I never understood the ashore gun support mission even if the AGS ammo was reasonably priced. Why expose a multi billion dollar ship to who knows how many land based missiles?
Three Zumwalts with AGS, unaffordable and next to useless, 10+ with extra missiles, conventional guns, affordable and a good upgrade on ABs with an excellent growth potential towards energy directed weapons. IMO, a better way forward than designing a somewhat smaller hull.
That’s where the stealth was to come in the AGS was supposed to offer longer ranges than then available ship guns combined with low observable features so as to allow it to stand off and offer naval artillery fire to the USMC on amphibious assault. A capacity lost with the retirement of conventional cruisers and the Battle cruisers like the Mighty Mo.
ASBMs hadn’t been available yet the ASMs on the market were shorter ranged allowing for vehicles like Zumwalt and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle to be seen as practical. They felt that 100km out was safe enough. As said though by the time they were being built the rules had changed. ASBM pushed safe ranges farther out to sea.
The slashing of the unit order drove up the price point of the ammunition for the AGS and Ships themselves astronomically. Much like what happened to the Seawolf class. But where SSN21 was partially salvaged by the Virginia class, Zumwalt has been slowly becoming a Burke class as the Navy bolts on bits and bobs leaving intended more advanced systems to scrap.
The problem with Burke is although good it’s maxing out it’s hull and energy growth potential rather quickly. It’s fine for 2020 but 2025.. Each block of Burke is getting substantially heavier. Systems like DE require far more electrical power to support them which is increasingly less available on the Burkes as other new systems eat into the small 7.5MW of block 2.5. The new Block 3 is said to up that to 12 MW.
Which is where Zumwalt was supposed to come in. It was to be followed on by more conventional destroyer and cruiser derivatives built on the same hull type taking advantage of the 58 megawatts of onboard electrical power.
It may not be the popular opinion but I feel that the Zumwalt hull and aspects could/should be salvaged into a the Future Surface Combatant much like how aspects of Seawolf were crafted into Virginia class and will be crafted into Columbia class.
The increased power generation offering more potential for DE or Rail guns, The Mk57 was designed to allow larger missiles than the Mk41, the acoustic and RCS designs to increase survival.
Of course changes made. Newer more common more mature phased array radars and data links as well as combat systems, more conventional base armament in terms of hyper velocity guns and defensive armament.
