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53-647: The origins of SC-21 lie in the realization by Admiral Joseph Metcalf III that new technologies such as vertical launch missiles permitted a complete rethink of warship design. He established a steering group, Group Mike, to study the possibilities. Group Mike sponsored two studies in 1987: the Ship Operational Characteristics Study (SOCS) and the Surface Combatant Force Requirement Study (SCFRS). Respectively, these studies sought to identify

106-529: A VLS allows a greater number and variety of weapons to be deployed, compared with using only torpedo tubes . A vertical launch system can be either hot launch , where the missile ignites in the cell, or cold launch , where the missile is expelled by gas produced by a gas generator which is not part of the missile itself, and then the missile ignites. "Cold" means relatively cold compared with rocket engine exhaust. A hot launch system does not require an ejection mechanism but does require some way of disposing of

159-466: A cold launch system for some of its vertical launch missile systems, e.g., the Tor missile system . The UK's Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM) family of missiles utilises a similar cold-launching system, referred to as soft-vertical-launch , and actively markets the advantages of the system. Soft-launch provides the missile with a reduce interception rate allowing for shorter ranged engagements, reduces

212-464: A cold launch system, while Type 054A frigates use a hot launch system. Transporter erector launchers are wheeled or tracked land vehicles for the launch of surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles. In most systems the missiles are transported in a horizontal out-of-battery configuration: in order to fire, the vehicle must stop and the transport/launch tube must be raised to the vertical before firing. BAE Systems has filed patents relating to

265-461: A costly, but more space efficient option. Some warships of China's People's Liberation Army Navy use a concentric canister launch (CCL) system that can launch using both hot and cold methods in the cell module, onboard the Type 052D destroyer and the Type 055 destroyer . The universal launch system is offered for export. Older Chinese ships use single launch system: Type 052C destroyers use

318-553: A greater number of weapons ready for firing at any given time compared to older launching systems such as the Mark 13 single-arm and Mark 26 twin-arm launchers, which were fed from behind by a magazine below the main deck. In addition to greater firepower, VLS is much more damage tolerant and reliable than the previous systems and has a lower radar cross-section (RCS). The U.S. Navy now relies exclusively on VLS for its guided missile destroyers and cruisers . The most widespread VLS in

371-475: A new program called Surface Combatant for the 21st century (SC-21), intended as a family of ships with a range of capabilities that would not necessarily fit old designations of "destroyers" and "cruisers". Meanwhile, strategy papers such as "FORWARD...FROM THE SEA" were redefining the Navy's priorities towards littoral warfare and the support of amphibious assaults inland. It seemed, then, that land attack would be

424-464: A slant so that a malfunctioning missile will land in the water instead of on the ship's deck. As missile size grows, the benefits of ejection launching increase. Above a certain size, a missile booster cannot be safely ignited within the confines of a ship's hull. Most modern ICBMs and SLBMs are cold-launched. Russia produces both grid systems and a revolver arrangement with more than one missile per lid for its cold launch system. Russia also uses

477-618: The CG(X) ballistic missile defense cruiser. The hull of the Zumwalt class is similar to that of the DD-21, but the new design displaces 14,564 tons and unlike the DD-21, the deckhouse is flush to the sides of the hull. The central "block" of VLS cells is replaced by a peripheral VLS of 80 cells, which allows both guns to be located forward of the deckhouse. This in turn allows the stern to be given over to helicopter facilities but means that

530-801: The Distinguished Service Medal with two gold stars, Bronze Star Medal with Combat V and gold star, the Combat Action Ribbon , the Meritorious Service Medal and Meritorious Unit Commendation . Metcalf is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Operations Analysis Curriculum and the U.S. Army War College. At the conclusion of active combat operations following the Invasion of Grenada, Metcalf and several of his senior aides were caught attempting to bring captured Soviet-made AK-47s back to

