The first guided-missile destroyer fitted for conventional hypersonic missiles is back in the water after more than a year of modifications.
Ingalls Shipbuilding undocked USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) and the ship is now pierside at the Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard, HII announced in a Friday statement.
“The undocking marked the completion of significant modernization work at Ingalls since the ship arrived at the Pascagoula shipyard in August 2023,” reads the statement from HII.
“Shortly after its arrival, the ship was put back on land in order to receive technology upgrades including the integration of the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) weapon system. The Ingalls team also replaced the original twin 155mm Advanced Gun Systems on the destroyers with new missile tubes.”
Zumwalt and the other two ships in the class will be the Navy’s first at-sea platforms to field the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) missile – a weapon designed to strike targets thousands of miles away with no warning.
The trio of ships were designed around twin 155mm guns that would launch guided-rounds to strike land targets, but the program was scrapped because the specialized ammunition, while effective, was wildly expensive.
In 2017, the Zumwalt-class ships were retasked from a close-in, naval surface fire support mission to a blue water strike platform. In 2021, then Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said Zumwalt would be the first Navy platform to field the hypersonic weapon.
Ingalls removed the forward gun mount and ammo loading mechanism storage from Zumwalt and added four large diameter tubes that can each field three weapons for a total of 12.
Now that Zumwalt is back in the water, the Navy anticipates testing the weapon at sea in 2027 or 2028, Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, the Navy’s director of strategic programs, told reporters last month.
The modular CPS system features an all-up round missile and a separate modular payload adapter.
“We’re testing and building the payload modular adapter, aside from what’s going on the actual ship,” Wolfe said. “The missile – the all-up round – we’re continuing forward with all that testing because the missile has to be what we call in-air launched because it’s so large. It’s not like any other type of missile. You don’t light this thing off inside.”
The Navy is also planning to field the CPS on the Block V Virginia-class Virginia Payload Module.
The third Zumwalt-class ship, Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002), is also at Ingalls Shipbuilding for its combat system activation and the eventual installation of its own missile tubes. Second-in-class USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) is based in San Diego ahead of its own missile tube installation.
