USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) underway at sea. U.S. Navy photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zumwalt's Second Act: Conventional Prompt Strike Makes DDG-1000 the US Navy's First Hypersonic Surface Combatant

Technical Summary

The United States Navy has converted USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) from a stalled naval gunfire platform into its first surface combatant configured to carry a hypersonic strike weapon. Shipwrights at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi removed the two 155mm (6.1-inch) Advanced Gun Systems (AGS) and the magazine structure beneath them, then fitted four large-diameter vertical launch tubes in the freed deck volume. Each tube measures roughly 87 inches (2.21 metres) across and accepts a canister, described in open sources as an Advanced Payload Module or Multiple All-Up Round Canister, that triple-packs three Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) All-Up Rounds (AURs). The result is a magazine of twelve hypersonic missiles per ship.

CPS is a boost-glide weapon built around the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) riding a two-stage solid rocket booster shared with the US Army's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, designated Dark Eagle. The glide vehicle separates after boost, then manoeuvres inside the atmosphere at a speed greater than Mach 5. Published range figures remain classified. Open-source assessments place the reach well beyond 2,775 kilometres (about 1,725 miles), a figure that dwarfs the roughly 100 nautical mile design range of the abandoned gun round. Zumwalt keeps its eighty Mark 57 Peripheral Vertical Launching System (VLS) cells for the Tomahawk land-attack missile, Standard Missile-2 and -6, and the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile, so the strike role is added rather than substituted.

The Long Range Land Attack Projectile was cancelled in 2016 at an estimated 800,000 to 1 million US dollars per round. Conventional Prompt Strike now extends the same hull's reach from roughly 100 nautical miles to a glide range assessed well above 2,700 kilometres. ISC open-source assessment, 30 June 2026

Analysis of Effects

The conversion answers a capability gap that had haunted the class since 2016. The Zumwalts were designed around the AGS and its Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), a rocket-assisted guided round meant to reach beyond 80 nautical miles. When the production run fell from thirty-two ships to three, the per-round price climbed to a reported 800,000 to 1 million US dollars, and the Navy halted procurement in November 2016. Without ammunition the guns were dead weight. CPS turns that liability into a high-end strike role: a small number of very long-range rounds able to hold command nodes, missile sites and other time-sensitive targets at risk from standoff distance, with a flight profile and speed intended to complicate intercept. The trade is depth for reach. Twelve rounds per ship, and thirty-six across the three hulls at full fit, is a precise capability rather than a mass-salvo weapon, and reported unit costs of the order of 30 to 40 million US dollars per round reinforce that the magazine will be used sparingly. The All-Up Round is common across the force: the Navy will also field CPS from Block V Virginia-class submarines through the Virginia Payload Module, sharing the round and its supply chain, while the Army carries the same glide body in Dark Eagle. Open reporting describes additional fuel-capacity work to extend the class's endurance for Pacific operations. The hulls are being modernised in parallel under the Zumwalt Enterprise Upgrade Solution (ZEUS), a NAVSEA combat-system refresh that aligns the class with the wider surface fleet, including replacement of the bespoke AN/SPY-3 radar with the AN/SPY-6(V)3 air and missile defence radar.

The same period has produced a quieter answer to the long-range fires problem that LRLAP failed to solve at acceptable cost. A new generation of 155mm projectiles now reaches far past conventional gun range. General Atomics has developed a Long-Range Maneuvering Projectile that deploys wings and glides to about 120 kilometres. Norway's Nammo unveiled a solid-fuel ramjet 155mm shell in 2025, quoting up to 150 kilometres from standard NATO L52 and L58 howitzer barrels. United States work under the Extended Range Artillery Munitions Suite, including a Raytheon ramjet round, targets around 100 kilometres, while Tiberius Aerospace offers the ramjet-powered Sceptre with claimed metre-class accuracy. These rounds are projected at unit costs far below the LRLAP figure. They are land-artillery munitions and are not compatible with the now-removed naval gun, so they do not restore Zumwalt's own guns. They do show that the precision deep-fires effect the class was built to deliver is being achieved elsewhere at a fraction of the original ammunition cost, which is part of why the second former gun position is reported as left open for future missiles, directed energy or other payloads.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

Stowing twelve large solid-rocket-motor missiles aboard raises magazine-safety questions that open sources do not fully answer. The Mark 57 VLS was designed with cells around the ship's periphery and with blast-hardened structure, so that a cell event vents outboard rather than into the hull, an arrangement that aids damage control. CPS is understood to use a cold-launch method, ejecting the round from the tube by gas pressure before the booster ignites clear of the deck, which reduces launch efflux and blast loading on the ship. The US Navy demonstrated a cold-launch of a hypersonic round in a test in May 2025. The Hazard Division and Compatibility Group of a stowed AUR, its Net Explosive Quantity (NEQ), and its insensitive-munitions qualification are not published, and are treated here as data gaps. As a two-stage solid-propellant weapon with a conventional warhead, the round would be expected to handle as mass-explosion-hazard ordnance pending confirmation, a point that is not independently verified.

Data Gaps

Several parameters remain unconfirmed in open sources: the operational range of CPS (classified); the NEQ, Hazard Division and Compatibility Group of a stowed All-Up Round; the fuzing and insensitive-munitions status of the warhead; the per-round cost, reported by some estimates at 30 to 40 million US dollars but not officially stated; the total class-conversion cost, reported at around 2 billion US dollars without a confirmed breakdown; and the precise at-sea firing date, given as 2027 or 2028 after land-based test delays. Figures attributed above to open-source estimate rather than primary documentation should be read as provisional.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product.