583-483: The IR signature of the ship and the obscurant of visibility by rendering the ship in efflux for several minutes; and most notably, the lack of hot efflux and reduced stress on the ship's structure allows for a much greater choice of launch systems, such as the lighter Mushroom Farm launcher whilst also still enabling installation into the heavier Mark 41 in a quad-pack or dual-packed configuration (4 or 2 missiles per cell) for

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636-580: The Iowa -class battleships, but this was dropped in favour of a conventional 5" gun and two 64-cell VLS . It would also feature a revolutionary cross-layer active sonar. An Operational Requirements Document was signed in November 1997, and an Advanced Development Memorandum on 11 December. A Program Executive Office was established on 25 February 1998. As with the Arleigh Burke -class, the construction of

689-762: The Regulus II , the forerunner of the present-day cruise missiles . He commanded the USS ; Westchester County , which made the first combat landing in Vietnam . He was in command of all the surface ships during the final evacuation of U.S. forces from Vietnam. Other sea commands were commanding officer of the USS  Bradley , commander of Destroyer Squadron 33, commander of Naval Surface Group Mid – Pacific, commander of Destroyer Group Eight and Battle Group Two and commander of Second Fleet / commander of NATO Strike Fleet Atlantic / Commander Joint Task Force 120. He

742-408: The "Blue" team; Ingalls partnered Raytheon in the "Gold" team. The new design was compared to the current Arleigh Burke hull and possible developments of it, and it was decided to go ahead with a new hull to be called DD-21 (or DD 21 ), the 21st century Land Attack Destroyer . The new hull was judged to have more potential for stealth and reductions in manning than the Arleigh Burke class. This

795-649: The "Streetfighter" concept. It did not help that the original plan called for the fifth ship to cost $ 750 m in FY96 dollars, but in the fourth quarter of 1999 alone the program cost went up from $ 3.2bn to $ 5.2bn. Streetfighter evolved into the Littoral Combat Ship ; under FSC the DD-21 became the DD(X) which would become the Zumwalt class destroyer , while the preliminary plans for CG-21 would be folded into

848-669: The Arsenal Ship championed by CNO Jeremy Boorda . In fact he was so enthusiastic that the rest of the SC-21 program was suspended in favor of development of the Arsenal Ship. The Navy set up a joint venture with DARPA on March 18, 1996. The Arsenal Ship would be acquired as a prototype under DARPA's Other Transaction Authority under Section 845 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 1994 (Public Law 103-160), which allowed them to bypass much of

901-708: The Cold War. The sudden disappearance of its greatest threat raised the prospect of Navy budget cuts as part of the peace dividend . Interest waned in big new designs like the SOCS ship; the Destroyer Variant (DDV) program of December 1991 was intended as a stopgap, the final development of the Arleigh Burke -class destroyer . In 1992 the CNO ordered a 21st-century Destroyer (DD-21) Technology Study. This led to

954-432: The DD-21 ships would be split between Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding to preserve the industrial base. However, there would be a competition between the two yards to design DD-21 and to be the full-service contractor for the class, which would mean the winning team receiving 85% of the total program costs of around $ 70 billion. BIW partnered with Lockheed Martin as the combat system designer and integrator, forming

1007-476: The ERGM which would double the payload and increase the range to 100 nautical miles (185 km). Together the two guns would give the ship a rate of fire of 24 rounds/minute, giving them the throw weight of two 6-gun 155 mm artillery batteries. Precision munitions make gunfire three times more effective than unguided shells, hence the DD-21 was said to have the destructive power of six batteries. The Navy's goal

1060-620: The Greek Navy preferred the similar Mark 48 system. The 3S-14 VLS was developed in Russia and is used in sea-based as well as land-based TEL systems such as the S-400 missile system . The advanced Mark 57 VLS is used on the Zumwalt -class destroyer . The older Mark 13 and Mark 26 systems remain in service on ships that were sold to other countries such as Taiwan and Poland. When installed on an SSN (nuclear-powered attack submarine),

