The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Zumwalt has departed Pascagoula, Mississippi for sea trials, and is the primary warship to take action whereas configured to be outfitted with intercontinental vary missiles. The Zumwalt has been below refit since August 2023, throughout which its two 155mm Superior Gun System turrets have been eliminated and changed with 12 launch tubes for the Typical Immediate Strike (CPS) intercontinental vary hypersonic missile. The missile has a terminal pace exceeding Mach 5 and an unknown vary that exceeds 6000 kilometres. It for the primary time supplies the U.S. Armed Forces, or any navy on this planet, with the choice of launching intercontinental vary ballistic missile assaults with out utilising nuclear warheads. This permits Zumwalt class ships to fulfil solely new roles, after points with their gun had beforehand introduced their objective within the Navy into critical query.
The CPS missile relies on the Lengthy-Vary Hypersonic Weaponprogram developed by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Army, and makes use of the identical propulsion rocket and the identical Frequent Hypersonic Glide Physique warhead. After vertical launch, the missile releases the warhead, which accelerates to hypersonic speeds. A major threat in using the missile is that its flight traits will alert the strategic early warning radar techniques of China and Russia, that means the USA will probably have to notify each if making a launch, very similar to Russia has notified Washington and Beijing when launching its new Oreshnik intermediate vary hypersonic missile in fight. The flexibility to launch strikes over such ranges has a number of potential advantages, together with making assaults much less predictable, and offering supporting fireplace in areas the place there’s not a enough naval presence to launch the required variety of cruise missile strikes.
The USS Zumwalt accomplished its first operational deployment in November 2022 with the Pacific Fleet, which lasted three months. The destroyer is certainly one of simply three of its class to have been constructed, with prices per unit of over $9 billion per vessel, a comparable price to a Nimitz class supercarrier, making them by far the most costly floor combatants on this planet. They’re a number of instances as expensive as initially projected when this system was initiated, and endure from outstandingly excessive upkeep wants. A complete of 32 warships have been initially deliberate with the opposite 29 minimize as a consequence of points with the design, together with the truth that the destroyers’ weapons couldn’t perform as supposed, whereas the variety of vertical launch cells needed to be minimize to a conservative 80. The USS Zumwalt started its refurbishment shortly after its transient operational deployment, with the choice to combine the CPS missile more likely to have been influenced by the ships’ restricted utility and value effectiveness if employed for extra typical roles.
The combination of ballistic missiles onto destroyers has turn into more and more frequent, with North Korea having carried out so on its Choi Hyon class ships, the primary of which was launched in April 2025, whereas China has repeatedly examined YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles from its Sort 055 class destroyers and can probably deliver them into service in 2026. These medium vary designs have small fractions of the CPS missile’s vary, nonetheless, and are supposed for tactical functions somewhat than to supply a worldwide strike functionality. However, China, Russia, and North Korea have all developed ground-based intermediate vary ballistic missiles with exact typical strike capabilities, whereas China is reported to even be creating an intercontinental vary ballistic missile able to launching precision strikes on excessive worth enemy warships. The Zumwalt class destroyer program’s lengthy historical past of delays has raised questions concerning when the ships will turn into operational with the brand new CPS missiles.
