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That's one hell of a misleading title lmfao

I don't think the Zumwalt was so powerful they couldn't build anymore. It was such a powerful failure they couldn't build anymore. It was massively expensive and none of it's systems worked. How can you consider something a _"technical marvel"_ when none of the technology worked? That's not marvelous, that's a disaster.

After retiring from the Navy in '82 (7 years as Chief of Staff at Naval Research Labs), my uncle worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab where he helped define some of the characteristics of what became the Next Gen Destroyer. I never got a chance to talk with him about what he did and saw in his R&D years. I know he couldn't talk about the things that are IN the Zumwalt, but I would have loved to hear about some of the blue-sky ideas that DIDN'T pan out. RIP, Leigh... you were a helluva pilot and engineer.

The problem with all weapons systems is the "cost plus" arrangement between the Pentagon and its contractors. Congress should request a set in concrete price per unit, and a set in concrete delivery time. Every penny in excess will be swallowed by the contractor, and a 1 million per day of delay fine will be assessed on the contractor. Furthermore, anyone working at the Pentagon will be banned from working from any company that does business with the Pentagon for a period of 20 years. Failure to comply will mean the worker will have a permanent residence at Ft. Leavenworth.

The only destroyer sunk by her own guns.

Love how you had to specify the captain of THIS ship is James A. Kirk, so as to not be confused with James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise.

I currently think that they should consider adding naval drones and smaller air drones to the ship's toolset. Because they already carry some of the larger helicopter drones they have the required maintenance workshops. I think serving almost as a drone carrier would be a great way to use these ships. Drone technology has progressed so much that I think it is going to play a larger part in naval warfare in the future.

I had to stop from doing a spit take - the Captain, *James* A. *Kirk!?* Love it. It’s ironic because the Zumwalt was an experimental craft that didn’t really deliver and was refitted and rolled into regular fleet service - like the Excelsior. 😎

I worked with Captain Zumwalt (RET), during his civilian career. He was the son of admiral Zumwalt. He got invited to the commissioning of the first Zumwalt class ship. Great guy too.

Well on a happy note I would point to the Seawolf, a far overly expensive sub which was also cancelled due to changing world event and the horrific price tag. Yet the Seawolf served as the test bed for technologies which would decades later be incorporated into the far more reasonable Virginia class which makes up the modern sub force. So perhaps the Zumwalts will likewise be a valuable experience for future ship building decades from now.

This is the most advanced ship I've ever been honored to board. I toured top decks, below decks and bridge. She is an advanced, high speed warrior without a mission, currently, but things could change in a way that would make her invaluable. Zumwalt!

5:11 what I found most interesting is that this ship is under the command of Captain James Kirk. I guess it is not for another few centuries that he takes the helm of the Enterprise.

I’m no engineer, but seems like the problem is trying to build the systems to fit the ship , instead of building the ship to fit the systems.

I love the plexiglass with grease pencil writing like the old WWII Bogie Tote Board shown at 12:30…and I busted a gut reading “DCPO Spotcheck”. Ships routines never change.

Hats off to the boys in the orange bandannas. They helped develop & design the XForbit3Z2 System.

"The stealth ship so BAD, they couldn't build any more" there, helped you with that title.

Was on Michael Monsoor. The 2017 sea trial wasn't a complete failure. Something just failed to work that was vital to the testing and we couldn't complete them. The Navy just labeled it as a 'failure'. Everything up until that point was working better than the Zumwalt. It was just a very unfortunate thing. Hey, shit happens. *Shrugs*

The government built an overpriced, underachieving stealth ship. Unlike the ship's radar signature, it was easy to see this coming.

