Surface Navy 2025: Zumwalt hypersonic work on track, Raytheon says

Giving Zuwmalt the capability to fire hypersonic missiles means the removal of the ship's big guns. (Janes/Michael Fabey)

The programme to put hypersonic missile capability on guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) is on track, according to Scott Spence, Raytheon vice-president of Naval Systems and Sustainment.

The US Navy (USN) tapped Raytheon for work to develop Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) on Zumwalt-class destroyers.

“Putting CPS on, that's a big push, and it's going well,” Spence told Janes on 8 January during a briefing in advance of the Surface Navy Association National Symposium 2025 from 14 to 16 January.

“The challenge might have been we were given an aggressive schedule,” he said. “SECNAV [Secretary of Navy Carlos Del Toro] said, ‘See how quickly you can do it.' The team has rallied around that. We're meeting that challenge.”

For more information about the effort to put hypersonic missiles on Zumwalt, please see Destroyer Zumwalt completes modernisation for CPS integration .

Engineering design planning includes removal of the two 155 mm Advanced Gun System (AGS) mounts, according to the USN. The CPS capability will be installed in the space previously occupied by the forward AGS gun mount while the aft mount will remain open for future capabilities.

Spence added, “Once we put pen to paper, we knew what we had to do and how to do it. We've integrated other effectors over the years. This is adding another effector.”

He said, “We have to make sure we have the interfaces correct – we've integrated other things on new platforms.”