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Two Guns Removed, 12 Hypersonics Added: Can CPS Finally Justify the Zumwalt Class?
The Navy has just added another $99 million to the final Zumwalt-class destroyer's path to sea. Lyndon B. Johnson began construction in 2012, reached Ingalls in 2022 for combat-system activation and is now being finished as a hypersonic-strike ship rather than the naval-gunfire destroyer originally envisioned. The three-ship experiment produced some of the Navy's most advanced surface-warship technology. It also produced two guns with no affordable ammunition, a class cut from 32 ships to three, billions in development cost spread across those three hulls and a second major weapons conversion before the third ship has even been delivered.
There is more than one correct Zumwalt cost number
Program accounting changed across more than two decades, so historical then-year acquisition totals should not be mixed directly with newer inflation-adjusted GAO comparisons or later modernization spending.
The economics changed every time another ship disappeared
| Stage | Planned quantity | Industrial effect | Cost effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| DD-21 concept | 32 ships | Development, tooling and unique weapons spread across a large fleet | High R&D could be amortized across decades of production |
| DD(X) restructure | 16 ships | Same technology program supported by half as many hulls | Per-ship development burden rises |
| Later plan | 8 ships | Supplier quantities shrink again | Unique components and ammunition lose economies of scale |
| Final class | 3 ships | Nearly bespoke fleet inside a much larger Navy | Development and sustainment cost concentrated on three hulls |
GAO's 2025 shipbuilding review uses the sequence 32 → 16 → 8 → 3 when explaining the program's quantity collapse and unit-cost growth.
Two 155 mm guns became extremely expensive empty space
The Advanced Gun System was not a small secondary weapon. The ship was physically designed around two automated 155 mm mounts, deep magazines and the Long Range Land Attack Projectile.
The quantity cut helped kill the ammunition
The projectile was intended to serve a much larger class. Once the fleet collapsed to three hulls, the production run became so small that the projected per-round price rose dramatically.
The Navy had already built the ships around the guns. The weapon therefore became a sunk-cost system whose removal later created the physical volume used for CPS.
The Navy is turning a gun destroyer into a hypersonic strike ship
| Original architecture | Converted architecture | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Two 155 mm AGS mounts | Guns removed | The original naval-fire-support centerpiece disappears. |
| Forward AGS volume | Four large missile launch tubes | Creates space for CPS advanced payload modules. |
| One specialized projectile per shot | Three CPS rounds per large tube | Up to 12 hypersonic weapons per ship. |
| Shorter-range littoral fire support emphasis | Strategic conventional deep strike | The ship's mission moves from shore bombardment toward high-value defended targets. |
| 80 Mk 57 peripheral VLS cells | 80 Mk 57 cells retained | Tomahawk, ESSM, Standard Missile and ASROC capacity remains separate from CPS. |
Saving the class for hypersonic strike adds another major cost layer
Lyndon B. Johnson has been in its second shipyard since 2022
The $99 million award is not the first post-Bath completion bill
Selected publicly announced HII contract increments associated with combat-system activation, mission-system work and sea trials illustrate how much effort remained after the hull left Bath.
Selected public increments: about $396.6 million
Those announcements are not a complete cost history for DDG-1002, and some work supports the changing mission-system baseline. They do show that leaving the construction yard did not mean the ship was close to ordinary fleet delivery.
The hypersonic rescue is already two years late
USS Zumwalt completed builder's sea trials after its conversion in January 2026. GAO reported the modernization was 94 percent complete that month, but additional work and testing remain before operational CPS capability is established.
The final ship is being converted before original new-construction delivery. USS Michael Monsoor, the middle ship in the class, will receive CPS later.
No. Several technologies survived the mission failure
The feature that saved Zumwalt was excess capacity
The ship was built with enormous electrical generation, internal volume and margins for systems that did not yet exist. Railguns and high-energy weapons were repeatedly discussed as future possibilities.
Those particular weapons did not arrive on schedule. CPS did.
A 16,000-ton technology demonstrator finally found a weapon big enough to need it
CPS rounds are nearly four stories tall. GAO says the Navy selected Zumwalt as the first sea platform partly because the ship's size and unique systems could accommodate the weapon.
The same expensive unused margin that looked excessive during the gun-system failure now gives the Navy a surface ship capable of carrying a weapon that cannot simply be dropped into a normal Mk 41 VLS cell.
Three rare ships with a very specific mission
| Capability | Zumwalt after CPS conversion | Strategic value | Constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPS | Up to 12 per ship | Long-range conventional strike against valuable defended targets | Very expensive missile and limited production rate |
| Conventional VLS | 80 Mk 57 cells | Tomahawk, air defence and ASW weapons | Unique launcher and combat architecture adds sustainment complexity |
| Stealth | Very low-observable surface design | Supports forward strike mission | Only three ships benefit from the design investment |
| Electrical power | Approximately 78 MW installed | Large margin for future sensors and weapons | Unique complex electrical system has contributed to maintenance issues |
| Fleet scale | 3 ships | Small specialist force | No fleet-wide economies of scale |
The program stacked too many firsts on one hull
Twelve developmental technologies
GAO says the program attempted to mature 12 new technologies while the ship itself was being designed.
Quantity collapsed before development cost did
Cutting 32 ships to three did not make the billions already invested in technology development disappear.
The primary weapon was not proven first
The ship was designed and built around AGS before its unique projectile proved economically viable.
The threat environment moved
GAO notes roughly 15 years passed between the identified requirement and lead-ship construction while Navy priorities shifted away from littoral land attack.
Unique systems became permanent overhead
Three ships retain unique radar, computing, electrical and support architectures that GAO says are costly and difficult to sustain.
A technology demonstrator and a fleet program are not the same thing
As an experiment, Zumwalt proved the Navy could put integrated electric drive, extreme signature reduction, extensive automation, a new computing architecture and large growth margins into a surface combatant.
As a fleet acquisition program, it failed to deliver the quantity or original mission promised for the money spent.
The central mistake was not experimentation itself. It was asking one production ship class to mature too many experimental technologies at the same time, then assuming enough hulls would be bought to make the economics work.
Zumwalt Cost Salvage Model
This separates sunk acquisition cost from the new money required to turn the three ships into hypersonic-strike platforms.
What did the Zumwalt experiment buy?
It did not buy the 32-ship stealth destroyer fleet once envisioned. It did not deliver its original naval-gunfire mission, and its third ship is still moving toward final delivery years after the other two entered the fleet.
It did buy a three-ship technology base with extreme electrical power, large internal volume, reduced signature, automation and a missile architecture flexible enough to accept a weapon the Navy did not plan when the hull was designed.
The final judgment depends on what happens next. If CPS becomes an important operational weapon and the three Zumwalts spend the 2030s holding high-value targets at risk from the Pacific, some of the experiment's unused capacity will finally have operational value. It will not make the original acquisition efficient. It will determine whether the Navy receives something strategically useful from one of the most expensive surface-ship experiments it has ever attempted.
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