Maybe they should water down .... oh wait, I guess they tried that and it broke :D
She cannae take it, Captain Kirk! USS Zumwalt breaks down
Weird new warship USS Zumwalt has broken down while on sea trials, three weeks ahead of her formal commissioning ceremony. The futuristic $4.4bn vessel, which features a so-called “tumblehome” hull, suffered a seawater leak into the auxiliary lube oil system for one of her main propeller shafts, according to USNI News. The …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 16:36 GMT werdsmith
Re: El Reg unit
Red Osprey, Red Falcon and Red Eagle are refurbished, but not by any means new.
The Lymington ferries, Wight Sun, Wight Sky and Wight Light are not that small, 1500 tonne, 65 cars + HGVs, Wight Sun sometimes works on the Portsmouth service.
St. Cecilia, Sl Clare and St. Faith do the Portsmouth-Fishbourne (not Wootton Bridge) route.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:01 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Nomenclature...
boat vs ship: technically, if it's over ~200 feet long (I think that's right), it's a ship. The exception is a submarine, which is called "boat" by tradition, since modern subs (and the ones in WW2 as I recall) are nearly ALL well over 200 feet long. L.A. class is ~360 feet.
thinking of the L.A. class, they came out of the factory with a flaw that later had to be corrected. Future versions were built with the correction. However, a trip to a shipyard was required to fix the problem [it affected top speed, probably shouldn't give details]. So with only 3 ships in the class, this kind of thing really isn't all that uncommon.
Still, it's fun to point fingers and laugh.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 22:32 GMT peter_dtm
Re: Nomenclature... @bombastic bob
ship - 3 masted sailing vessel
Steam Ship (ss Great Britain; ss British Patience) Steam ship - vessel using steam propulsion (so maybe nuclear as well ? )
RMS (eg the 'Queens' ) Royal Mail Ship
Motor Vessel - uses infernal combustion (diesel for instance)
Motor Tanker - Tank(er) vessel using motor...
other nationalities use different nomenclature to the Brits - like the Russians using 'he' instead of 'she' when talking about ships (and the PC use of 'it' [shudder] )
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 11:28 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: Nomenclature... @peter_dtm
SS doesn't mean what you think it means! (no, it doesn't mean your thing either, Herr Goebels). SS is an abbreviation for Screw Steamship, to distinguish them from paddle steamers.
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Sunday 25th September 2016 06:56 GMT Kurt Meyer
Re: Nomenclature...
@ bombastic bob - Re: The Los Angeles class
"So with only 3 ships in the class ..."
There were 62 boats in the Los Angeles class, 39 of which are still active.
Perhaps you were thinking of the Seawolf class, the successor to the Los Angeles. There are three Seawolf class boats.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 21:32 GMT GrumpyKiwi
Re: With this tonnage...
The Treaty of Versailles had nothing to say on the size of Battleships apart from that Germany couldn't have any.
That was the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. And it placed no minimum size on them, but rather a maximum size of 35,000 tons standard displacement and a maximum of 16" guns.
By that stage all the obsolete early RN and USN battleships had been retired/scrapped and 23,000 tonnes+ was about the size of even the oldest and least capable battleship.
The treaty DID establish a maximum size of 10,000 tones standard displacement for Cruisers along with an 8" gun size limit.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 11:15 GMT Jonathan Richards 1
Re: With this tonnage...
> The Treaty of Versailles had nothing to say on the size of Battleships apart from that Germany couldn't have any.
> The treaty DID establish a maximum size of 10,000 tones standard displacement for Cruisers along with an 8" gun size limit.
None of which stopped Germany from building the Panzerschiffe at up to 12,000 tons, with 28cm (11") guns, and all before the Treaty of Versailles was repudiated by the National Socialists.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 10:06 GMT DropBear
Re: That's what happen when you have a Kirk...
"...gorgeous alien woman who will turn out to be an enemy spy but will do a last-minute heel-face turn..."
