The US Navy has a severe problem, because it fails to continuously develop new ship types, but instead continuous to built old designs.
That is the reason why a design like a Zumwalt appears revolutionary, whereas in reality it is only similar in many aspects to designs of other navies.
The Zumwalt was designed as a replacement for the Spruance class. It would have been - if it would have got it complete radar set - a word-class anti-aircraft, anti-ship, anti-land-targets and anti-submarine design.
A simple gun/missile monitor would have been a very specialised, in most cases completely useless design.
The hypersonic missile launchers replace the 155 mm guns - they will keep the Mk 57 VLS! That means they will have 80 normal VLS cells PLUS 4 hypersonic missile launchers!
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