Not really. They were able to build nearly 2 1/2 dozen of them. Cost effective to run and proved extrmeely useful all over the globe.
And how about actual AB II/IIIs?
Or just fix the gun or dont have it break down.
Again, this is evidence of requirements extravagance that pushes up size and cost.
Great if you can afford it, but even the US with its largesse couldnt. That suggests the design/requirements are deeply flawed.
And yet wasnt. Because it was lunacy expensive for the benefits it offered.
This is the thing, you can pile on functionality, redundant guns, triple redundant guns, even more and bigger VLS and so on and so on.
But at some point someone has to sign the cheque to build it in numbers. They didn’t. Result = limited capability orphan class.
So many things wrong with this. Where to begin?
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Not really. They were able to build nearly 2 1/2 dozen of them. Cost effective to run and proved extrmeely useful all over the globe.
TLDR:
@A Tentative Fleet Plan is correct.
By the late 90s, the Navy was undergoing 2 major changes. The first being Peace Dividend and the results of that, namely the decommissioning of Cold War vessels without replacement (specifically the NTU vessels and ASW frigates), and the change from the Forward Maritime Strategy to From the Sea. The latter put a heavy emphasis on littoral operations to support interventionist policy, whereas the former severely hampered the Navy's ability to follow through on From the Sea. The reduced budgetary environment meant that the Navy would be severely limited in the number of hulls it could operate, while having to undergo massive doctrinal changes, completely reversing decades of R&D work, and having to cope with an entirely new mission set.
The remaining surface fleet consisted of Flight I and II Burkes (albeit the DDV studies had already been completed, and Flight IIA production began in the late 90s(?)), the Ticos, Spruances, and Perrys. When examining procurement programs, there's two "types" of replacement to consider,
A) Numerical replacement (Flight IIAs replaced the Spruances, despite one being an AAW vessel and the other being a ASW/Strike platform)
B) Role replacement (the Columbia-class SSBNs are replacing Ohio-class SSBNs)
The recent advent of Burke-class and their continued construction meant that any future LSC program would
not replace the Burkes either numerically or from a role perspective. If anything, Burke production was expected to continue until Zumwalt production finally became doable on a mass scale. Let me repeat,
the Zumwalts are not a Burke successor in any form, they share completely different mission sets, and were expected to operate side-by-side. Elaborating on that last comment, it was expected that the Burkes would remain with the CVBGs and provide area AAW and BMD defense for the "littoral navy", namely what would become the Zumwalts and LCS. The same situation also applies to the Ticos.
That left the Spruances and Perrys. While neither class was going to hit their designed service life by the time Zumwalt production started, they'd only be a decade off, and Zumwalt production was expected to continue into said decade. So based on the way the timeline worked out, and the continuing need for AEGIS vessels, it was determined that the Zumwalts would replace both the Spruances and Perrys. Let's consider the role of both classes.
The Spruances were originally designed in tandem with what would become the Kidds-class DDGs. The Spraunce stemming from the DX program, and the Kidds from the DXG program. Both were meant to share common hulls and machinery to save cost. The Spruances would be centered around ASW, replacing the aging WW2-vintage FRAMcans, whereas the Kidds would make up the AAW portion of the fleet. The DXG program was ultimately rolled up, and more or less succeeded by what became the Ticos.
Because of the designed commonality between the Spruances and Kidds, that left the former with tons of SWAPC margin. Namely, the entire ASROC slot could be filled in with a Mk26 launcher. Funnily enough, the Mk41 was designed to fit the Mk26's footprint. This was also around the time that TLAMs began entering the fleet in large numbers, so in the mid-80s the Spruances' ASROC launcher was ripped out in favor of a 61-cell TLAM-packing Mk41. Not only did the Spruances now serve the ASW niche, but they also took on the strike role, something that became extremely prevalent following the retirement of the Iowas and the doctrinal shift towards From the Sea. This in turn meant that DD(X) would have to take on both the ASW and the given land attack role. The plan was to replace Spruances 1:1.
The Perrys on the other hand were in even more of a pickle. Being SSCs, they were only designed for 25 year service lives, not the 35 years of LSCs. This meant that the class would begin to expire between 2005-2015. This is also what happened in reality. For reasons outlined in the 1988 Surface Combatant Force Requirement Study (SCFRS), the Brass determined that it would not be in the Navy's financial interest to procure a new class of frigates, even under Reagan-level budgets. Because of this, no replacement effort was taken seriously, as this line of thought continued up until the early 2010s. I also suspect that the reduced budgetary environment and the collapse of the Protection of Shipping role put further doubt on the need to procure a new traditional frigate.
Ultimately though, the Perrys filled both the ASW and AAW niche, the latter being accomplished by SM-1MR. Seeing as the Zumwalts were already being tied to the ASW role, and the equipment needed to carry out the strike role overlapped with that of medium-range AAW, putting SM-2MRs in the VLS only seemed logical. This is not to mention that the littoral threat environment necessitated AAW regardless. Ultimately, the Zumwalts were supposed to replace the Perrys on a ~1.5:1 basis. This never came to fruition obviously.
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Again, this is evidence of requirements extravagance that pushes up size and cost.
Ironic because the Zumwalt requirements were actually toned down on several occasions. The Zumwalt requirements were fairly well thought out, and made sense given the environment they were written in. They seem like lunacy from our perspective because we're looking at it through a modern lense. Ultimately both the Zumwalts and LCS were designed in a radically different time period, necessitating totally different ships from what we're used too. Had From the Sea not been overtaken by current events, we'd be having a very different conversation.
The issue with the Zumwalt program is not unit cost either. If we are to create entirely new production lines for only 3 hulls, utilizing all new machinery and equipment, exorbitant costs are to be expected. Had the total cost been divided by a larger denominator, it would look better. I also suspect most of the actual expense was R&D work, not just construction, as so many of the technologies had no evolutionary base. Where you could previously track the Burke's lineage all the way back to the Leahys, tracking each technological development, just about everything for the Zumwalt had to be done from the ground up. The fact that it produced anything is beyond amazing. The Zumwalt design is functional and mass-producible, the issue is we built just three of them.
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I am also very confused by your comment suggesting we use Burkes over Zumwalts in the littoral strike role.
I also find it funny you're fixated on the guns and their redundancy, especially considering those were virtually the only pieces that came in on time and on budget. The only notable thing about them is the automated magazine and hex barrel shape. They're just normal guns.
