NAVY WANTS NEW DESTROYER WITH LASERS, HYPERSONIC MISSILES

The U.S. Navy’s workhorse destroyer went into production more than 30 years ago, when Tom Stevens was a young welder.

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Now, the Navy is getting ready to turn the page as it looks to a future ship brimming with lasers that can shoot down missiles and attack enemies with hypersonic missiles topping 3,800 mph.

Stevens, 52, said the warship provides an opportunity to build something new after a historic production run of the Arleigh Burke class.

“It will be an impressive destroyer that will absolutely launch us into the next generation of ships,” said Stevens, director of ground assembly at Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works.

The stakes are high when it comes to a replacement for the backbone of the fleet as the Navy faces a growing threat from China, whose numerical advantage becomes greater each year.

The first design contracts were awarded this summer to General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Maine and Huntington Ingalls Industries in Mississippi for a large surface warship that would eventually follow production of the ubiquitous Burke destroyers.

All of that warfighting gear won’t come cheap. The average cost of each new vessel, dubbed DDG(X), is projected to be a third more expensive than Burkes, the latest of which cost of about $2.2 billion apiece, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Navy has vowed that it won’t repeat recent shipbuilding debacles when it rushed production and crammed too much new tech into ships, leading to delays and added expense with littoral combat ships, stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers, and the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier.