What matters now is not that the Zumwalt class lost its signature guns, but that the Navy finally found a mission those ships can physically and operationally support. For years, the three-ship class sat in an awkward place inside the fleet: expensive, technically ambitious, and built around a gun system whose ammunition never became practical. The 155mm Advanced Gun Systems were designed for long-range naval fire support, but the guided rounds tied to them became so costly that the ships were left carrying main batteries without a usable future. In April 2022, the Navy’s position on the removed mounts was still simply, “Disposition plan to be determined.”
The replacement is far more consequential than a weapons swap. USS Zumwalt now carries four large Advanced Payload Module tubes in the space once dominated by its twin gun mounts, with each tube sized for three Conventional Prompt Strike missiles. That gives the ship a planned load of 12 rounds of a weapon family described as reaching over 1,700 miles. The significance is structural as much as tactical, because these missiles are too large for the Navy’s standard vertical launch cells and demanded a redesign of the ship’s most distinctive internal volume.
That redesign has already moved beyond drawings. After arriving at Ingalls in 2023 for a deep modernization period, Zumwalt returned to the water and then back to sea in early 2026 following the installation of the new missile tubes and related system work. The yard period was not limited to cutting steel and dropping launchers into place. It required the ship to absorb a new strike architecture that touches storage, handling, control interfaces, ship safety, and launch sequencing without undermining the stealth shaping and power advantages that made the class unusual in the first place.
Capt. Clint Lawler, the DDG-1000 program manager, outlined just how invasive the refit became: We removed both guns from the ship. We’ve recovered some of the space under the second gun system for spaces that were previously used under the forward gun mount. We’ve essentially recaptured some of that space. Other space is a reservation for future capability. That comment reveals the deeper logic of the conversion. The Zumwalt hull was originally criticized as overbuilt for the mission it ended up with, but its spare volume and electrical margin now make more sense as enabling conditions for a missile system that needs more than a standard launcher bank. The class still retains its 80 peripheral launch cells, so the hypersonic fit does not replace the rest of the ship’s missile battery; it adds a new long-range strike layer on top of it.
The weapon itself also helps explain why the Navy chose this class first. CPS uses a booster to accelerate a glide body past Mach 5 before separation, creating a conventional strike option meant to compress the time between launch and impact. The Navy and Army share the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, a common core intended to simplify development and future upgrades across services. Integration at sea remains the hard part, because the missile is not “like any other type of missile,” as Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe put it: “You don’t light this thing off inside.”
Zumwalt is only the lead conversion. Lyndon B. Johnson is already in line for combat-system activation and tube installation, while Michael Monsoor is set to follow. What once looked like a class in search of purpose is becoming something far narrower and more defined: a stealthy surface platform built to carry a small magazine of very fast weapons farther offshore than its original concept ever allowed.
