The Navy's Stealth Destroyers Will Have Their Deck Guns Replaced With Hypersonic Missiles
The doomed 155mm guns ended up being too expensive to shoot, Now they will be ripped out and replaced with missile launchers at an unknown cost.
By Joseph Trevithick November 2, 2021
The War Zone
The USS Zumwalt fires an SM-2 Block IIIAZ missile in a test.
The U.S. Navy says it plans to begin converting the first of its Zumwalt class destroyers to fire the service's future Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapons, or IRCPS, in the 2024 Fiscal Year. The launchers for these missiles, which will be loaded onto the ship's inside triple-packed Advanced Payload Module canisters, will replace the 155mm Advanced Gun Systems on these stealthy destroyers. The Navy decided back in 2016 not to buy any ammunition for those guns due to ballooning costs, rendering them effectively dead weight and prompting discussions about the possibility of installing other weapons in their place.
Naval News first reported this new schedule information. The Navy's budget request for the 2022 Fiscal Year, released earlier this year, had already revealed that the service hopes to have some level of operational capability to launch IRCPS missiles from its Zumwalt class ships by the end of 2025. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday had previously confirmed the basic plan for adding hypersonic missiles to these destroyers, which are also referred to as DDG-1000s after the hull number of the lead ship, USS Zumwalt, during a talk at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank in April. The Navy is planning to integrate IRCPS onto its future Block V Virginia class submarines, likely using the Advanced Payload Module (APM) canisters, as well, and the weapon could find its way onto other vessels.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42963/the-navys-stealth-destroyers-will-have-their-deck-guns-replaced-with-hypersonic-missiles