1113-556: The Littoral Combatant (3B1) were revived under the SC-21 banner. It was initially renamed the Power Projection Ship, and then DD-21, Destroyer for the 21st century. Influenced by the Arsenal Ship, it would have a stealthy hull with a significant land attack capability. At first the plan was to install a twin-barreled Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS), developed from experiments on advanced projectiles for

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1166-466: The Navy announced a less ambitious Future Surface Combatant program (FSC). Polmar claims that DD-21 was terminated primarily for political reasons as the program was closely identified with the Clinton administration, whereas Work views it as the culmination of a debate within the Navy about whether they should use in the littoral zone large capable ships like the DD-21 or more numerous smaller ships like

1219-746: The Navy had lost enthusiasm for the project with Boorda's suicide in May 1996, and in April 1997 the Arsenal Ship was redesignated as the Maritime Fire Support Demonstrator (MFSD), which would be a technology demonstrator for a revitalised SC-21 program. As a result, Congress cut funding to the project and it was finally canceled in October 1997. The Arsenal Ship concept was revived in 2002 by converting four Ohio -class submarines into SSGNs carrying 154 VLS tubes. In 1997, plans for

1272-443: The Navy regarding the incident, and it did not prevent him from later being assigned as deputy chief of staff of naval operations for surface warfare. Press accounts at the time noted that in the same conflict, six enlisted personnel and one junior officer, of which two were Marines and five were Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division , all received reduction in rank, dishonorable discharges and at least one year of prison time for

1325-857: The U.S. Naval Academy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Advanced Research and Development Center in Bangkok, Thailand. In the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, he served in a number of positions: head of the planning branch of the Programming Division, deputy assistant chief of naval personnel for personnel planning and programming and as director of the General Planning and Programming Division. Metcalf

1378-563: The US as war souvenirs, in violation of both military regulations and US customs law. Twenty-four AK-47s, along with 24 magazines, were seized by customs agents from the Vice Admiral's plane at Norfolk Naval Air Station, VA when Metcalf and his officers were returning from the Grenada theater. As a direct result of intervention by President Ronald Reagan , Metcalf received only a caution from

1431-508: The automated magazine can only contain 750 rounds, supplemented by an auxiliary store. The lead ship was finally commissioned in 2016, and the class was truncated to a total of three ships as the Navy's mission changed and the costs increased. The AGS is unusable, as the only munition it can fire, the LRLAP , has been cancelled and there are no plans to replace it. Joseph Metcalf III Joseph Metcalf III (December 20, 1927 – March 2, 2007)

1484-507: The bureaucracy involved with defense procurement, enabling a prototype to be built by the end of 2000. The requirement was for a network-capable ship with around 500 VLS and less than 50 personnel, for a cost of less than $ 520 m for the lead ship. A further five ships would be acquired at a later date. In July 1996, five consortia were awarded $ 1 m to come up with some concepts. Three received follow-on contracts in January 1997, but

1537-452: The cell during the launch and so requires a way of venting rocket exhaust. France, Italy and Britain use a similar hot-launching Sylver system in PAAMS . The advantage of the cold-launch system is in its safety: if a missile engine malfunctions during launch, the cold-launch system can eject the missile, reducing or eliminating the threat. For this reason, Russian VLSs are often designed with

1590-659: The decision was put back twice as the new Bush administration reviewed defense spending. On March 1 it was announced that the decision would be made in May, and on May 31 it was announced that the Navy would wait for the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review, and a future shipbuilding review. After the House Appropriations Committee proposed a reduction in the DD-21 allocation in the FY2002 budget in late October 2001, on 1 November

1643-446: The design of a Large Capacity Missile Ship, a 20,000-tonner with 500 VLS cells filled with land-attack missiles. This design was inspired by a RAND paper in that year, which suggested a land invasion could be halted by destroying 20% of its vehicles with precision munitions. This would take several days with aircraft, but a surface ship with large numbers of land-attack missiles could achieve the same effect almost instantly. This design

