The US Navy is to transform three, white elephant, stealth destroyers by fitting them with first-of-their-kind shipborne hypersonic weapons.

The USS Zumwalt is at a Mississippi shipyard where workers have installed missile tubes that replace twin turrets from a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive.

Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform for conducting fast, precision strikes from greater distances, adding to the usefulness of the warship.

“It was a costly blunder. But the Navy could take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some utility out of (the ships) by making them into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defence analyst at the Hudson Institute.

7.5 billion
The cost in dollars of each of the three Zumwalt class destroyers which were unable to use their guns because they were too expensive to fire

The US has had several types of hypersonic weapons in development for the past two decades, but recent tests by both Russia and China have added pressure to the US military to hasten their production.

Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added manoeuvrability making them harder to shoot down.

Last year, The Washington Post newspaper reported that among the documents leaked by former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was a defence department briefing that confirmed China had recently tested an intermediate-range hypersonic weapon called the DF-27.

While the Pentagon had previously acknowledged the weapon’s development, it had not recognised its testing.

One of the US programmes in development and planned for the Zumwalt is the Conventional Prompt Strike.

It would launch like a ballistic missile and then release a hypersonic glide vehicle that would travel at speeds seven to eight times faster than the speed of sound before hitting the target.

The weapon system is being developed jointly by the Navy and Army.

Each of the three Zumwalt-class destroyers would be equipped with four missile tubes, each with three of the missiles for a total of 12 hypersonic weapons per ship.

In choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is attempting to add to the usefulness of a 7.5 billion US dollars (£5.9 billion) warship that is considered by critics to be an expensive mistake despite serving as a test platform for multiple innovations.

The Zumwalt was envisioned as providing land-attack capability with an advanced gun system with rocket-assisted projectiles to open the way for Marines to charge ashore.

But the system featuring 155mm guns hidden in stealthy turrets was cancelled because each of the rocket-assisted projectiles cost up to one million dollars (£790,000).

Despite the stain on their reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers: Zumwalt, Michael Monsoor and Lyndon B Johnson; remain the Navy’s most advanced surface warships in terms of new technologies.

Those innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimise radar signature, an unconventional wave-piercing hull, automated fire and damage control and a composite deckhouse that hides radar and other sensors.

The US is accelerating development because hypersonics have been identified as vital to US national security with “survivable and lethal capabilities”, said James Weber, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.

“Fielding new capabilities that are based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the defence department to sustain and strengthen our integrated deterrence, and to build enduring advantages,” he said.

US to transform white elephant destroyers by fitting hypersonic weapons