Then of course right before the finale a new last-last-minute threat appears and said spy saves the day, the hero's life or both at the cost of her own - this last part is non-negotiable seeing as how having been a baddie is a sin in the eyes of Hollywood that can never possibly be redeemed to a degree that would warrant a happy ending for an ex-spy regardless of how reformed she might be; much as any villain must die of some convenient consequence of his own actions as to not sully the hands of the hero with his murder yet still be satisfactorily dealt with, any reformed baddie absolutely must suffer the heroic version of the same fate so as to not burden the protagonist with any questionable moral choices. Some wholesome mourning and #sadfaces all around is so much better than insinuating that the real world might not be black and white after all...
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: OK it looks small to radar
You have two types of radars - those for discovery and those for "firing". Even if you can discover a ship with a binocular (which may still be difficult at night/bad weather, but optronics may help), many weapons - guns and missiles use radars for directing fire and homing. If the radar section of the ship is small, those weapons may have issues to keep a good lock, while countermeasures can be much more effective. You can switch to optronics, but it's less effective at night (even with intensifiers), and less good for ranging (you'd need lasers or the like, or a "telemeter" setup).
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 17:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: OK it looks small to radar
You can switch to optronics, but it's less effective at night
On a big boy like this it doesn't really matter, does it? Unguided weapons would probably suffice.
And pretending your a fishing boat only helps if that fishing boat is somewhere well away from your real location - as I recall, most missile test firings are against tiny platform targets.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 09:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: OK it looks small to radar
Unguided weapons from what distance? Firing at a moving target at sea several miles away was never an easy task - even against ships larger than this. Unlike tanks, ships can't fire guns straight on because they engage at much longer distances (Nelson era ended long, long ago...). Unguided missiles would have very little chances to hit at these distances. Today, even guns are going to use guided ammunition.
Many "automatic calculators" were designed exactly to find firing solutions for guns at sea. And it wasn't deck officials with binoculars to input data, it was people with large telemeters in their own turrets. And you still needed to guess the enemy speed and course. Radar-assisted firing gave already an advantage in WWII battles (see, for example, check the battle of Surigao Strait). The less effective the radar lock on a target is, the less effective the fire as well. In these battles often wins who fires first and hits first.
The size of a ship depends at what angle you look at it at, and its distance. The horizon itself is a limit at sea, and most long-range reconnaissance is made using airborne radars, the smaller your section, the closer you can go before being identified (if you don't transmit, of course).
You also misunderstood the "fishing boat" example. The aim is not to pretend to be a fishing boat ("steath" technology is not a cloaking device), the aim is being difficult to be discovered early, and then being difficult to be fired at.
Antiship missiles test targets are not usually so small... and anyway many test targets are designed to be hit easily enough, especially when you're interested to assess the damaging capabilities, and not the guidance system.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 17:18 GMT WolfFan
Re: OK it looks small to radar
We tried using optics in ww1 and ww2, didn't really work too well in either.
HMS Warspite got first-salvo hits at 26,000 yards in March 1941, shooting at the Italian fleet in the Med. No radar. Just optics, and excellent fire-control computers... mechanical, clockwork, fire-control computers. Well, computer. Just one. It was really big, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_Fire_Control_Table That one was for a cruiser, not a battleship.
Getting the hits was not the problem, the problem in 1916 was that British shells didn't penetrate German armor properly. HM forces got lots and lots and lots of hits at Jutland... they didn't do as much damage as they should have with all those hits. Even so, at the end of the battle the Grand Fleet had 20 capital ships ready for action, at sea, awaiting (in the words of that ass, Beatty) a 'second Glorious First of June', while the High Seas Fleet had 6 capital ships ready for action and were sitting in harbor. SMS Seydlitz had to be towed in, stern first, with 5,000 tons of water in her bows and every gun turret out of action. SMS Derflinger also had every gun turret knocked out. SMS von der Tann had 10% of her crew killed or severely injured. SMS Lutzow was at the bottom of the North Sea. In return, HMS Queen Mary, Princess Royal, and Indefatigable were also on the bottom of the North Sea, HMS Warspite had jammed her rudder and made two complete circles under the guns of the entire High Seas Fleet and was badly knocked about, HMS Lion was short one gun turret (Q turret was, in Beatty's flag lieutenant's fatuous words, 'ripped open like a sardine tin'. Lion was prevented from blowing up only by the actions of Maj. Francis Harvey, RM, VC (post), Q turret's turret officer.) Lion was still ready for action on the morning of 1 June 1916; Warspite, with only A turret operational, and with the fire-control computer out of action, had been ordered back to port.
