The US Navy is turning a submarine into a powerful weapon with the ship’s first hypersonic weapon, which is being upgraded to the first of its three stealth destroyers.
The USS Zumwalt is in a shipyard in Mississippi, where workers have installed missile tubes that replace the twin turrets of a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, Zumwalt will provide a platform for rapid and accurate strikes from greater distances, increasing the warship’s utility.
“It was a costly expense, but the Navy could have pulled victory from the jaws of failure here by turning them into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.
The US has been developing various types of hypersonic weapons for the past two decades, but the most recent tests have been conducted by Russia and China. they added pressure to the US military to speed up their production.
Hypersonic weapons go beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, making them harder to shoot with more maneuverability.
Last year, The Washington Post reported that documents leaked by Jack Teixeira, a former member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, included defense department intelligence that confirmed China had tested a medium-range hypersonic weapon called the DF-27. Although the Pentagon previously acknowledged the development of the weapon, it did not acknowledge its testing.
One of the US programs planned and under development for the Zumwalt is the “Conventional Prompt Strike”. It would launch like a ballistic missile and then unleash a hypersonic flight vehicle that would travel seven to eight times the speed of sound before hitting its target. Weapons systems are being jointly developed by the Army and Navy. Each Zumwalt class destroyer would be equipped with four missile tubes, each with three missiles for a total of 12 hypersonic weapons per vessel.
In choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is trying to add utility to a $7.5 billion warship that critics say is a costly mistake, despite serving as a testbed for multiple innovations.
The Zumwalt was planned to provide a ground attack capability with rocket-assisted missiles to pave the way for Marines to load ashore. But the system, which had 155mm guns hidden in a hidden turret, was shelved because each rocket-assisted projectile cost between $800,000 and $1 million.
Despite its tarnished reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers remain the Navy’s most technologically advanced surface warships. These innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimize radar signature, a wave-piercing hull, automated fire and damage control, and a composite shroud that conceals radar and other sensors.
He reached the Zumwalt Huntington Ingalls Industries Pascagoula (Mississippi) shipyard in August 2023 and was removed from the water for the complex work of integrating the new weapon system. It should be decommissioned this week for further testing and return to the fleet, shipyard spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard said.
A US hypersonic weapon was successfully tested in the summer and missile development is progressing. The Navy plans to begin testing the system aboard the Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028, according to the Navy.
US weapons systems will come at a high price. It would cost nearly $18 billion to buy 300 weapons and maintain them over 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Critics say there is too little in return for income.
“This particular missile costs more than a dozen tanks. All it gets you is a pinpoint non-nuclear explosion somewhere far away. Is it really worth the money? The answer is that, in most cases, the missile costs far more than any target you can destroy with it.” , said Loren Thompson, a longtime military analyst in Washington, DC.
But they give Navy ships the ability to strike the enemy from thousands of miles away — beyond the range of most enemy weapons — and there is no effective defense against them, said retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Ray Spicer, director general of the U.S.S. Naval Institute, a think tank and former commander of an aircraft carrier strike force.
Less expensive conventional missiles aren’t cheap if they can’t hit their targets, Spicer said, adding that the US military has no choice but to go after them.
“He has opponents. We never want to ignore it,” he said.
The U.S. is accelerating development because hypersonics have been deemed essential to U.S. national security with “survival and lethal capabilities,” said James Weber, senior director of hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.
“The development of new capabilities based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the defense department to maintain and strengthen our integrated deterrence and create sustainable advantages,” he said.
