US Navy’s stealthy new ‘ship killer’ Michael Monsoor has nothing to shoot from its hi-tech guns
- The cost of gun system’s shells jumped to at least US$800,000 apiece, which analysts said contributed to the change in the destroyers’ mission
With slick sides and sharp angles, the USS Michael Monsoor and its sister ship Zumwalt cut a distinct silhouette along the waters of San Diego.
Unlike a nearby aircraft carrier whose radar juts into the air, the Monsoor’s composite material deckhouse is polygonal and covered with material that can absorb radar waves and increase the destroyer’s stealth.
Its “tumblehome” hull looks like something you’d see on a ship built before the first world war.
Make no mistake, the Monsoor guided-missile destroyer is one of the US Navy’s most technologically advanced ships.
But developing that technology was more difficult than expected, and its deployment has been complicated by a strategic pivot in the ship’s mission.
In the end, what was once intended to be a class of 32 destroyers will now be only three, at a per-ship cost of about US$4.4 billion, according to a December 2016 estimate by the Government Accountability Office, the most recent cost estimate available. Including development costs, that number balloons to US$8.2 billion, the GAO said.