Navy putting first shipborne hypersonic weapon on vessel once seen as ‘costly blunder’

The Pentagon is in the process of fitting the first-ever shipborn hypersonic missile system to a U.S. stealth destroyer once considered to be defunct.

The USS Zumwalt is stationed at a Mississippi shipyard as it undergoes the retrofit. The U.S. Navy is installing missile tubes towards the vessel’s bow, where two inactive gun turrets were once positioned. The turrets had never been activated due to cost.

“It was a costly blunder. But the Navy could take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some utility out of them by making them into a hypersonic platform,” Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said of the Zumwalt’s retrofit.

The development comes as the U.S. competes with Russia and China to develop and implement new hypersonic weapons technologies. 

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Hypersonic missiles hold a key advantage in contemporary warfare because they travel at such high speed that missile defense systems cannot reliably shoot them down.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target Ukrainian government buildings in Kyiv with hypersonic missiles last week. Such missiles are also believed to be capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast.

Putin’s announcement came after President Biden approved Ukraine to use U.S.-made ATACMs missiles on targets in Russian territory.

“Of course, we will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory with long-range Western-made missiles, as has already been said, including by possibly continuing to test the Oreshnik in combat conditions, as was done on November 21,” Putin told a meeting of a security alliance of ex-Soviet countries in Kazakhstan.

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“At present, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff are selecting targets to hit on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defense and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centers in Kyiv,” he said.

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Putin claims Russia’s production of advanced missile systems exceeds that of the NATO military alliance by 10 times, and that Moscow planned to ramp up production further.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.