USS Zumwalt is no longer being reconstructed to fight with guns; it is being reconstructed to launch limited number of very large, very fast missiles upon a stealthy surface vessel capable of appearing, hovering, and threatening long range targets.
Huntington Ingalls Industries stated that the destroyer has passed builder sea trials following a comprehensive modernization availability with the testing focusing on propulsion, the hull integrity, power generation and general performance of the ship systems. The work was significant as this was not the ordinary yard time. In August 2023, Zumwalt was brought into Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, placed on land to allow extensive alterations to be made to it, and undocked in December 2024, before the ship underwent final preparations to resume sea service.
The revision of the headline is simple and irreversible: those twin 155mm Advanced Gun Systems on the ship are now missing and in their place is the firing infrastructure of the Navy Conventional Prompt Strike weapon. That seals the book on the original purpose of the class as an accuracy platform in naval gun fire and revises DDG-1000 as the first American surface combatant to carry CPS. Reporting involved with modernization relates to four large missile tubes where the forward gun system used to dominate the ships silhouette which is an apparent message that the internal reorganization of the ship was based on the amount of weapons and how they handled instead of the amount of ammunition kept.
The CPS concept relies upon two stage booster and a common hypersonic glide body which separates and flies an unpowered, maneuvring trajectory at hypersonic speed. The several factors that combine to produce this attraction include high speed of more than Mach 5, shorter warning range, and a flight profile that emphasizes defensive maneuvering and attack over subsonic cruise missiles. It is here that integration is more than just physical fit CPS must inhabit within shipboard safety specifications, and command-and-control pathways, as well as targeting architectures that can accommodate a weapon needed to strike in a few seconds on high-value or time-sensitive targets.
The trade space of the conversion is seen in the depth of the magazine.
There is a high volume consumption of large-diameter hypersonic launchers, and open accounts of where the refit is made to each tube, which carries three missiles, and then 12 rounds are on a ship that also carries Mk 57 peripheral vertical launch cells to carry other types of weapons. That number is not random, but it indicates the size of the weapon and the fact that CPS is to be used not as a long-range response, but as a selective weapon. It also implies that the ship mission profile is skewed to purposeful shots, backed up by intelligence and timing, of the type the gun-centric concept used to suggest.
The hull shape and inbuilt electric propulsion of Zumwalt remains relevant in this novelty. It had a signature management and power rich architecture design and power generation was a performance focus in the refit tests. Such excess electrical capacity and growth factor remains a hallmark, although the bow guns will have long since lost their place as the most valuable feature of the ship to the new hypersonic launch compartment.
The wider group lags behind. The shipbuilder has reported that USS Lyndon B. Johnson is receiving CPS integration at Ingalls, and USS Michael Monsoor will receive the system in one of its future availabilities, establishing a three-ship surface force capable of operating on prompt conventional strike instead of naval gunfire support.
It is not the hypersonic lethality of a builder which eventually certifies him that he has endured the next stage, which is to transform the highly modified hull into an operational strike node, capable of using CPS safely, networking it effectively, and managing what it means to place an operational, long-range conventional weapon upon a visible surface combatant.
