The US Navy is turning an expensive flub into a powerful weapon with the first shipboard hypersonic weapon, which is being carried aboard the first of its three stealthy destroyers.
The USS Zumwalt is in a Mississippi shipyard where workers installed missile tubes that replaced twin turrets from a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform for rapid, precision strikes from greater distances, adding to the utility of the warship.
“It was a costly mistake but the Navy can win out of the jaws of defeat here, and gain some utility by building them into a hypersonic platform,” said Brian Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute. said
The US has had a variety of hypersonic weapons in development for the past two decades, but recent tests by both Russia and China Pressure is applied The US military to speed up its production.
Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added maneuverability making them difficult to shoot down.
Last year, The Washington Post reported that one of the documents leaked by Jack Teixeira, a former member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was a Department of Defense briefing that confirmed that China had recently developed an intermediate-range missile called the DF-27. Tested a hypersonic weapon. Although the Pentagon previously acknowledged the development of the weapon, it did not recognize its testing.
One of the US programs in development and planned for Zumwalt is the “conventional prompt strike”. It would launch like a ballistic missile and then release a hypersonic glide vehicle that would travel seven to eight times the speed of sound before hitting the target. The weapon system is being jointly developed by the Navy and the Army. Each of the Zumwalt-class destroyers will be equipped with four missile tubes, each carrying three missiles for a total of 12 hypersonic warheads per ship.
In choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is seeking to add utility to a $7.5 billion warship that critics consider a costly mistake even as it serves as a test platform for many innovations.
The Zumwalt was envisioned to provide a land-attack capability with an advanced gun system with rocket-assisted projectiles to open the way for ships to charge ships. But the system, featuring 155 mm cannons, was hidden in secret turrets because each rocket-assisted projectile costs between $800,000 and $1 million.
Despite its tarnished reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers remain the Navy’s most advanced surface warships in terms of new technologies. These innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimize radar signature, an unconventional wave-piercing hull, automated fire and damage control and a composite deckhouse that hides radar and other sensors.
Arrived at Zumwalt Huntington Ingalls Industries Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi in August 2023 and removed from the water for the complex task of integrating the new weapon system. It is scheduled to be undocked this week in preparation for the next round of tests and its return to the fleet, shipyard spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard said.
A US hypersonic weapon was successfully tested in the summer and missile development continues. The Navy wants to begin testing the system aboard the Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028, according to the Navy.
American weapons systems will come at a high cost. According to the Congressional Budget Office, buying 300 weapons and maintaining them over 20 years would cost about $18 billion.
Critics say there’s too little bang for the buck.
“This particular missile costs more than a dozen tanks. All it gets you is a precise non-nuclear explosion, somewhere far away. Is it really worth the money? The answer most of the time is that the missile costs far more than any target you can destroy it with,” said Lorraine Thompson, a longtime military analyst in Washington, DC.
But they give Navy ships the ability to attack the enemy from thousands of kilometers away — beyond the range of most enemy weapons — and there is no effective defense against them, retired Navy Rear Adm. said 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 are no deal if they are unable to reach their targets, Spicer said, adding that the U.S. military has virtually no choice but to pursue them.
“The opponent has that. We never want to be left behind,” he said.
The U.S. is accelerating development because hypersonics has been identified as critical to U.S. national security with “survivable and lethal capabilities,” said James Weber, principal director of hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.
“Fielding new capabilities based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the Department of Defense to maintain and strengthen our integrated deterrence, and build lasting advantages,” he said.
