Yet Another Mini Crazy Thought: The JP Jones Class Destroyer

"USS JP Jones" at top, USS Zumwalt below at scale
stop mocking my photoshopping!!!

I've been playing around again.  This picture is hardly as good as what I did to create the second MC Perry class, but it does outline what is possible for a potential next generation destroyer.  While, like the MC Perry, the JP Jones is a name which is already in use, the point is to pick a name which is recognizable and easily short handed (and probably will end up getting recycled).  This is meant to be what I think, roughly, what the Navy's Future Surface Combatant ought to be.

I left a copy of the Zumwalt next to the JP Jones for comparison sake.

The missions of a destroyer in the US Navy is both that of an escort and as an independent combatant.  With the except of the Zumwalts, all current American destroyers are anti air guided missile destroyers.  This is primarily because other than the Zumwalts, the only ships which we have are the various flavours of the Burke class.  Likewise, the other role which the Burkes fill is of ASW, anti submarine, hunters.  Except the earliest versions of the Burke, they carry a pair of helicopters to hunt subs.

The JP Jones is far, far more conservative than the MC Perry.  To be sure, they share a lot of the same weapon systems, but the MC Perry is a far smaller hull with a lot of nontraditional approaches taken.  The Jones is more in line with traditional ship building.

There are nontrivial differences with the JP Jones compared to the previous generations of destroyer.  The JP Jones is meant as an escort and an independent combatant when necessary.  Its also meant to take on a lot of the newer technological weapons the Chinese, the up and coming power, have and will develop.

The JP Jones is shorter than the Zumwalt by 25 feet.  However, it displaces significantly more: 3,200 tons more (making her almost 19k tons).  This is due to the fact the Jones have a more traditional bow.  The draft of the Jones is deeper as well: about 3 feet, but still.  The beam matches the Zumwalts.  The deckhouse is shorter than on the Zumwalts, too.  The total crew is larger than the Zumwalts (190 vs 140).

The Jones will have a Aegis/ADMR radar combination.  A sonar tail would also be necessary, but also a set of UUVs which would be able to dive to different depths for sonar coverage while linked to the destroyer. 

The Jones class sports more VLS cells than either the Zumwalt or the Burke.  The largest number the Burkes have is 96.  The Zumwalt has a total of 80.  The Jones will have a total of 108 cells.  These are the same MK 57 cells, like the Zumwalts, allowing for larger missiles in the future, over the Mk 41.  While acting as an escort, I'd expect 16 cells to be filled with ASROC, 16 cells to be filled with 64 ESSM, 8 cells to be filled with LRASM (or TLAM equivalent) and the rest of the load out would be SM series missiles (68).  When operating along, the SM series would probably be reduced in favor of Tomahawks or whatever replacement missiles there are.  Likewise, when they become available, the LRASM will likely be replaced by a hypersonic missile.

However, those are not the only weapons on the ship.  In the past, they would have constituted the primary weaponry and in many ways, they still are.  However, that's not all that is being touted for here. 

Like the MC Perrys, the JP Jones' have a railgun.  This is meant for both naval gunfire and when coupled with the radar, to be a defensive BMD weapon: a little hard to run away from a mach 7 projectile.  The reason there are not two railgun guns is due to the power equipment, power requirements and just plain real estate: there is only so much volume and space on a warship of even this size.

Also like the MC Perrys, the Jones' have kept up with the high energy lasers.  There are two megawatt class fleet defense lasers and two weapons grade self defense lasers.  The former are atop the deckhouse and are meant to protect at long range the entire battle group, whereas the self defense lasers are on the port and starboard deck and meant for a combination of CIWS and ASuW work.

The Jones' retain the large flight deck of the Zumwalts and nominally carry 2 SH-60s, 4 firescouts and 2 TERNs.  The VTOL capabilities are intended to be primarily for sub hunting.  However, the TERNs are meant for the ISR and light strike role.

Okay.

Why this load out?

For example, why keep so many VLS cells when you have lasers and a railgun?  Backup.  Really.  There are circumstances when the lasers will be degraded based on weather and other factors.  Its best to have weapon systems which can still engage the targets under those circumstances.  The ESSM will be necessary for certain circumstances.  

I have said this before, but...I will say the ESSM needs an upgrade for the distance which it can engage at given the coming age of hypersonic missiles.  10 miles is 10 seconds from the ship at Mach 5.  That's almost point defense range under those circumstances.  The next generation replacement for the ESSM will need to at least engage to the horizon (30 miles).  The ideal is to be able to have a range such that if the first salvo of missiles against an incoming 'vampire' miss, there is time to engage again.  30 seconds might not be enough even then.

It was tempting to place another railgun at the aft end of the ship and increase the length of ship by another 30 ft.  However, the cost and weight would be high and even more so, placing a weapon which might interfere with the flight deck makes me uncomfortable.  The VLS cells in the aft are only there as a backup in case the bow cells are damaged.  However, it has been done before and could be considered.

