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BIG OL' BOATS Under congressional pressure, the Navy is taking a look at the possibility of building a 25000 ton nuclear cruiser, which would be the largest new U.S. surface combat warship since the Alaska-class battlecruisers of World War II, and roughly similar in size to the Russian Kirov class battlecruisers of the 1980s (two of this class are still in a form of "service"). Defense Tech:
Two cruiser designs are being considered. The first is a new warship based on the controversial DDG 1000 (Zumwalt class) destroyer, which features the controversial “tumblehome” hull. This design is being called an “escort cruiser” to protect aircraft carrier strike groups. It would have gas turbine propulsion, as do all other U.S. cruisers, destroyers, and frigates.The second cruiser would be a much larger, 25,000-ton, nuclear-propelled ship with a more conventional hull featuring a flared bow. This ship would be optimized for the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) mission.The "tumblehome" design is controversial because critics have asserted that the ships will capsize in rough seas. Fortunately, at a cost of only billions of dollars per ship, we'll soon find out whether the boats float or not. The bigger ship is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, given continuing high oil prices, Congress wants the Navy to look into nuclear propulsion for surface vessels again. The Navy built a number of cruisers during the Cold War with nuclear propulsion, but decommissioned and scrapped all of them in the 1990s (well short of their expected service lives), in part because they had proven less cost-efficient than their conventional counterparts. Extremely high oil prices, the reasoning goes, will change that calculus. The Ballistic Missile Defense element is also kind of interesting, because it involves both a strategic and a tactical calculation. Naval vessels will be expected to make a contribution to missile defense, either in the "boost phase" (sitting off the coast of an enemy and shooting down ballistic missiles as they go up), or in the midcourse or descent phase (sitting off the coast of the target and shooting the missiles as they come down). Work has proceeded much quicker on the latter than on the former. The latter also has a tactical application. Some naval authorities expect that the Chinese will soon be able to produce guidance systems for ballistic missiles accurate enough to hit aircraft carriers. This is no small technical task, as a carrier is (relative to, say, Taiwan) a small target, and it moves fairly quickly. Since fleet air defense is largely based around the threat of cruise missiles, however, it could also prove quite devastating. The USN has declared this capacity dangerous and destabilizing, which it is... for the USN. Nevertheless, the strategic impetus for BMD lends itself to the tactical, and vice versa. All that said, these ships may never get built. The history of the Navy is littered with projects that sounded interesting but never went to sea.--Robert Farley
