The U.S. Navy is making progress in deploying its first shipborne hypersonic weapon. Workers at a Mississippi shipyard have finished installing missile tubes on the USS Zumwalt that will replace twin turrets from a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. The work began after the ship’s arrival in August 2023 at the Ingalls shipyard on the Mississippi coast and the ship is scheduled to be undocked this week. The U.S. is attempting to catch up with Russia and China in developing hypersonic weapons that travel beyond Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.