ASW is going to be just as important for the destroyers of the future.  The torpedo tubes will be necessary on ship as well as the ASROC and its eventual replacement.  The new ability to carry unmanned underwater vehicles (drone subs) will be very important.  These will give sonar and other sensors in areas where the destroyer is blind currently.  Eventually, those UUVs will become armed and have short range torpedoes of their own.  In the mean time, the ability to hunt subs both from the air with the Firescouts and SH-60s and underwater with the UUVs, sonar tail and shipboard sensors, will improve the situation over what it is now significantly.

Escort duties:

A carrier battle group would have a Nimitz or Ford class carrier, a pair of cruisers (the Gravelys, to be written up), three Jones and two Perrys.  

Currently, a CVBG has ~424 cells.  Between the Perrys and the Jones, there would be 388 VLS cells.  The Perry and Jones would add 5 railguns, 8 megawatt class fleet defense lasers and 6 multi hundred kilowatt self defense lasers.

Currently, neglecting the ASW helicopters on the carrier, the escorts have a maximum of 8 SH-60s.  The Perry and Jones have ten, but they also have 16 firescouts.  This is part of the reason I was thinking to shift off the ASW assets from the carrier airwing.

Additionally, the Perrys and Jones would add 10 TERNs to the mix for ISR.  With this number you can keep between 2 to 3 TERNs constantly in the air at a minimum without worrying about wearing them out.  This is also why I'd think the UCLASS ought not be focused on ISR.  If you embrace the Navy's 'distributed lethality' idea, the destroyers, cruisers and frigates would be able to provide the ISR.  The carrier ought to focus on the high end then.

Sketching in the Gravelys (scaled up Jones class like the Ticos were for the Spruance), you end up with over 700 VLS cells, 9 railguns, 14 fleet defense lasers, 10 self defense lasers, 12 SH-60s, 24 Firescouts and 18 TERNs.  ASW (from the VTOL POV) and ISR are sufficiently covered.  Ballistic missile defense is also covered: the railguns can fire 54 rounds per minute in aggregate and could take out that number of missiles.  With ~5 second engagement times, the fleet defense lasers could take down 84 Mach 5 sea skimming missiles.  The self defense lasers could take down a max (though they'd have to be coming in the right way (HA!)), of 30 Mach 5 sea skimming missiles with a ten second engagement time.  If each ship had 64 ESSM, totally 448 missiles, then in a hypersonic attack scenario, they could take out up to 112 Mach 5 sea skimming missiles.  That means it ought to be possible to take down a total of 226 hypersonic missiles (280 if the rainguns are used against the seas skimmers).

Total cost for that defense is less than $160M.  The total cost for the attackers is at least $600M if not well over a billion dollars.  With no probable kills. 

And the battle group can engage like this at least four times.

And this does not count the abilities of the standard missiles as well (potentially bagging up to another 120 missiles, if only 1/4 of the SM magazine used).  Pushing the total cost to nearly over a billion per engagement, if not 2. 

And that does not count the ability of the carrier airwing to engage either (like with the fleet defense avengers I talked about earlier).

This means to kill a carrier battlegroup you're going to need to spend as much as the carrier battle group in missiles, if not much more because those pesky lasers and railguns are cheap to fire. 

Defending against subs, we have now 36 ASW VTOLs flitting around the battle group a 4 1/2 times increase.  Additionally, the use of UUVs makes for a dramatic increase in the number of submerged sensors as well.

If the US Navy keeps 11 battle groups and you are an opponent of the US at war with the US, at least 5 of those are going to be approaching your coast.  Assuming it takes $20 billion kill a battle group, you're looking at $100 billion (or one Apollo Program) to kill all 5...and they have 6 more siblings to seek vengeance with.

Other thoughts:

One concept which I have been 'in love with' since the 1990s, but don't see happening is the DDV.  This is a destroyer that carries its own F-35Bs.  The DDVs were meant to give CAP and strike capability only available to carriers without trying to be a full blown carrier.  Originally, the idea was to have 2 F-35s, four SH-60s and whatever drones were available.  A surface action group with four DDVs could keep a continuous CAP.  A single DDV would be able to keep an ASW patrol up 24/7 without the drones, but with the addition of the Firescouts this could be an extensive, persistant ASW patrol.  An updated theoretical airwing of a DDV would have a pair of F-35Bs, four SH-60s, 6 Firescouts and four TERNs.

However, when adding in the normal capabilities of a destroyer (VLS, sonar, etc) plus the aviation capabilities, you are looking at a very big ship.  To accommodate the F-35s, even only operating in the VTOL mode, you're looking at needing a flight deck of 80 ft wide and a 101 ft long: you could go smaller, but it'd be really, really tight.   I'd speculate this would become a beam of 80 ft and a length of at least 650 ft for the ship.  That would lead to a near 20k ton ship.  The cost would be prohibitive and then there is the need to procure more F-35Bs: they cost ~$104M each and each ship would need four.  Yes, four because two will be deployed, one spare would be needed back Stateside and the other is effectively the loss replacement, when, if planes are lost.  That alone increases a ship's cost by $416M and this ship is likely to cost as much as a Burke: $1.9B.  And while giving some unique capabilities, its a jack of all trades and master of none (smaller # of VLS, etc).

Alas.

Remember folks, this is all in fun.   Kind of the beer and pretzels discussion equivalent of blogging.