Guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is back underway to its new homeport after a five-day delay for repairs, Navy officials confirmed to USNI News.
Zumwalt left Naval Base San Diego last week bound for HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., where it will undergo an extensive refit that will add hypersonic missiles to the 16,000-ton combatant as part of the Navy’s push to turn the ship into a blue-water combatant.
“USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000)… will shift its homeport from San Diego to Pascagoula, Miss., to enter a modernization period and receive technology upgrades including the integration of the Conventional Prompt Strike weapons system,” Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson said.
“The upgrades will ensure Zumwalt remains one of the most technologically advanced and lethal ships in the U.S. Navy.”
However, the ship returned when to port needing unspecified repairs. The Navy would not identify the casualty when contacted by USNI News. On its initial transit to the West Coast in 2016, Zumwalt was sidelined due to an engineering fault and had to be repaired in Panama.
Zumwalt was back underway on Tuesday. The ship will now travel to Pascagoula to have its 155 mm Advanced Gun Systems removed and replaced with four 87-inch missile tubes that will field 12 of the Common Hypersonic Glide Bodies (C-HGB). The missile is a joint program being developed the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.
The Navy also plans to add the missiles to the two other Zumwalts – USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) and Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002) – during their own availabilities at Ingalls.
The service also plans to field the C-HGB aboard the Block V Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine fitted with the Virginia Payload Module.
