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Description

NEW FOR 2010!

Ported to OBJ from the model created by Lazarus Starkweather for Microsoft's Flight Simulator X (FSX). Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. To download, click on the Download icon.

"The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster."

- Mike Friedberg, National Review

The three ships of the Zumwalt class represent, in retrospect, the biggest goose egg laid by the United States Navy (USN) in the early part of the 21st century. Named for former CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, a man known for his many innovative ideas (not all of which either the USN liked or worked in service practice), these were going to replace the aging (and now decommissioned) Iowa class battleships as the primary fire support vessels of the fleet, with secondary roles of fleet combatant and anti-aircraft warfare. Their main firepower came not from their two 6-inch main guns, both of which were housed in angled farings to reduce radar cross-signature (and for which there was only a limited ammo supply), nor from the railguns that were going to replace them later (that's right, railguns! They're not science fiction anymore! - ed) but their massive array of 20 vertical launch missile systems. That's right, I said 20 of them, giving Zumwalt the firepower of a dozen modern-day guided missile cruisers tucked away in its stealth-contoured hull, and equipped with the latest in naval warship electronics, ECM and ECCM suites, and so on. Zumwalt also reintroduced the tumblehome (reverse-angled bow) hull form, which had not been used by any navy for its warships since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, in a deliberate move to make Zumwalt more maneuverable in tight waters. All of this sounds impressive and it is, but each Zumwalt cost a helluva lot of money to build, and that wound up suffering from the same problem that a lot of World War II era German warships did (most notably the flottenbegleiter) in that too many new features were introduced in a single warship design. Its tumblehome bow leaked at high speed, its stealth capability proved not to be effective as desired at the close ranges required for proper naval fire support, the new LRLAP projectiles for its main guns were so sophisticated that they wound up costing almost US$1 million apiece to make and were soon scrubbed, the planned railgun system was cancelled as too expensive to develop, none of its VLS boxes could fit newly developed hypersonic missiles, part of its sophisticated phased-array radar systems had to be left out (AN/SPY-4) due to "technology issues," and on and on and on. The final icing on the cake was when construction cost overruns sailed so high that the program was automatically cancelled under U.S. law (the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment), with only three Zumwalts built out of the planned twenty-four. There will be no more, and the controversy over the three Zumwalts built, how to best fit them out, and how to best use them remains to this day. To find out more about the USN's controversial 21st century Zumwalt class destroyers, follow the link below:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-…

This is a straight port with no changes by me.

This is not my model. All I did was port it to OBJ for you. Please credit Lazarus Starkweather as the original creator if you use this in any of your own 3D projects. You do not have to credit me for my part.

For non-profit, non-commercial use only.

Description

NEW FOR 2010!

Ported to OBJ from the model created by Lazarus Starkweather for Microsoft's Flight Simulator X (FSX). Preview picture posed in XNALara XPS. To download, click on the Download icon.

"The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster."

- Mike Friedberg, National Review

The three ships of the Zumwalt class represent, in retrospect, the biggest goose egg laid by the United States Navy (USN) in the early part of the 21st century. Named for former CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, a man known for his many innovative ideas (not all of which either the USN liked or worked in service practice), these were going to replace the aging (and now decommissioned) Iowa class battleships as the primary fire support vessels of the fleet, with secondary roles of fleet combatant and anti-aircraft warfare. Their main firepower came not from their two 6-inch main guns, both of which were housed in angled farings to reduce radar cross-signature (and for which there was only a limited ammo supply), nor from the railguns that were going to replace them later (that's right, railguns! They're not science fiction anymore! - ed) but their massive array of 20 vertical launch missile systems. That's right, I said 20 of them, giving Zumwalt the firepower of a dozen modern-day guided missile cruisers tucked away in its stealth-contoured hull, and equipped with the latest in naval warship electronics, ECM and ECCM suites, and so on. Zumwalt also reintroduced the tumblehome (reverse-angled bow) hull form, which had not been used by any navy for its warships since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, in a deliberate move to make Zumwalt more maneuverable in tight waters. All of this sounds impressive and it is, but each Zumwalt cost a helluva lot of money to build, and that wound up suffering from the same problem that a lot of World War II era German warships did (most notably the flottenbegleiter) in that too many new features were introduced in a single warship design. Its tumblehome bow leaked at high speed, its stealth capability proved not to be effective as desired at the close ranges required for proper naval fire support, the new LRLAP projectiles for its main guns were so sophisticated that they wound up costing almost US$1 million apiece to make and were soon scrubbed, the planned railgun system was cancelled as too expensive to develop, none of its VLS boxes could fit newly developed hypersonic missiles, part of its sophisticated phased-array radar systems had to be left out (AN/SPY-4) due to "technology issues," and on and on and on. The final icing on the cake was when construction cost overruns sailed so high that the program was automatically cancelled under U.S. law (the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment), with only three Zumwalts built out of the planned twenty-four. There will be no more, and the controversy over the three Zumwalts built, how to best fit them out, and how to best use them remains to this day. To find out more about the USN's controversial 21st century Zumwalt class destroyers, follow the link below:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-…

This is a straight port with no changes by me.

This is not my model. All I did was port it to OBJ for you. Please credit Lazarus Starkweather as the original creator if you use this in any of your own 3D projects. You do not have to credit me for my part.

For non-profit, non-commercial use only.