00:00This radar display shows a faint, glowing yellow signature slipping through the morning fog.
00:07To a radar operator, it registers as a 50-foot wooden fishing boat moving slowly across the horizon.
00:15But as the fog lifts, it reveals a 15,000-ton, 600-foot-long guided missile destroyer
00:24bristling with 80 vertical launch cells.
00:26Stationed in hostile waters, a traditional cruiser is exposed.
00:32The ocean is completely flat, offering zero physical cover to break an enemy's line of sight.
00:39Because of their cluttered masts and jagged steel angles, traditional ships reflect radio waves
00:46directly back to enemy radar installations located hundreds of miles away.
00:51Once a ship is visible on radar, it can be targeted by a supersonic anti-ship missile traveling at Mach
00:593.
00:59At those speeds, survival depends entirely on automated defense systems reacting before the hull is breached.
01:08Because being seen often results in instant destruction, naval engineers had to set aside a century of shipbuilding traditions.
01:16To make a skyscraper-sized ship invisible, they had to rebuild it from the ground up.
01:24Standard ship hulls flare outward, reflecting incoming radar waves directly back to create a massive signature.
01:33The zoom walt reverses this with an inward-angled tumble hull.
01:38These precise angles deflect radar waves up into the sky or down into the water.
01:46To maintain this clean profile, engineers stripped the deck bare, removing all spinning radar dishes, exposed gun barrels, and messy
01:57antenna arrays from the exterior.
01:59Every sensor and communications dish is sealed inside this angled deckhouse, which is covered in classified radar-absorbent materials to
02:10further dampen its signature.
02:12These design choices mean that while the zoom walt is 6,000 tons heavier than a standard destroyer, its radar
02:20cross-section is 50 times smaller, effectively making it appear no larger than a small fishing boat on an enemy
02:28screen.
02:28While stealth protects the ship from being found, engineers also had to address the fatal weak point found in traditional
02:37destroyers, the central missile magazine.
02:40If missile tubes are clustered in the ship's center, a single direct hit can trigger a catastrophic detonation, destroying the
02:49vessel from the inside out.
02:51The zoom walt solves this by utilizing a peripheral vertical launch system, moving the missile cells away from the ship's
02:59core.
03:00As seen in this schematic, the missile cells form a ring along the hull's extreme outer edge, acting as additional
03:08armor.
03:08If a missile detonates inside, the reinforced casing channels the explosion outward into the ocean, protecting the interior crew compartments.
03:18By rethinking where the most dangerous payload is stored, the zoom walt turns its ammunition supply into a functional shield
03:26for the sailors on board.
03:28A standard destroyer requires over 300 sailors to manually manage its systems.
03:34The zoom walt utilizes a ship-wide automated computing environment to handle these operations.
03:41This reduces the required manpower to roughly 147 sailors, less than half a traditional crew.
03:49This reduced crew allows the ship to operate more efficiently on extended deployments, maintaining its presence behind enemy lines with
03:58a smaller logistical footprint.
04:00While its stealth allows it to maneuver unnoticed, the zoom walt is also designed to deliver a massive amount of
04:08power from the shadows.
04:09The ship is driven by two massive Rolls-Royce gas turbines, which generate a combined 78 megawatts of electricity.
04:18To put that in perspective, 78 megawatts is enough to power a small city, and it provides the ship with
04:25a massive internal electrical grid.
04:27This power supply is designed to support next-generation technology, including hypersonic missiles and directed energy weapons, like high-output
04:37lasers.
04:37By combining this level of futuristic firepower with a minimal radar signature, the zoom walt can move within striking range
04:46and engage targets before an enemy's radar-guided defenses even register its presence.
04:52To see more deep dives into the engineering behind modern military technology, subscribe to Heroes and Arsenals.
05:01Next time, we're taking these stealth principles into the stratosphere to see how the F-22 Raptor uses its low
05:09-radar cross-section and supercruise capabilities to dominate the airspace.
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