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1696-410: The launching tube. This potentially makes a hot-launch system relatively light, small, and economical to develop and produce, particularly when designed around smaller missiles. A potential disadvantage is that a malfunctioning missile could destroy the launch tube. American surface-ship VLSs have missile cells arranged in a grid with one lid per cell and are "hot launch" systems. The engine ignites within

1749-412: The missile's exhaust and heat as it departs the cell. If the missile ignites in a cell without an ejection mechanism, the cell must withstand the tremendous heat generated without igniting missiles in adjacent cells. An advantage of a hot-launch system is that the missile propels itself out of the launching cell using its own engine, which eliminates the need for a separate system to eject the missile from

1802-687: The most important mission for the new ships. Since the retirement of the Iowa-class battleships , there had been a Congress-mandated requirement relating to the Navy's capability for Naval Fire Support (NFS). The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy maintained that destroyers would be adequate in this role, although there are dissenters. While smaller caliber guns (and missiles) have been used for centuries in naval fire support, very large guns have special capabilities beyond that of medium range calibres. US battleships were re-activated three times after WWII specifically for NFS, and their 16 inch gunfire

1855-454: The norm, around 12,000 tons, and for networking sensors and weapons together so that they could be used by the task force as a whole even if an individual ship had their radar disabled. Survivability also called for the bridge and Combat Information Center to be combined and "buried" in the heart of the ship, and for the ship to use electric drive to distribute the engineering around the ship. This would provide more room for weapons as well as

1908-472: The operational characteristics required of an escort ship and estimate how many such ships were required by the fleet. Since it was expected at that time that the Navy would be fighting prolonged campaigns in the Norwegian Sea, SOCS put an emphasis on ships' continuing ability to fight after an initial Soviet attack. This in turn called for larger, more survivable escort ships than had historically been

1961-400: The project on 13 January 1995, allowing the program to proceed to Cost & Operational Effectiveness Analysis (COEA). The SC-21 COEA had an unusually wide remit, and studied a variety of designs from 2,500 tons to 40,000 tons. There were three main "concepts". Concept 1 looked at possible upgrades to existing vessels, Concept 2 looked at variations of existing designs, and Concept 3

2014-411: The same offense. Vertical launching system A vertical launching system ( VLS ) is an advanced system for holding and firing missiles on mobile naval platforms, such as surface ships and submarines . Each vertical launch system consists of a number of cells , which can hold one or more missiles ready for firing. Typically, each cell can hold a number of different types of missiles, allowing

2067-470: The scope for future weapons such as railguns and lasers. SCFRS suggested that the Navy should not replace the Oliver Hazard Perry -class frigate for convoy escort duties, but concentrate on building front-line combatants that could be assigned to less demanding convoy duties in their later years. Both studies reported in 1989, but were almost immediately rendered obsolete by the conclusion of

2120-445: The ship flexibility to load the best set for any given mission. Further, when new missiles are developed, they are typically fitted to the existing vertical launch systems of that nation, allowing existing ships to use new types of missiles without expensive rework. When the command is given, the missile flies straight up far enough to clear the cell and the ship, then turns onto the desired course. A VLS allows surface combatants to have

2173-543: The weapons planned for the DD-21 were to be trialled in existing ships, increasing the land attack capability of the existing fleet in FY05 before the delivery of DD-21 in FY10. Rocket-boosted Extended Range Guided Munitions (ERGM) for existing 5"/62 guns would have a range of 63 nautical miles (117 km), while the long-range Block IV Tactical Tomahawk missile could be fired from existing Mk 41 vertical launching systems . It

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2226-583: The world is the Mark 41 , developed by the United States Navy . More than 11,000 Mark 41 VLS missile cells have been delivered, or are on order, for use on 186 ships across 19 ship classes, in 11 navies around the world. This system currently serves with the US Navy as well as the Australian, Danish, Dutch, German, Japanese, Norwegian, South Korean, Spanish, and Turkish navies, while others like

