WASHINGTON – The ship model started from the corner of a man-made grotto, pitching and yawing spectacularly through heaving mounds of black water designed to mimic the most terrible storm ever to hit the mainland United States.

“It doesn’t look like much from here,” said naval architect Arthur Reed as the little ship motored across the test pond at the David Taylor Model Basin. “But if you were small enough to stand on the deck of the model, some of those waves would be the equivalent of 60 feet high. Here we have immortalized Hurricane Camille.”

With its backward-canted bow, its inward-angled hull and its pillbox superstructure, the project the Navy calls DD(X) bears scant resemblance to any surface warship any modern sailor has ever seen. But this new destroyer – or something equally radical – is likely to become the template for a new generation of vessels that will embody the most dramatic changes in U.S warship design since the advent of nuclear power.

The Navy expects the highly automated vessel, with its radical engineering systems, to operate much more cheaply and efficiently than anything in today’s fleet.

After nearly 13 years of conceptual studies and design work, the Navy in the next few months is scheduled to pick DD(X)’s basic hull design – a revolutionary inward-slanted “tumblehome” shape built to deflect enemy radar and give the ship the same electronic signature as a fishing boat. The model being tested is one of the competing designs.

The ship must be able to endure “sea state 8,” a Camille-size hurricane, and much more. Anticipating increased use of expeditionary forces in the 21st century, the Navy wanted a vessel capable of maneuvering in restricted waters to provide gunfire and missile support for troops as far as 100 miles inland.

DD(X) will be electric-powered. Much of its superstructure will be made of graphite composite instead of steel or aluminum. It will be a “stealth ship” with the Navy’s first onboard control system for dispersing heat emissions and with its radars embedded in the skin of the ship to make detection by enemy radar more difficult.

Instead of the 350 officers and enlisted men and women aboard destroyers, the DD(X) will sail with a crew of 150 or fewer, because of automation. It also will have 80 missile launchers and two main deck guns whose 155mm ammunition will be loaded, moved, stored and fired without ever being touched by human hands.

A smaller crew will mean greater creature comforts, especially for enlisted personnel. Instead of gathering in large multitiered berthing spaces such as those on most Navy ships, DD(X) crew members will enjoy four-person staterooms.

DD(X)’s tumblehome hull will curve slightly inward from the waterline or even below instead of flaring outward, as traditional hulls do. But while the new shape will make it more difficult for enemies to get a solid fix on the ship, the tumblehome design is also much less stable. Making it work properly is “very tricky,” said naval architect Barry Fox. “It’s the most difficult ship I’ve ever worked on.”

But it’s worth it, for those concerned. “You only get an opportunity once in a generation to do something like this,” said Navy Capt. Chuck Goddard, the Naval Sea Systems Command’s project manager for DD(X). “It’s pretty exciting.”

The Navy began the program in late 2001 after 10 years of research and after scrapping an earlier, more elaborate design that Chief of Naval Operations Vernon Clark said at the time carried too much risk of failing to deliver what the Navy wanted. Goddard said in a recent interview that the early design was “unaffordable.”

By contrast, DD(X) is supposed to provide the Navy with a new generation of warship technology good for the next 40 years. The prototype may be a destroyer, but the design will likely be adapted for cruisers and other ships.

Goddard said 24 DD(X) destroyers should enter the fleet beginning in 2013. The price for each would be between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion, with the first one likely to cost twice as much, he added.

The program is not without critics. The Congressional Research Service issued a report in October suggesting that lawmakers examine whether the Navy needs a radical new generation of ships when it might be able to fill its needs in different – and cheaper – ways.

“We need it for fire support,” Goddard said. “You can leave your howitzers at home – for the first 100 miles (inland) this ship will provide support 24/7. It’s designed to fight in really difficult water.” At 600 feet in length, DD(X) will be 100 feet longer than current destroyers, but its 28-foot draft will be 3 feet less than today’s ships, a critical margin of difference for a ship operating in restricted waters.

Some critics have also focused on the reduced crew size, suggesting that DD(X) will not have enough people to cope with a collision or an attack such as the terrorist bomb that tore a hole in the side of the destroyer USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen.

“And if you reduce the crew below 100, you might even have to worry about pirates,” said defense analyst Norman Friedman, a historian of U.S. warship design. “The Navy likes to have human insurance against things going wrong.”

Goddard said he is mindful of critics’ misgivings about DD(X)’s crew size, but hopes to use automation to handle damage. “We still have some people who can respond to a casualty,” Goddard said. “But it’s only a third the size of a normal damage-control party.”

Finally, said William O’Neil, chief scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, the Navy needs to make certain it is not trying to travel in too many new directions at once. “None of these things strikes me as terribly risky – not like going to nuclear power,” O’Neil said. “But they need to ask whether all these technologies should be in Navy ships at this time.”