky ground, has finally had its contract awarded. There will be two ships of this class built simultaneously, one in Maine by General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works the other by Northrup Grumman’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi. What makes this class of ship so unique, aside from it’s Animesque name, is all the high-tech goodness that will be pumped into it. From it’s stealth hull which, purportedly, reduces radar signature more than 50x over current hull designs, to its Advanced Gun Systems, to its automated cargo handling system, to its use of the LynxOS RTOS as a systems OS this ship has many seemingly incredible advances.

Maybe too incredible, many concerns over the design (especially the hull which is said to be unstable during high seas) have made this class of Naval vessel controversial to say the least. With the USS Iowa (BB-61) being stricken from the Naval Register in 2006, no more battle ships exist in the US fleet, which means there are no ships with the capacity for truly frightening naval surface fire support. That’s one of the roles the Zumwalt class should address, but even that is role is in doubt.

Still, have a look at the specs, pretty impressive…

Images courtesy of Wikipedia, the US Navy and the Public Domain (link, link)

WOW!! A few years ago (quite a few actually) I got to take a tour of a PC-14 Tornado class ship. Which is basically a floating hot lead delivery system. No, seriously. Seals used them as for cover fire for fast insertion and extraction. They’re armed with twin .50 caliber machine guns, 25mm fully automatic gun, stinger missile launchers, grenade launchers and more all packed into a 170ft hull with a 25 ft beam. The Seals still complained there wasn’t a 5 inch gun on board.

This video reminds me of that mentality. Truly a weapon with an enormous fear factor.

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