I'm an avid reader of GAO documents concerning US (and thus Canadian) military procurement and am always surprised to see how vastly the conclusions of the GAO differ from the information I get from the MSM or other supposedly academic sources. According to GAO, literally not much has been going well in the US army this last decade except for Hueys - the only US aircraft to fulfill a majority of its objectives since 2011 (GAO-23-106217) - and the F-35 program has been the worst boondoggle of humanity to date, yet we keep seeing constant and nonstop praise for it and the US military generally (who can't supply old M1 Abrams to Ukraine until maybe 2 years). Thank you for setting the record straight and using probably the only non-biased reliable source we have. Thanks to the people of the government accountability office!

Can't believe we couldn't make cannon shells cheaper than that are freedom is priceless and nothing is to good for the people who fight for us

Damage control may be compromised with the skeleton crew. A “lucky” hit could take out the entire operational computing systems.

I feel it was optimistic to view these ships as operational vessels when it seems more appropriate to classify them as technology test beds. With this in mind protracted development, cost over runs and abandoned features are to be expected.

This ship is my new spirit animal.

I enjoy all of your channels! Thank for your time and hard work

My Dad worked on that ship before he passed away. He was a Foreman at Bath Iron works in Maine

It is a beautiful ship and highly capable. The problem is it’s too sophisticated for its own good. Remember, wether a cheap destroyer or an expensive Zumwalt, it only take one torpedo to sink it. The ship is too expensive to lose it and too expensive to keep it. 🤷🏻‍♂️🇺🇸

Very informative thanks👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

The way I see it, we need to fail before we can learn from our failures. The Zumwalt class was a failure, but by our next destroyer or the one after that, you’ll see what we learned.

They keep asking a ship to do too many tasks. The littoral combat ship has the same probems. Too few crew, and isn't good at any particular mission. So the number built gets cut. Dedicated purpose built ships are allways more useful. Another example is the F-111 that was supposed to be a fighter but was a pig in the air.

I think the reverse bow or the "X-Bow" is one of the coolest marine devolving evolution (oxymoron there) we've seen recently. By devolving I'm referring back to "outdated" technology. Vikings and Egypt used that technology to cross oceans, transporting large amounts of cargo in humans on waterways, and all ships before WW2 had the Atlantic bow or "Clipper" bow. The Atlantic bow has a better wet floor rating (meaning the deck is dry longer or not as wet in rough seas) making it better for war time activities.

You have to think of the 'at the time' scenario. The big white elephant at the time was the Iowa battleships - old, expensive, and useful for only one thing - shore bombardment. However the problem was something plainly seen in conflicts like Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf - while the carriers did their thing, and the battleships sailed slowly up and down the coast pounding targets, the rest of the fleet, ultra expensive anti-submarine frigates, anti-submarine destroyers, etc., just sailed around doing nothing, looking for a non existent submarine threat (the USN has never ever engaged an enemy submarine since WW2). Proponents of the battleships used this to argue that they should be kept active until a new NGFS platform was developed, and this brief went into the design of the Zumwalts in the various forms (DD21, DDx, DD1000). Now since the 1991 gulf war, bombarding shores has kind of gone out of fashion, so there has been no further calls for the battleships, or the Zumwalts, to provide this role. They have also realized that designing ships specially for countering this non-existent submarine threat (despite all the planning for another world war with a submarine-capable nation like Russia or China, all wars since WW2 have been against non-submarine-possessing nations and non-submarine-possessing factions like IS and the Taliban) is a folly as well, so have retired all the anti-submarine frigates and concentrated on the Burke destroyers, which are much more capable of carrier escort and land attack with Tomahawks, much more valuable roles.

After the cold war the Navy wanted to make ships that required a much smaller crew, and have less maintenance to do. Lots of time was wasted on removing rust, prep, prime, and repainting the exterior. And we had to do lots of preventative maintenance. The Arleigh Burke Class destroyer has some built in stealth in the design, and some radar absorbing techniques. The Zumwalt was supposed to be stealth on a whole new level. And most of the time the actual top speed is not given. You can expect 5-10% faster speeds than listed without trying very hard.