Optical systems and low-end computers worked quite well. The guns mostly worked. The shells had problems. This had been a problem with British naval artillery since at least the Bombardment of Alexandria in the 19th century, when one British shell landed in the middle of the main Turkish gunpowder magazine... and failed to explode.
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Sunday 25th September 2016 08:36 GMT Kurt Meyer
Re: OK it looks small to radar
@ WolfFan
I don't recall ever reading a description of the battle of Jutland quite like yours.
"HMS Queen Mary, Princess Royal, and Indefatigable..."
In order of their exploding and sinking, that would be: HMS Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible.
HMS Princess Royal, although badly damaged, survived the battle.
I note your mention of HMS Warspite achieving a hit at long range, claimed to be one of the longest ranged hits ever scored.
Surely you will have wanted to recall another action in which the Royal Navy was involved in very accurate long-ranged fire, also claimed to be one of the longest ranged hits ever scored.
It must have slipped your mind.
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Monday 26th September 2016 18:48 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Kurt Meyer Re: OK it looks small to radar
"......Surely you will have wanted to recall another action......" The German ships in that action did have gunnery radar. The sinking of Glorious was part of the Norweigean Campaign, where - again, just as before and after Jutland - the Royal Navy controlled the North Sea and reduced the German Kriegsmarine to hit-and-run actions. Whilst the loss of Glorious was unfortunate, the RN could lose her and many more and still prevent the Germans from controlling the North Sea. Indeed, the Norweigean Campaign was so costly to the Kriegsmarine that it meant the British could safely send naval units to reinforce the Med (including Warspite) and commit more forces to the Battle of the Atlantic. The Kriegsmarine's losses in the Norweigean Campaign meant Hitler did not have a fleet of warships to control the English Channel in 1940, which meant he had to relie on the Luftwaffe to win the Battle of Britain in order to invade Britain. In case you forgot, the Germans lost the Battle of Britain. Both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau spent the majority of the War hiding from the RN, the former being caught and sunk and the latter being stripped of her guns and eventually used as a blockship.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 20:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: OK it looks small to radar
You can switch to optronics
It is 16 f***ing K tons. That is morbidly obese for a destroyer. More of a pocket battleship than a destroyer. You can probably whack that without any active guidance "the old fashioned way" at 20 clicks using a field howitzer and an optic sight. In fact, that is the way to sink it too as it is not armoured. So a single salvo from a WW1 gunboat (or its modern DIY equivalent) should suffice to disable it (if not sink it).
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 22:05 GMT veti
Re: OK it looks small to radar
Try getting a field howitzer within 20k of it. Betcha can't.
The threat to warships on the open sea is from guided missiles, not old-school field artillery. If you can dodge a guided missile, you've got much better survivability than an armoured warship that has no defence against taking an Exocet amidships.
Of course there are plenty of scenarios where this isn't true, armour does still count - any brown-water operations, for instance - but the US Navy is not so small that every ship has to be able to do everything, they can afford to specialise.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 14:22 GMT Cuddles
Re: Displaced, by gad.
"I'll trust USNI over some Wikipedia nerd any day, thanks."
I'm confused. Aladdin Sane pointed out that the Type 45 displaces 8,400 long tons, and therefore the Zumwalt is nowhere near 3 times the size of it. So what exactly are you trusting the USNI about in order to dismiss this point? The only thing you actually appear to disagree on at all is the exact tonnage of the Zumwalt, which is not in any way relevant since the difference between 16k and 14.5k will not magically make the Type 45 any smaller.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 14:51 GMT graeme leggett
Re: Displaced, by gad.
As it's Wikipedia the data is sourced.
Zumwalt-class destroyer displacement to:
"Destroyers – DDG fact file. U.S. Navy, 28 October 2009."
and Zumwalt it/herself to "DDG 1000 Flight I Design". Northrop Grumman Ship Systems. 2007."
