Capt. Casey Moton said the program office has been working all year on Flight III detail design, with the most critical piece being the 3D modeling of the new design – a process that both builders, Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding, had to undertake separately. Both yards recently completed this process, meeting the long-standing December 2017 goal for this milestone, Moton told USNI News in a Dec. 14 interview.
...
AMDR testing has been going well, Moton said, with all the cooling and power requirements holding steady and no signs that the radar would require any further changes to the ship design. The radar will move to Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Combat System testing facility in Moorestown, N.J., later this fiscal year to be married up with the combat system hardware for integration.
...
integrating the back end of the radar system – the electronic cabinets and other components – with Aegis hardware. Some integration issues were identified...
...
The AMDR will also require a new electrical plant for the ship, which Moton said is also performing well in testing. A power conditioning module, which converts the new generators’ 4,160-volt AC power into 1,000-volt DC power, is “nearing completion of testing” with builder Leonardo DRS and should ship to the Land-Based Engineering Site in Philadelphia next month for further testing. The 4,160-volt generators, which were developed for the DDG-1000 program, should also ship to the Philly test site next month. As the remaining power system equipment arrives there early in 2018, the power system will be able to light off in FY 2019.
...
Ingalls’ start of fabrication date of May 2018 hasn’t changed despite the lengthy contract negotiations, in part because the Navy provided the shipyard long lead time material and long lead time engineering funding to keep DDG-125 on track.