2279-480: Was a United States Navy vice admiral . He graduated from Vermont Academy in 1946 and then from the Naval Academy in 1951 and retired from active duty in 1987. Vice Admiral Metcalf had extensive leadership and operational experience in both sea and shore assignments. He held sea commands in each grade, lieutenant through vice admiral. Among his early commands was the USS  King County , which fired

2332-829: Was a member of numerous boards: The Navy Federal Credit Union, the United States Naval Academy Foundation, and the board of directors of the Navy Mutual Aid Association . He was also a member of the board of directors of the USS Constitution Museum . He was the district chairman of the Potomac Division of National Academy of Sciences Board. He was also a member of vestry of St. Patrick's Episcopal Church in NW Washington, D.C. Metcalf wore

2385-463: Was also planned to turn old Standard Missile SAMs into Land Attack Standard Missiles (LASM) with 150 nautical miles (278 km) range. Initially it was planned to use the Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships (VGAS), but this was abandoned in favor of a more conventional Advanced Gun System fore and aft, each with a separate magazine of 600-750 rounds. The guns would fire a 155 mm version of

2438-478: Was announced in January 2000 to replace the 27 Ticonderoga class cruisers . Procurement was to begin after the end of the DD-21 program, perhaps around 2015. Development work had not started before the program was terminated in November 2001; CG-21 was replaced by the CG(X) program, which was subsequently cancelled in 2010. The winner of the competition to design the DD-21 was due to be announced in March 2001, but

2491-407: Was apparently included in the SC-21 assessment as an afterthought - it was not included in the original list of concepts. Two designs were considered, both with 512 VLS cells - Option 3A6 was a minimal version of 13,400 tons with no self-defense capability, Option 3A5 was a 30,000 ton "goal ship" with many more survivability features. The latter Maritime Fire Support Ship became the basis of

2544-498: Was delayed by a year following the decision in January 2000 to use electric drive in the ship. But by early 2000 a "tumblehome" design had emerged that resembles that of the eventual Zumwalt class, albeit with differences in the weapons carried. Sources disagree on the displacement of the DD-21, and indeed it probably varied during the design process, but around 16,000 tons seems most likely. As of July 2001, 32 DD-21s were planned, with construction planned to start in FY05. Many of

2597-401: Was for new ships : Option 3B1 was closest to what became the Zumwalt class, with a pair of 64-cell VLS fore and aft and two standard 5" guns on a conventional flared hull of around 9,400 tonnes. A bigger hull would be required to enclose everything in a stealthy shape, and to accommodate the much bigger AGS gun system. In a separate study in 1993, two French students had been assigned

2650-431: Was important, as one aim of the program was to reduce manning and operational costs by 70%, while providing scope for a follow-on cruiser class. On 4 July 2000 it was announced that the lead ship of the class would be named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt , who had died earlier that year. The name would be inherited by subsequent versions of the design, culminating in the Zumwalt -class destroyer . The ship's delivery schedule

2703-422: Was the operational commander of all U.S. Forces during the successful campaign to rescue U.S. citizens in the invasion of Grenada . Metcalf's last active duty assignment was the deputy chief of staff of naval operations for surface warfare. During this assignment he developed the concept of "revolution at sea" and the triad "up out and down" for missile deterrence. Other assignments ashore included instructor at

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2756-579: Was to have 256 VLS cells on the DD-21, but the final number may have been 128 - some sketches show missiles being launched from fore and aft but the aft launchers appear to have been replaced by a second gun system and/or a helicopter pad. As well as LASM and Tactical Tomahawk, the DD-21 would receive the Advanced Land Attack Missile (ALAM), a new missile with a variety of warheads and a design range of up to 300 nautical miles (556 km). A 21st century air defense cruiser (CG-21)

2809-645: Was used in every major engagement of the U. S. from WWII to the Gulf War. The battleships USS  Iowa and USS  Wisconsin were finally struck from the Naval Vessel Register in 2006, having been kept on in part to fill a naval fire support role. The SC-21 Mission Need Statement was approved by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council between September–October 1994. The Defense Acquisition Board approved

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