Artist’s concept of a DDG-51 Flight III with AMDR. Raytheon Photo
ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s vision of what its next large surface combatant will look like still remains unclear, but that future hull will almost certainly run the DDG-51 Flight III’s combat system, the Program Executive Officer for Ships said today. Read More
Artists rendering of the first planned Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer, Jack H. Lucas. HII Photo
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – The Navy released the final request for proposal today for a multi-year contract to build the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer said the service’s chief weapons buyer on Thursday.
USNI News polled its writers, naval analysts and service members on what they consider the most important military and maritime stories in 2017.
The following is part of a series. Please also see Top Stories: International Acquisition, Navy Operations, Marine Corps Operations, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Acquisition, International Operations and New Administration.
2017 began with the promise of planning for a larger fleet: at the end of 2016, the Navy announced a 355-ship requirement, and the incoming Trump Administration expressed its support for a larger military and a heftier Navy. Few concrete steps were taken this year, though, to begin a buildup – though many programs that will be pivotal to the 355-ship fleet of the future reached significant programmatic milestones in 2017.
A crane lifts the Air and Missile Defense Radar into place for its upcoming tests at the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility, in June 2016. Raytheon photo.
WASHINGTON NAVY YARD – The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program office has completed 3D modeling of its Flight III design upgrade and will spend 2018 testing major components of the new configuration, the program manager told USNI News. Read More
USS Lassen (DDG-82) underway in the Philippine Sea in 2015. US Navy Photo
Lockheed Martin would like to accelerate both its Aegis cruiser and destroyer modernization efforts and its AN/SPY-1 radar refurbishment program, in the hope of closing a “capability capacity gap” the surface navy faces, the company’s director of Aegis U.S. Navy Programs said Monday. Read More
Aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) sits pier side in the early morning light at Newport News Shipbuilding in 2014. US Navy Photo
Radar maker Raytheon has been awarded a $92 million contract to develop a new Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar for the U.S. Navy’s new Ford-class carrier fleet and big deck amphibious warships, company officials told USNI News on a Monday conference call. Read More
The first grand blocks of the future USS John Finn (DDG 113) are erected on the building ways at the Ingalls Shipbuilding yard in Pascagoula, Miss. Huntington Ingalls Industries photo.
WASHINGTON NAVY YARD – The Navy and two shipbuilders are moving forward with the Flight III upgrade to the Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers (DDG-51), which adds an air and missile defense radar to the ship class starting this fiscal year. Read More
