Launch of the Zumwalt!

Cue the theme music from Jason and the Argonauts: The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) has set sail! Its commission and launch were delayed earlier this month by the government shutdown, but alas, it's finally on the water. Read up on the launch, and then check out HowStuffWorks.com for more on the ship's design and capabilities.

Every time a new weapons system goes operational, my inner 13-year old boy comes out and starts drooling over pictures of the system, especially computer images rendered in Maya (what can I say - when I did 3D modelling and animation as a hobby, it was because I wanted to work on mil sims). Enjoy:

The Zumwalt and its sister ship take out the Liaoning at port. Some day, right?

Short list of cool features: radar-deflecting and absording "tumblehome" hull, latest-generation Long-Range Attack Projectiles and Sea Sparrow missiles, ability to strike from 100 miles offshore, the quiet all-electric drive system, and a power system that may eventually allow installation of magnetic rail guns. But the really neat thing about the Zumwalt is that its bridge is run entirely on Red Hat Linux-based operating systems and commercial off-the-shelf software. (Read this awesome Ars Technica article for more on the software powering this beast's networking systems as well as its guns; the author calls the ship a "floating data center".)

Only a couple problems: The ship is technically only 87% complete (it's not going to start patrolling until next year), and the doubling of the cost (from $3.8 billion to $7.9 billion) means that only three Zumwalt-class destroyers will ever be built. I'm also going to be reading up on potential software vulnerabilities stemming from COTS reliance in the Zumwalt; God knows that they must be out there (DoD's move to COTS has already been ripped a new one by everyone from RAND to Richard Clarke).