Project 18, Next Generation Destroyer (NGD) : News and Updates
- Thread starter Vishwamitra
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I'm fairly disappointed at the timelines indicated in this article. I sure hope that's a mistake on the part of the writer. If the first NGD won't start construction for 3+8 years from now (2037), we can only expect to see it in service in the mid-2040s.
That said, I'm confused at the "P-18A" nomenclature being used. This indicates that there was a "P-18" design on the board earlier.
I'm wondering if the original P-18 was the design shown in a WESEE video years ago, which is ostensibly based on a Fincantieri DDX baseline:
Whereas the new one shown last year (with superstructure-based radar panels like on Arleigh Burke) could be the P-18A:
If I resort to a little bit of high-octane speculation, I'd say we originally did want to go with a DDX baseline. A lot of preliminary work may have already been done for it, but for whatever reason it didn't pan out (Italians quoted too high a price, or maybe that design was only made with MFSTAR in mind and couldn't support the LRMFR). This was the P-18.
So we went back to square one and decided to come up with our own design, what we now call P-18A. This would be entirely based around carrying the LRMFR arrays.
This would explain the inordinate delays and why the program is stuck in conceptual stage for nearly a decade at this point.
It's based on the most recent render released by Navy (2nd pic above).
Note that the Navy never officially identified this design as NGD, but it couldn't really be anything else. Now, whether this design is the actual one they are pursuing or if it's just a placeholder, that we do not know.