THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 21, 1996 TAG: 9603210362
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
The Pentagon will announce today a formal commitment to development of an ``arsenal ship,'' a floating missile platform which with 500 launch tubes would be history's most heavily armed warship but would cost far less to build and run than the dreadnaughts of days past.
An agreement signed this week by officials of the Navy and the Defense Department's advanced research agency calls for putting the first arsenal ship to sea in 2000 and terms it ``among the highest priority programs within the Navy.''
A copy of the agreement, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, says the cost of the initial ship would be limited to $520 million, with two-thirds of that coming from the Navy's budget and one-third from the research agency. Subsequent ships probably would be cheaper.
The Navy included $25 million for arsenal ship development in the 1997 budget submitted to Congress earlier this month. The service expects to build perhaps six arsenal ships in all.
Aircraft carriers, the Navy's most expensive ships, cost up to $5 billion. The guided-missile destroyers the service is building as its primary surface warship cost about $1 billion each.
The arsenal ship is envisioned as a dramatic departure from those destroyers and the cruisers and frigates the Navy also uses as missile platforms. It would be able to carry a mix of Tomahawk land attack, anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles, and would ride low in the water so as to resemble a tanker on the radar screens of potential enemies.
One concept discussed within the Navy calls for a three-layered hull design to reduce the ship's vulnerability to mines and torpedoes. The Navy also reportedly is considering adapting the hull design now used for its Arleigh Burke class destroyers.
Perhaps most startling, the conventionally powered ship would carry a crew of no more than 50, relying far more on automated systems than do current Navy ships. It's missiles would be guided by computers, radars and crews aboard other vessels or planes. Carriers sail with around 5,000 sailors and airmen while destroyers carry crews of 300 or more.
The ship will be designed to be simple and cheap to run, planners stress, and the smallness of the crew might allow replacement sailors to be flown to the ship at the end of each six-month deployment cycle, keeping the vessel itself on station.
The Navy has been developing the concept of the ship for about a year, urged on by Adm. Mike Boorda, its chief of operations. Since the retirement of the last of it's World War II-era battleships, the service has been eager to have a platform able to project massive firepower in support of ground troops ashore.
The arsenal ship ``can certainly fulfill that role without the problems you have now with loading Tomahawks on a cruiser or destroyer,'' said Norman Polmar, an independent naval analyst. On those ships, the Tomahawks displace surface-to-air and anti-submarine missiles that might be needed to defend aircraft carriers and other ships in the fleet.
Polmar said the Navy also should consider developing a submarine version of the arsenal ship, probably by modifying one of the Los Angeles class attack subs it's in the process of retiring. Prospects for that ship are considered very limited however, owing largely to the estimated $1 billion pricetag for each conversion. ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC
ROBERT D. VOROS
The Virginian-Pilot
SOURCE: New York Times
KEYWORDS: MISSILE ARSENAL SHIP by CNB