When the ship you draw in 2nd grade becomes reality 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

The captain of the Zumwalt shold be the captain of the next Enterprise.

@7:45 thats right everyone; it creates enough power for itself 😂

*Enemy: Ready the EMP blasters* Zumwalt: Crap!

This ship was built on the basis that the rail gun would be available by the time the ship was completed. That’s known as putting the cart before the horse. A ship is one thing but a weapons system is a whole other ball of wax! In short the Navy screwed the pooch on Zumwalt.

There were a lot of technical issues with many of the systems it was too bad the problems with the class weren't elaborated on in a more detailed manner.

I love seeing the ship in my city. It's a shame it wasn't successful, its a beautiful ship.

I was told that them 1,000 ship number's was connected to the X37b... thanks for sharing great stuff 👍

I live close to Bath Iron Works where these were built. First time i saw Zumwalt sitting in the kennebec river I was thinking WTH is that?? Strange ship indeed. Many acquaintances and friends i know have worked on this project and have said the same basic things: It was a failure the Navy isn't really sure what to do with. The concept is cool, but it has been marred with cost overruns, system failures and weapons issues.

I remember seeing these ships from the bridge on Rt. 1 when they were being built at BIW. They looked incredible; like something out of a Terminator movie. Often technological "orphans" like this wind up finding alternate roles that they excel at even more than the ones they were originally designed for; hopefully we'll see something like that here.

Interesting that this popped in my feed. I was a sub contractor on the dd21 project, software principal architect on the system that handled all the spec and designs for the program. The first proof of concept was released in 3 weeks and took over 2100 man hours. Which won Northrop Grumman a 5 mil bonus. I didnt see any of that lol. But it was interesting times. Was onsite for quite a while as well and went to Virginia a couple of times.

This here is the DeLorean of the seas. Looks a hell of a lot cooler than it performs.

78 megawatts is about 1/12th of what Aircraft carriers have (1100 megawatts on the Nimitz, 1300 on the Ford).

I think that eventually, we will get a Zumwalt II, when the technologies mature. It was a case of too many brand cutting edge systems that didn't play nicely. We'll get it, but probably not for a solid 45-90 years.

Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all. I'm confident we learned a lot from this experience and will put that knowledge to great use in the future.

I dig the multi-compartmental individual shipping container like assembly visually melding into one. Which would think has got to be better able to isolate breeches while remaining water tight Sections retain buoyancy. As to why some sections made out of different materials, must be something specific to type of operations carried out. Requiring something in between unlike materials made out of different properties to prevent reactive corrosion.

My brother-in-law was an electrician in the Navy, and he worked on the Zumwalt when it was in Maine at the Bath Ironworks. He told me when it was going through its testing phase, it had done so well that local Maine lobstermen and women couldn't see the vessel until it was nearly on top of them. The navy ended up having the line the Zumwalt with red flags so that the local fisherman could see the damn thing.

I heard it was cancelled because it failed its stability tests and was unstable at high turning speeds It was also designed for the new railgun system which has never been finished and seems to be abandoned for now It was from all accounts a failed folly of a ship with good intentions when it was designed but took to long to build putting it beyond the capabilities it was designed for

Crazy how much it resembles the Monitor and Merrimack from the civil war era

Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up

A pity that the class hasn't worked out. I really like the look of the ships - that tumblehome bow is very reminiscent of early 20th-century warships! It's often said that "you can learn more from mistakes than from successes", so given that a few mistakes seem to have been made with this class, that sounds like a really good "learning opportunity" for the U.S. Navy!

Crazy looking ship. One sitting in PSNS Bremerton. Driven past it numerous times. Very interesting.

Seeing these floating around Sand Diego is really surreal.

Fredenburg went on to detail problems relating to the skyrocketing costs, lack of accountability, unrealistic goals, a flawed concept of operations, the perils of designing a warship around stealth, and the failure of the Advanced Gun System. He concludes: The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster.

