‘Problem After Problem’: The US Navy Planned 32 Zumwalt ‘Stealth’ Destroyers and Built Just Three. Their Guns Needed $1 Million Shells, and the Navy Couldn’t Afford to Fire Them.

‘Problem After Problem’: The US Navy Planned 32 Zumwalt ‘Stealth’ Destroyers and Built Just Three. Their Guns Needed $1 Million Shells, and the Navy Couldn’t Afford to Fire Them.

Summary and Key Points: The Zumwalt-class destroyer was supposed to be a 32-ship fleet that would park off hostile coastlines and pound targets ashore with a pair of 155mm guns. Cost overruns cut the class to three ships, and the guns’ custom shells proved too expensive to use. Now the Navy is giving the stealthy hulls a second life as its first sea-based hypersonic strike platform. The catch is magazine depth: with a dozen missiles per ship, th…