Navy Completes Key Design Reviews on DD(X) Program

The U.S. Navy's revolutionary DD(X) destroyer program passed two critical milestones in the past month with the successful completion of Preliminary Design Reviews (PDRs) by the U.S. Navy on two of the ship's subsystems: the Total Ship Computing Environment (TSCE) and the MK 57 Vertical Launching System (VLS). "We are making significant progress on the design of DD(X)," said Mike Hoeffler, Raytheon vice president for DD(X), "and the successful completion of these PDRs -- on schedule -- reflects the Navy's judgement that our design work is on-target." Under a three-year $1.3 billion contract, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems serves as the weapon and electronic systems integrator for DD(X) -- the next-generation destroyer for the U.S. Navy that will revolutionize naval technology for the 21st century. As part of this effort, Raytheon is completing design work on eight major subsystems, including the TSCE and the MK 57 VLS. The TSCE will integrate all of the warfighting and peacetime electronic operations of the ship into a common enterprise computing environment; it is being designed to the Navy's Open Architecture model to facilitate future system changes and reduce costs. The MK 57 is designed to fire all of the missiles currently in the U.S. Navy inventory and projected to be in inventory for the foreseeable future. MK 57 also is scalable to accept the heavier missiles that could potentially be used in the future for ballistic missile defense and lighter missiles such as the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile (ESSM). Both the TSCE and MK 57 VLS will be used on other Navy ships now under development. Raytheon and program prime Northrop Grumman Ship Systems lead a national team of top defense companies designing DD(X). The Navy plans to award detail design and construction of the lead DD(X) in fiscal year 2005.