The USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) was designed from day one to have a power system that would be capable of employing "future weapons systems". The electrical power plant can produce 1000% more electrical power than the Burk class. To put that in perspective the Zumwalt could provide the electricity to power about 45ooo average American homes (not a typo). Sounds good so far, but here is the thing, the administration has all but pulled the plug on the program, the class has dropped from an original planned size of 32 hulls to 3 (Three). The real advantage of this new magnetic rail gun is the velocity of the projectiles. The Chinese have been developing hyper speed missile systems that can literally out run any counter measures we have. The problem with hyper speed weapon systems is that they can't change direction very quickly, this makes them very susceptible to predictive tracking and fire control. Lasers and hyper speed projectiles are very good at intercepting them. Our conventional anti missile system is very expensive to use, each missile costs millions of dollars and we can't build or deploy enough to protect us from the new Chinese hyper speed missiles. The Chinese plan is to deploy the hyper speed missiles in swarms to overwhelm conventional countermeasures. That means we need something that can fire multiple hyper speed inexpensive projectiles, and do it over and over until the swarms are eliminated. We have to stop every one to be successful they only have to get one through to be successful.
They just deployed one with a fast fire laser capable of downing missiles and aircraft. I think it has been moved over near the Persian gulf, from earlier news reports.
It was in the news papers and online news. No secret info 20 years of opsec, I'm not going to give away anything that will hurt our troops. But once it is in the papers, heck even Military dot com had it listed.
I actually think they put it out there to scare the bejesus out of some of those who think they can do anything and not have consequences.
Congress Reacts to Chinese Hypersonic Missile Test | Defense Tech This is the kind of thing we need to develop defenses against. Our conventional anti missile-missiles are ineffective. Without new tech like the lasers and mag rail guns, the only other alternative is going back to the days of the nuke warheads on the Nike missiles.
We have been developing our own hypersonics. I've seen a lot on that in some of the military news as well
Yes we have, and I hope we continue. Ultimately though we need new countermeasures more than new strike capability. The Chinese have about 1.3 billion folks, and quite frankly I don't think they would mind much if they lost a few hundred million in a war. We cannot bomb them into submission if we ever end up in a real shooting war. The current state of politics in the US is such that if we lost more than a few thousand, Washington would roll over and give China anything they wanted. Our best hope for maintaining military dominance is the development of effective countermeasures against new weapon technology. Right now I am not sure if the current administration cares about maintaining military dominance.
