The US Navy is transforming a precious flub into a powerful weapon with the first hypersonic weapon on a ship, retrofitted aboard the first of its three stealthy destroyers.
The USS Zumwalt is in a Mississippi shipyard, where workers have installed rocket tubes that replace the twin turrets of a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform for conducting fast, accurate attacks from greater distances, adding to the warship's usability.
“It was a costly blunder, but the Navy could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat here and get some use out of it by turning it into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.
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The US has had several types of hypersonic weapons in development for the past two decades, but recent tests by both Russia and China have increased pressure on the US military to speed up their production.
Hypersonic weapons can travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added maneuverability that makes them harder 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 confirming that China had recently tested an intermediate-range hypersonic weapon. the DF-27. Although the Pentagon had previously acknowledged the development of the weapon, it had not acknowledged its testing.
One of the US programs in development and planned for the Zumwalt is 'Conventional Prompt Strike'. It would launch like a ballistic missile and then release a hypersonic hover vehicle that would travel seven to eight times faster than the speed of sound before hitting. The weapon system is being developed jointly by the Navy and Army. Each of the Zumwalt-class destroyers would be equipped with four missile tubes, each carrying three of the missiles, for a total of twelve hypersonic weapons each. ship.
By choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is trying to increase the usefulness of a $7.5 billion warship that critics consider an expensive mistake despite serving as a test platform for several innovations.
The Zumwalt was intended to provide land attack capabilities with an advanced gun system with rocket-assisted projectiles to open the way for Marines to storm ashore. But the system with 155mm guns hidden in stealthy turrets was canceled because each of the rocket-assisted projectiles cost between $800,000 and $1 million.
Despite the stain on its reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers remain the Navy's most advanced surface warship in terms of new technologies. These innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimize radar signature, an unconventional wave-penetrating hull, automated fire and damage control, and a composite deckhouse that conceals radar and other sensors.
The Zumwalt arrived at the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in August 2023 and was lifted from the water for the complex work of integrating the new weapons system. The ship will be disconnected this week in preparation for the next round of testing and return to the fleet, shipyard spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard said.
A US hypersonic weapon was successfully tested last summer and development of the missiles continues. The Navy plans to begin testing the system aboard the Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028, according to the Navy.
The American weapons system will come at a high price. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would cost nearly $18 billion to purchase 300 of these weapons and maintain them for 20 years.
Critics say there is not enough value for money.
“This particular missile costs more than a dozen tanks. All you get is a precise, non-nuclear explosion, somewhere far away. Is it really worth the money? The answer is that the missile usually costs a lot 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 attack an enemy from thousands of miles away — beyond the range of most enemy weapons — and there is no effective defense against them, said retired Navy Adm. Ray Spicer, CEO of the US. Naval Institute, a think tank and former commander of an aircraft carrier strike force.
Conventional missiles that cost less aren't much of a bargain if they can't reach their targets, Spicer said, adding that the U.S. military really has no choice but to pursue them.
'The opponent has them. We never want to be left behind,” he says.
The U.S. is accelerating development because hypersonics have been identified as essential to U.S. national security with “survivable and lethal capabilities,” said James Weber, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.
“Deploying new capabilities based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the Department of Defense to sustain and strengthen our integrated deterrent and build lasting advantages,” he said.
