Task Force 72

The US Navy is obviously not letting the grass grow under its feet, with a multi-year deal to two seperate shipyards for 10 Burke class destroyers.

Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, is awarded a $3,904,735,559 fixed-price-incentive, firm target multiyear contract for construction of four DDG 51 class ships, one each in fiscal 2019 through 2022.

This contract includes options for engineering change proposals, design budgeting requirements, and post-delivery availabilities on the awarded firm multiyear ships, which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $4,030,194,579.

This contract also includes options for construction of additional DDG 51 class ships.

Huntington Ingalls Industries, Pascagoula, Mississippi, is awarded a $5,104,668,778 fixed-price-incentive, firm target multiyear contract for construction of six DDG 51 class ships, two in fiscal 2018 and one each in fiscal 2019 through 2022.

This contract includes options for engineering change proposals, design budgeting requirements, and post-delivery availabilities on the awarded firm multiyear ships, which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $5,253,076,779.

This contract includes options for construction of additional DDG 51 class ships.

In summary, ten Arleigh Burke class destroyers for US$10,28 billion, delivered over four years.

As a personal aside, this is why we should never have built the F100 here. For the price of three Hobart class frigates, we could have had six Burkes, with vastly more capability, delivered faster and with less issues. For the price of the Hunter class frigates we could have a further dozen Burkes, standardising on a single class of far more capable vessels delivered far faster.

The idea that we have to build here to maintain capability is a crock, we maintained and upgraded the DDGs and FFGs and the Oberons without building them here. Also I note that the RAAF is not being asked to buy Australian built F35s, C17s, Poseidons, KC-30s, Wedgetails, Tritons or Super Hornets, but seems to deliver all the capability required.

And 95% of the trained workforce has been let go and most have said they won't go back due to the way the whole thing has been handled. The same problems that plagued the AWD project are likely to hit the frigate project since it will be a largely inexperienced workforce again.

Smart thing would have been to order a 4th ship to keep the workforce on, then jump straight into the FFG builds....but that just my opinion

B2

PS I would have bought the Kidd class DDGs when they offered them to us dirt cheap.....then Scotty could have crawled all over one for research

If I was to suffer yet another rush of shit to the brain and build a Burke, it would probably be the USS Nathan James, from the TV show the Last Ship.



Mind you, with a little modification, the hull could support a Japanese Kongo or Atago class as well. The Kongo's in their own way are striking ships, more rounded than the Burkes, though I don't care for the lattice mast.




Kongo Class




Atago class

Yup they are the only remaining ships still using the NTU upgrade radars...

I don't think he will be going up there for that.....

To build it you just need Alien to make a midships hull section to stretch the Burke hull, there's also the South Korean Burke variant too....

B2