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Next-gen Burkes may push limit of DDG frame

The Navy’s next batch of workhorse destroyers will likely be larger, sport a different-looking superstructure and could carry a new set of weapons, according to a Navy official and congressional reports.

Service officials committed the Navy to a new variety of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in appearances around Washington over February and March, even rolling out the term “Flight III” for a ship that will combine much of what sailors already know in today’s Flight I, II and IIA ships with advanced refinements that designers hope are ready in the next few years.

“We ultimately have to go beyond today’s level of missile defense capability that’s in the [DDG] 51 class, which is why we have continued to move forward development of the air and missile defense radar technology,” the Navy’s top weapons buyer, Sean Stackley, said in a congressional hearing March 3. “So that’s an ongoing development. And those two intercept in about 2016 in terms of maturity of that technology and spiraling of the 51.”

As with any modern warship, the new destroyer’s sensors and weapons will be the two key variables that determine how different it becomes from today’s version. One basic component is its new radar, still in development, which will likely have a bigger array than the SPY-1 radar worn by today’s cruisers and destroyers.

The radar antenna for the Flight III ship could have a diameter of about 14 feet, compared with the roughly 12-foot arrays of today, according to a Feb. 26 report by Congressional Research Service shipbuilding expert Ron O’Rourke.

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