The Stealth destroyer will be home to the first hypersonic weapon on a US warship

The US Navy is turning an expensive flub into a powerful weapon with the ship’s first hypersonic weapon, which is also included in its first three destroyers.

The USS Zumwalt is at a shipyard in Mississippi where crews installed missile tubes to replace the twin turrets from a gun system that never worked because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform to conduct rapid and accurate strikes from long range, adding to the warship’s operational capabilities.

“It was a costly mistake but the Navy can take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get help from making it a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.

The US has had several types of hypersonic weapons in development over the past two decades, but recent tests by Russia and China have increased pressure on the US military to accelerate their production.

Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, and the added mobility makes it difficult to shoot down.

Last year, the Washington Post reported that among the documents leaked by former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was a Defense Department briefing that confirmed China had recently tested a medium-range hypersonic weapon called the DF-27. While the Pentagon had previously approved the development of the weapon, it had not approved its testing.

One of the US plans being developed and planned for Zumwalt is the “Immediate General Strike.” It will launch like a missile and release a hypersonic glide vehicle that will travel at seven to eight times the speed of sound before impact. target. The weapons system is being developed jointly by the Navy and the Army. Each of the Zumwalt-class destroyers will be equipped with four missile tubes, each with three missiles. A total of 12 hypersonic weapons per ship.

In selecting the Zumwalt, the Navy is trying to add to the significance of a $7.5 billion warship that critics consider a costly mistake despite serving as a testing ground for many new techniques.

The Zumwalt is envisioned to provide a land attack capability with an Advanced Gun System with rocket-assisted launchers to pave the way for the Marine Corps to drive ashore. But the program with 155 mm guns hidden in hidden turrets was canceled because each rocket support project costs between $800,000 and $1 million.

Despite the stain on its reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers remain the Navy’s most technologically advanced warship. Those innovations include an electric explosion, an angular shape to reduce the radar signature, an unusual wave-piercing hull, automatic fire and damage control and a composite deckhouse that hides the radar and other sensors.

The Zumwalt arrived at the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in August 2023 and was removed from the water for the complex task of assembling a new weapons system. It will be unloaded this week in preparation for the next round of inspections and its return to the ships, said ship spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard.

A US hypersonic weapon was successfully tested in the summer and missile development continues. The Navy wants to begin testing the system at Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028, according to the Navy.

The US weapons program will come at a steep price. It will cost about $18 billion to buy 300 weapons and maintain them over 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Critics say there is too little money to be made.

“This particular missile costs more than a dozen tanks. All you get is a non-nuclear precision explosion, somewhere far away. Is it really worth the money? The answer is often a missile is more expensive than any target it can destroy,” said Loren Thompson, a longtime military analyst in Washington, DC.

But they give Navy ships the ability to strike the enemy thousands of miles away — outside the range of most enemy weapons — and there is no effective defense against them, said Navy Rear Adm. Ray Spicer, US CEO. Naval Institute, think tank, and former commander of the air force.

Low-cost conventional missiles aren’t much use if they can’t reach their targets, Spicer said, adding that the US military has no choice but to go after them.

“The enemy has them. We never want to lose,” he said.

The US is accelerating development because hypersonics has been identified as vital to US national security with “living and lethal power,” said James Weber, chief director of hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.

“Acquiring new capabilities based on hypersonic technology is a priority for the defense department to sustain and strengthen our combined deterrence, and to build lasting advantages,” he said.