Summary: The United States Navy's future guided-missile destroyer, DDG(X), marks a significant advancement in naval warfare technology. Gibbs and Cox, alongside Leidos, received a $36.7 million DoD contract to continue designing this new class of warship. The DDG(X), expected to be the backbone of the Navy's surface fleet, will have a displacement 39% greater than the current Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

US Navy's DDG(X): The Next-Gen Warship Redefining Sea Power

Earlier this year, Gibbs and Cox, a U.S. naval architecture firm and Leidos subsidiary, were awarded a Department of Defense (DoD) contract modification worth $36.7m to continue its design and feasibility efforts for the United States Navy's future guided-missile destroyer, DDG(X).

According to a report from Naval-Technology, it came a year after an earlier modification valued at $39.6m for the same services.

Details remain sparse on the future backbone of the United States Navy's surface fleet, but an October 2023 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the Navy's Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) 30-year shipbuilding plan stated that "the Navy has indicated that the initial [DDG(X)] design prescribes a displacement of 13,500 tons," which would be about 39% greater than the 9,700-ton Flight III DDG-51 (Arleight Burke-class) design.

Production of the DDG(X) is set to begin in FY23, and the first vessels of the class are expected to feature the combat systems, sensors, and weapons of the current Flight IIIs fit inside a new hull with the space, weight power, and cooling that can be expanded to include new weapon systems and sensors. This isn't particularly surprising as the U.S. Navy has announced plans for it to have a three-year overlap between the start of construction on its next-generation guided-missile destroyer DDG(X) and its current crop of Flight III Arleigh Burke DDGs, USNI News reported in January.

"Just from a design standpoint, our shipbuilding programs are evolutionary vice revolutionary," explained U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Fred Pyle at the time. "Where design and automation come in for DDG(X) is the hull form, what we’re doing in the propulsion plant, and those other enablers are the platform."

The DDG(X) Marks the Spot

The DDG(X) program, designated PMS 460, was first initiated back in 2021 to develop a new class of warships that would replace the U.S. Navy's aging Ticonderoga-class cruisers and older Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, with the first vessels expected to enter service in the early 2030s.

However, the program is already running behind schedule, as the plan originally called for the U.S. Navy to procure the first ship in 2028. Given that design work is continuing, even a timeline of 2032 could seem rushed – and U.S. Navy officials are not rushing anything this go around.

The proposed fiscal year 2024 (FY24) budget request called for $187.4 million in research and development for the program, and as noted by a Congressional Research Services report from last December, the U.S. Navy also seeks additional space, weight-carrying capacity, electrical power, and cooling capacity from the Flight III DDG 51 design. This could allow for the use of higher-power equipment and potentially even direct-energy weapons.

"The Navy states that the baseline DDG(X) design, like the Flight III DDG-51 design, is to include 96 standard Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells, with an ability to incorporate 12 large missile launch cells in place of 32 of the 96 standard VLS cells. It is also to include two 21-cell Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launchers and an ability to be built with an additional mid-body hull section, called the Destroyer Payload Module, that would provide additional payload capacity," the CRS report stated.

Additionally, the Navy has called for the DDG(X) to have reduced vulnerability from reduced infrared, acoustic, and underwater electromagnetic signatures.

The Navy is certainly being careful with the DDG(X) – not wanting to make the same mistakes it had made with the Zumwalt- class destroyers.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected].

Image Credit: Creative Commons/U.S. Navy.