Sceptics line up broadside on $3bn super-stealth US destroyer

A SUPER-STEALTHY warship that could underpin the US navy’s China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic “railguns” right out of a sci-fi movie.

However, at more than $3 billion (£1.95bn) each, critics say the DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched US conventional fleet.

One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the hi-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.

With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history – a silver bullet of stealth.

It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world – Asia and the Pacific.

The DDG-1000 and other Zumwalt class ships feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers – but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on radar.

Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.

However, the sceptics are not impressed by the technology.

“Whether the navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfil the various missions that confront it,” said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington DC.