Type 45 destroyer displacement to:
"HMS Daring leaves Sydney after spectacular week of celebrations". Royal Navy. Retrieved 2013-10-13."
"For Queen and Country". Navy News (July 2012): Page 8. "One hundred or so miles west of the largest city of Abidjan lies the fishing port of Sassandra, too small to accommodate 8,500-tonnes of Type 45."
"HMS Duncan joins US Carrier on strike operations against ISIL". Navy News. Royal Navy. 7 July 2015. Retrieved 9 July 2015. "As well as supporting the international effort against the ISIL fundamentalists – the 8,500-tonne warship has also joined the wider security mission in the region."
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 15:28 GMT Aladdin Sane
Re: Displaced, by gad.
I was using the units which were easiest to copy and paste and which are generally used to compare ship sizes of similar types.
Dimensions from Wikipedia:
Zumalt:
Displacement: 14,564 long tons (14,798 t)
Length: 600 ft (180 m)
Beam: 80.7 ft (24.6 m)
Draft: 27.6 ft (8.4 m)
Type 45:
Displacement: 8,000 to 8,500 t (8,400 long tons; 9,400 short tons)
Length: 152.4 m (500 ft 0 in)
Beam: 21.2 m (69 ft 7 in)
Draught: 7.4 m (24 ft 3 in)
So It's 100' longer, ~10' wider and has a ~3' deeper draught.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 10:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Displacement
Even then Standard Displacement could be bent to a country's advantage
eg UK argued that boiler feed water ought not to be part of definition since they operated over long distance between the colonies compared to others (Italians and Med, US and their seaboards).
And once that was done, it was possibly for the RN to install water tanks inside the armour that were defined as boiler water tanks, and hence contents exempt from the displacement calculation but when filled with water acted as shock absorbers against torpedo impacts (as intended).
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 14:10 GMT kaseki
"So called" tumblehome?
It would have been sufficient to just put "tumblehome" in quotes. This naming is not some new 'Merkin English invention. An obsolete Middle English meaning of tumble is in use here, and the term was surely well known to HM naval architects when HMS Victory was laid down.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
"I'd certainly fire at one if it showed up on my radar in the middle of a war !!!"
As I recall, my father told me that during WW2 the Japanese used fishing boats with a gun mounted near the stern and covered with tarpaulin, so any fishing boat you came across where the crew suddenly headed for a big lump at the stern was liable to be sunk in very short order, owing to the Japanese tendency not to surrender.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Sub heading surprise
A lot of US ships and boats use Cutless bearings which are sea water lubricated and cooled - as well as being simple in construction they have the advantage that they don't leave an oil slick.
You would think by now after over 150 years of development stern tubes and shaft bearings would be idiot proof, but I guess that with that amount of money the DoD can afford a better class of idiot.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:17 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Sub heading surprise
Seawater lubricated bearings notwithstanding... [they work nicely for shaft seals and bearings located outside the main hull]
it probably wasn't caused by an oil-lubricated shaft bearing that was directly exposed to water. Most likely it was a lube oil cooling system that leaked water into the oil. These ships typically use sea water for cooling things like oil and sometimes directly cooling rotating machinery. Oil gets hot when it's used to lubricate things like turbine reduction gears, so you need an oil cooler. If the oil cooler has a defect causing a leak, it probably requires a shipyard to replace it. In the mean time, watery oil makes a poor lubricant, so they'd lock the shaft and run on the other one(s).
that's my take on it.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 21:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: weapons?
flearider, been there, done that. Compare Spruance-class destroyers (DD-963) which is what Congress paid for in the 1970's versus the Kidd-class (DDG-993) which was the original design before Congress cheaped out. Pea shooter is right. Had to go back to the yards to get real weapons later on at much more expense.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 01:04 GMT Kurt Meyer
Re: weapons?
@ Jack of Shadows
"... which was the original design before Congress cheaped out."
You are wrong.
The Spruance class came before the Kidd class, and were specialized for the anti-submarine warfare role. Which they performed very well.
They were designed for and with space for, additional weapons which were not ready in time to be fitted as the first units were commissioned, but were, as you said, retro-fitted later.
