[yasmin]

By ERIC TALMADGE 06/04/12 05:07 AM ET AP

SINGAPORE -- A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. 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.

But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to
bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet.



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 stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class 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 enemy 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.

But the destroyers' $3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $7 billion each
when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that
was cut to 24, then seven.