For a while now I've wondered why the military doesn't go to a modular form factor. Design all new/future ships to be modular in their kit. Systems designed from the start to be swappable with minimal down time due to a unified base set. Have a destroyer that you need to change out from one role to another for a mission/deployment? Pull up to the dock, gantry crane pulls out the missle banks and drops in a multi-helicopter pad or a large diameter gun turret. All within a day or two and the ship is back under way.

you need to make more of the fact that she was commanded by captain kirk. that's just too cool.

It's power system generates 100% of the power it needs to operate, astonishing! I forgot the rest of the navy needs to run power cords from the shore.

From Dark Skies to Dark Seas - You are the best!

The Burke class DDG’s are at their limits for supporting electronics. The hull of the Zumwalt class is stealthy and has enormous electrical generation. Along with that AEGIS and more missile capacity than other warships. Failures are the gun system and new complex systems need debugging. A failure? Maybe… but clearly it offers lessons.

A small crew on any warship is incredibly stupid. You need lots of redundancy when the shooting starts, that has been the case since Nelson.

Conspiracy Theory: The Navy always planned to use it as a hypersonic missile platform, but they knew that technology would take a lot longer to develop. They also wanted to test out railguns but just to understand them to know their economic requirements and what forms of defense would be required. Like the Sea Wolf, everyone kinda knew they would be overpriced but they only wanted a small number in the first place...so the dominoes were set and congress followed their predictable path. So now we have a small number of stealth warships a little ahead of hypersonic missiles finishing development. Clearly the hypersonics took a few years longer than expected. Or...I'm wrong and someone was creative in repurposing them for hypersonics.

Did the navy fix that cracking that was occurring on some main part of the hull (from stress) ?? I heard about it once in a news snippet, then nothing more.

As a sailor I've always considered the z a joke. I'd hate to be stationed on that ship.

Over priced and not worth the time and resources put into it. They found out it wasn't worth anything but it sure looked pretty even if it falls apart and is not able to do what the navy planned for.

That's some collaboration between some of the giants of military tech. How could it not be a success with companies like those involved?

I like the new Zumwalt stealth destroyer, a lot! This is a project the US needs to keep working on to reach its goal.

It was cutting the number of vessels in the class which forced up the price of the 155mm ammunition. The rounds were costed on 2 guns per ship, 32 ships, and 750 rounds per gun. That's 48,000 rounds, with development costs built into the price of each one. So when the class was cut to 3 ships, with just 4,500 rounds, even an overly simplistic 48k/4.5k=10.7 calculation can show you how and why the ammunition cost exploded.

The Australian Collins class submarine also suffered from ambitious planning during the contract writing stage. It was also a disaster initially

You just gotta love that military industrial complex/governmental relationship!

Projectile and propelling charge unit costs, already high, skyrocketed when the number of ships, and the amount of projectiles, were decreased - losing the lower unit cost benefits of large production runs. The original intent of the ship wax to provide replacement for the fire support abilities of the battleships. However the projectile was merely a fragmentation round. It was certainly useful to some degree, but the effects on the enemy would have not been close to equivalent to a 16" shell, even given the high precision of the guided round. Basically, it seems that no one at the highest levels of the Navy reviewed the progress of these ships and considered the changing environment it was to work in, or the effects of the cost reductions on the capability of the ship, and hence its viability. It is a waste that no one has taken responsibility for. More adult thinking was desperately needed.

Proudly built in maine. Super cool to drive by the shipyard and see these and the older models being built.

This is a classic example of biting off more than you can chew

I worked for BAE in 2011 on the USS Kearsarge LHD 3 and One or two Destroyer ships.

It seems to me as most of the problems with all of these new military machines is the rushing of the technology and The Cutting of the funding at the same time while expecting world class results

The ammo for those guns was enormously expensive it was inconceivable... $800000 per round The ship was ultimately a failure because if it. they'll retire it cuz it doesn't meet any of the current requirements for any designated ship. It cant fit enough missiles to be anything. The engines were another problem if my mind serves me right....

