Now I've never been on a ship and have no knowledge about their design. But the pictures of it I've seen make me thing there is no way those ships can function in any kind of strong cross wind. The upper level, don't know the term for it, is solid and no way for the wind to not hit it full force.

What say you swabbies.

hot knife through butter!

About as fugged up as a football bat and the Admiral they were named after. Almost Zero redundancy, very short range and seakeeping isn't even in the same universe as the Spruances.

I realize we're in the cruise missile age, and warships will not be trading salvos of heavy gunfire, nevertheless I don't see how those ships have enough weapons or armor to deal with threats.

The only other option to the Zumwalts is more Burkes, which we are getting too.

We are living in a world where the missile threat is quickly evolving, with supersonic seaskimmers, Anti-ship ballistic missiles, and who knows what else, hypersonic missiles?

The missile defense game, like the ASW game is hard for outsiders to really judge. How well will a Burke stand up to a dozen or so of supersonic seaskimmers? Well one axium I was told a long time ago was "find the enemy first, strike effectively first." Does the difference in signature between a Burke and Zumwalt make an effective difference? I dunno. Folks try to model it but there are always assumptions and a tweak one way leaves one side afloat and a tweak the other and the Burke is on the bottom.

What I do know is that the Burkes are a nice package, the VLS makes enhancements fairly easy to integrate. However it seems that many of the things coming down the pike take large energy budgets and the power is in short supply in the Burkes. That means its going to be hard to mount lazers and rail guns on a Burkes so how long they will retain relevance is hard to know, Most of the surface ships we built in the last 40 years were retired before their full service life so they could be replaced by more capable, newer ships. We early retired many most or the Perrys, Sprunces, even some of the Tico's

The other issue is that 20 years ago, the main role for the crusiers and destroyers was to protect the CVBG's and the MAU's (or whatever they were called), we have a lot fewer carriers now and its more likely that we will see surface combatants in action now. Historically this wasn't much of an issue, so much so that about half of our surface combantants only have gun or SAM's to shoot. The other half have a pretty short ranged, dated SSM. There is a race to get a servicable SSM to the fleet, but we are way behind.

I doubt the Zumwalts are really the answer to the problems and even the Navy knows that, there will only be two Zumwalts. Compared to the LCS and the f-35 the Zumwalts are a small experiment. Hopefully what we learn will help with what ever we go with after the run of Burkes is over.

Inside the 'Deck House' is a very large and tall folding flag mast with a huge white flag attached that can be run up!!

My compliments on this reply.

Technology is moving really fast these days. My fear is many weapons system that were supposed to be extremely effective when put into production will be all but mitigated by the time we build them in any number.

I'm really concerned with our reliance on 5th gen fighters and our stealth technology. I don't think any US pilot would care to fly a F22 or F35 over an area known to be operating Russian S400 or S500 SAM systems.

Went through basic with Adm. Zumwalt's Great Nephew (or some such thing - his dad was the Adm's nephew) and you wouldn't believe the amount of flack he caught for having the same last name.

Wonder how often he used his name over the phone to get something done in his career? Worked like a champ for Herman Goering's brother.

I had an RM1 in my division whose last name was Skipper (true no schnitt story here). He never actually said he was "THE skipper" from the 640, but you can fill in the blanks.

He was EN and going to be an MA. It was the older sailors that gave him flack - brass in khaki mostly. Saw a few Captains come by just to see him like he was some monkey in a zoo or something.

Good dude as his rack was across from mine at the end of the compartment. We talked a lot.

How fast are the Burke's?