The Pentagon is equipping the first-ever ship-born hypersonic missile system for a US stealth destroyer once considered defunct.
The USS Zumwalt is stationed at a shipyard in Mississippi while it undergoes renovation. The U.S. Navy is installing missile tubes toward the ship’s bow, where two inactive gun turrets once stood. The turrets were never activated due to cost.
“It was a costly blunder. But the Navy could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some use out of it by turning it into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute , about the Zumwalt retrofit.
This development comes at a time when the US is competing with Russia and China to develop and deploy new hypersonic weapons technologies.
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The USS Zumwalt is seen at the Huntington Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Hypersonic missiles have a significant advantage in today’s warfare because they travel at such a 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 Kiev with hypersonic missiles last week. It is believed that such missiles could also reach the west coast of the US.
Putin’s announcement came after President Biden approved Ukraine to use US-made ATACM missiles against targets on Russian territory.
The USS Zumwalt is being retrofitted with a hypersonic missile battery. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
“Of course, we will respond to the continued attacks 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 said. told a meeting of a security alliance of ex-Soviet countries in Kazakhstan.
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“Currently, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff are selecting targets to attack on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defense and industrial enterprises, or decision-making centers in Kiev,” he said.
Putin has threatened to use hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
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claims Putin Russian production of advanced missile systems exceeds that of the NATO military alliance by ten times, and Moscow planned to further increase production.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