It wasn't explained in the video, but those 800k dollar artillery shells are so expensive because their production line was not scaled up to meet the needs of 32 ships. Just three ships meant it stayed in the hand-made initial production phase, which is much more expensive, per shell. Also, the gun was a stop-gap until railguns would be ready, and this thought was part of the reason that so much electrical energy was made available for the ship. Also, because it uses less sailors, it's cheaper to operate. The savings will make up for its doubling of cost compared to an Arleigh Burke class over the lifetime of the ship. Also not mentioned in the video, the low crew size made many have doubts about the crew's ability to perform damage control. But also, the vertical launch missile cells are on the outside of the ship, instead of clustered together near the middle, precisely to make the ship more survivable once hit. Something tells me we will be needing this ship sooner or later, and it's a mistake not to field them.

Just started watching your videos an I love them. An I'm from Maine an it's cool to see Maine get some recognition lol

this is what happens when the govt provides a very loose spec and let the contractors loose to put it together. this class and the LCS were contractor-led projects (vs the Arliegh Burkes which were driven by the navy's design departments)

Captain Kirk commands that ship.

"A single computing system that can be controlled by any crew member from anywhere on the ship." Eh. They make rouge agent movies like this.

I worked on that ship back in the day hanging cranes in the hanger Bay good old days but I did not know it was three of them beautiful ship

It needs 3 tugs to accompany her wherever she goes in case she breaks down which is often. All the enemy has to do is spot the non stealth radar returns of the tugs to know where she is. The admirals in the pentagon got rich off the kickbacks procuring this lemon.

I think the three Zumwalts we have will still be highly valuable, not just as R&D test beds for future tech, but as special operations platforms for missions, such as reconnaissance, deployment of SEAL teams, and as first strike weapons. Kind of a wild card we can hold to for a rainy day.

Abrams and Bradley were once considered grotesquely expensive failures too, as is the Gerald Ford. Technological leaps are expensive and difficult.

Gotta admit one thing, it looks cool as hell.

a large part of ship design is the hull shape. ships have that V so when they roll they can hopefully spring back up. They probably found out that the zumwalt is too tippy in rough seas. I would figure it would capsize.

The sheer complexity of this ship and its systems makes me wonder how well it would function if it took a hit.

So, apparently a balloon can defeat all this? I want my money back!

The key to all language is expression and intensity. Focus your intent and not only all animals will understand but you can bend metal and ground

The Navy canceled the Seahawk attack submarine class for being too expensive. Instead they took the most cost effective features and incorporated them in the Virginia class submarines. The Navy is doing the same with the new successor of the Arleigh Burke destroyer class, a very successful class copied by many western navies. The Zumwalt's were canceled for being to expensive as a fleet destroyer class for the USN. The most cost effective features will be incorporated in the new class. A personal and professional observation, I have found the "Dark" seas-sky vlogs to be extremely unreliable in observations and conclusions.

Let me correct that title for you, "ship so overpriced it world bankrupt the U.S. Navy to buy any more"... There fixed it.

The stealth ship that looks like it could be a submarine.

Rumour has it if you walk on one of these ships, with a magnet in your pocket; you can inadvertently wipe the ships computer hard drive and disable the ship

I think aspects of the ship are salvageable. We know that the hull design works as intended, so I'd start a project that takes the design, shrinks the size by 1/3 to 1/2, utilize mature technologies for power and systems and utilize drop in modules for power, propulsion and weapons. This way they can have specialized versions that use the same basic hull. Think AR-15 ship.

I love how he says it’s so powerful but I remember at the beginning of this year watching a video by the dark series saying the opposite and how terrible it really is

155mm guns that the Navy can't afford to buy ammo for! Way to go!

Last I heard it was falling apart due to structural damage caused by sea water. Yes, a real technological marvel .