The Kidd class were originally a modified Spruance designed for the Imperial Iranian Navy as specialized anti-aircraft ships.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Navy was happy to take delivery of the four ships, which were brought up to USN sensor and electronic standards, and subsequently renamed the Kidd class.
More info on the Spruance class here, and on the Kidd class here.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 10:59 GMT Dave 15
Re: weapons?
Could use the Royal Navy technique of shouting bang with your fingers in your ear... doesn't waste so much expensive ammunition, doesn't break the ships hull, doesn't get anything dirty... top job
Or (again as with royal navy) you can fit the necessary tools to fire the weapons but save money by not having any missiles or shells.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 16:11 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Re: weapons?
A lot of ships seem to be going the way of vertical launch missile silos...
Have an upvote, AC. The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is a guided missile destroyer and this is exactly what was done, with the design providing better safety and storage options on a number of levels. Additionally, it looks like this ship might get, or already have, a railgun as part of her armament. It will not take up a lot of room, either, but packs quite a punch.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 16:56 GMT Hurn
Leak
"a seawater leak into the auxiliary lube oil system for one of her main propeller shafts"
Probably a leak from auxiliary sea water into the lube oil system via a heat exchanger.
Good reason for the oil pressure in the heat exchanger to be higher than the water pressure: so that oil leaks out instead of water leaking in.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:02 GMT Chris G
Launch Mistake
It looks as though they have launched it upside down, perhaps that is why water is leaking into the prop tube. The props are probably airboat props al la the Everglades.
I'll bet that thing has a wet deck in a bit of a sea, it doesn't look as though you could stay on the pointy end in a storm for more than a couple of seconds.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Launch Mistake
Agoraphobic? Can't afford psychotherapy? Join the USN and travel the world while staying indoors all the time. It wouldn't surprise me if the lifeboats launch like the pods in 2001 so the crew don't need to go outside. It seems to have less available deck than a submarine.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 18:37 GMT Chris G
Re: Launch Mistake
It is definitely not a sailing man's boat but then I guess the whole thing is filled with nerds on keyboards.
I have to say, being on deck during a bit of weather and having some kind of horizon to look at is better than being battened down below even if the horizon is moving quite fast and going up and down a lot.
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 21:23 GMT TJ1
Weapons: 750 x 155mm shells, 2 launchers, 154km range
It's a few things but the 155mm launchers are a 'traditional' naval gun platform, although looks like another application of asymmetric warfare.
It's ironic that for general navigation and interaction with civilian vessels they are going to have to hang damn great RADAR reflectors on the sides so that other vessels can 'see' it!
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 21:33 GMT John Jennings
This ship was due to carry a railgun. It didn't work to schedule, so it carries 2 155mm canon. (as well as missiles etc)
The tumblehome is little to do with radar. The point was to create a wavepeircing hull, to provide stability for the railgun/guided shell launcher. This boat sinks (it has ballast tanks fitted to flood before firing). The problem with that is that it will basically unstable in this configuration, and liable to capsize in anything greater than a force 4/5 (as waved are likely to crash the deck)
So imagine the hull 6 feet lower in the water, moving at 10 knts (to fire). Generally low radar profile doesnt matter when 10 24LB shells per minute are detected!
It might be a submarine after all!
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Wednesday 21st September 2016 21:54 GMT Chris G
Fair weather sailors
@ John Jennings, "and liable to capsize in anything greater than a force 4/5 (as waved are likely to crash the deck)"
IIRC the East coast Scottish sailing trawlers who used to fish for herring, never left harbour unless at least force 5 was in the offing as they needed that much wind to power the sails to move the huge drift nets or trawls.
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Thursday 22nd September 2016 09:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
> The futuristic $4.4bn vessel, which features a so-called “tumblehome” hull
A feature common in warships of the 1900s...
The radar minimisation is based on the angled flats of the superstructure; they are arranged such that the reflected radio waves are bounced away from the radar receiver so less reaches it.
When the sea starts getting up the ship will start to roll (something exacerbated by the tumblehome) and the large flat sides will be constantly swinging back and forth going from minimal radar cross section to an extremely effective radar reflector.
The Zumwalt is going to be the one on the radar screen that's flashing...