The Navy Just Spent $22 Billion on Stealth Destroyers That Couldn’t Fire Their Guns

Now They’re Getting Hypersonic Missiles

The Zumwalt-class destroyers were supposed to be the future of naval warfare.

They looked like nothing else afloat, with angular hulls that made a 610-foot warship appear the size of a fishing boat on radar. The Navy wanted 32 of them.

They got three. The main guns never worked.

One ship broke down in the Panama Canal weeks after being commissioned. The whole program cost $22.5 billion and became one of the military’s most expensive embarrassments.

But the story doesn’t end there, because the Navy just ripped out those useless guns and replaced them with something that might actually change everything.

A Warship Designed to Disappear

The Zumwalt’s strange shape serves a purpose. The tumblehome hull slopes inward from the waterline up, and the composite deckhouse has no sharp edges or flat surfaces.

According to a Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman, despite being 40% larger than an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the radar cross-section is more akin to that of a fishing boat.

The design makes the ship 50 times harder to spot on radar than an ordinary destroyer. Even the acoustic signature matches that of a submarine.

Every antenna and sensor hides inside the smooth exterior.

The Navy built the stealthiest surface warship in history, then struggled to figure out what to do with it.

Named for the Navy’s Youngest Admiral

Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became Chief of Naval Operations in 1970 at age 49, the youngest officer ever to hold that position.

He commanded naval forces in Vietnam, where his son served on Swift Boats in the rivers he controlled.

Zumwalt reformed Navy personnel policies through communications known as “Z-grams,” which authorized beards, introduced beer machines in barracks, and began integrating women into more roles.

President Clinton called him “the conscience of the United States Navy” at his funeral in 2000. The guided missile destroyer program was named the Zumwalt class in his honor.

The admiral who modernized the Navy now has his name on ships struggling to justify their existence.

Everything Was Built From Scratch

The Zumwalt tried to revolutionize too much at once. Nothing about it was standard.

Every major component, the radar, the guns, the power system, had to be designed from scratch. The Integrated Power System generates 78 megawatts of electricity, enough to power nearly 10,000 homes.

Two Rolls-Royce gas turbines drive electric generators that power everything from propulsion to weapons.

There were no off-the-shelf parts to fall back on, so every step took longer, cost more, and came with its own set of growing pains.

General Dynamics spent $40 million just building a special facility to construct the ships. The ambition was staggering.

So were the problems.

Artillery Shells That Cost More Than Cars

The 155mm Advanced Gun System was supposed to be the Zumwalt’s main weapon, firing precision rounds 63 miles to support troops ashore.

The cost of the LRLAP projectile, originally estimated at $50,000 each, mushroomed to $800,000 as the Navy cut the number of ships and reduced its ammunition order.

That’s nearly the price of a Tomahawk cruise missile for a single artillery shell. The ammunition became prohibitively expensive, so the Navy stopped buying rounds entirely.

Two massive gun turrets sat on each ship with nothing to fire. The weapons that justified the entire program became expensive decorations.

Stuck in the Panama Canal

The USS Zumwalt was commissioned on October 15, 2016, in Baltimore. Five weeks later, it was stuck in Panama.

The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during a transit of the canal, and the crew saw water intrusion in bearings connecting the electric motors to the drive shafts.

Both shafts locked during the passage and the transit had to be completed with tugs. The ship made minor contact with lock walls in the canal resulting in minor cosmetic damage.

The most advanced destroyer ever built needed a tow from a tugboat. Repairs took about ten days at a former U.S. naval station before the ship could limp to San Diego.

From 32 Ships Down to Three

The original plan called for 32 Zumwalt-class destroyers at roughly $1. 3 billion each.

A January 2009 memo stated that the per ship price had reached $5. 964 billion, 81 percent over the Navy’s original estimate.

Congress demanded answers. The Navy kept cutting.

The order dropped to 24 ships, then to seven, then finally to three. In April 2016 the total program cost was $22.5 billion, $7. 5 billion per ship.

For that money, the Navy could have built three nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Instead, it got three destroyers with guns that couldn’t shoot and propulsion systems that kept breaking down.

Tearing Out the Guns That Never Worked

In August 2023, the lead ship arrived at Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, for surgery.

At the beginning of 2024, specialist trade workers at the shipyard removed the massive 155mm forward-most gun turret.

This was followed by the removal of all the associated machinery and the weapons magazine, all of which descended several decks.

Workers essentially gutted the bow of the ship, carving out space that had held weapons the Navy never planned to fire. Lawler’s pictures give a sense of the scale of the work that was involved.

The removal created room for something the Navy actually wants to use.

Hypersonic Launchers Take Their Place

Four new 87-inch diameter launch tubes now sit where the guns once stood.

Each tube holds three Conventional Prompt Strike missiles packed into an Advanced Payload Module canister, giving each destroyer 12 hypersonic weapons.

The USS Zumwalt was put back in the water in December 2024 after undergoing 14 months of work. The other two ships in the class will follow.

The USS Zumwalt is expected to be able to actually employ IRCPS operationally sometime in 2026.

A ship designed around guns that never worked will become America’s first surface vessel armed with hypersonic missiles.

Missiles Too Fast to Stop

The Conventional Prompt Strike missile launches on a two-stage rocket booster, climbs toward the edge of the atmosphere, then releases a glide vehicle that descends toward its target at speeds exceeding Mach 5.

With a range of up to 1,725 miles, the missile will enable the Navy to hold high-value targets at risk from a great distance.

The glide vehicle can change course during flight, making it nearly impossible to intercept with current missile defenses.

The Navy awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to integrate the Conventional Prompt Strike weapon system onto the Zumwalt-class destroyer in February 2023.

The weapon gives the troubled ships a mission that matches their capabilities.

Pearl Harbor Becomes Home Base

The Navy intends to base all three Zumwalt-class destroyers and several Virginia-class submarines armed with CPS weapons at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

The move puts hypersonic firepower thousands of miles closer to Taiwan and the South China Sea than bases on the U. S. mainland. The move will make Pearl Harbor the home of the Navy’s first hypersonic-armed surface and undersea fleet by 2030.

Hawaii Congresswoman Jill Tokuda wants answers about infrastructure needs and community impact before the ships arrive. The Navy sees strategic necessity.

Residents see warships designed for a potential war with China parking in their harbor.

From Expensive Failure to Hypersonic Threat

The Zumwalt class will never be what the Navy originally planned. Thirty-two ships became three.

Precision guns became empty turrets. Stealth technology that cost billions proved difficult to maintain.

But those three ships still generate enough electricity to power directed-energy weapons that don’t exist yet. Their stealth features could help them sneak within range of heavily defended targets.

By repurposing them into hypersonic strike platforms, if successful, the Navy will turn a costly disaster into something potentially highly potent.

The destroyers named for a reform-minded admiral may finally get their second chance.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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