Source: motherboard

_{Image Source: USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), 2015. Image: US Navy}

The US Navy’s ultra-versatile new $440 million warship might have to ride out the rest of winter frozen to a dock in Canada. But the sailing branch says it expects to formally accept a new 610-foot-long vessel into service in the coming weeks, its second Zumwalt-class stealth battleship.

The catch? Its main weapons don’t have any ammunition. And possibly never will.

The future USS Michael Monsoor, which was nearing completion at Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine in mid January, is the second in a three-ship class of high-tech vessels with hard-to-detect downward-sloping hulls, a huge flight deck for helicopters and drones, and a sophisticated on-board computer network. Each ship, named after a Navy SEAL who died in Iraq in 2006, costs around $4 billion, not including the $10 billion the Navy spent on research and development for the class, according to the Congressional Research Service. The sailing branch was originally slated to buy as many as 32 of the new ships, but ultimately cut the planned production run to just three owing to the high per-vessel cost.

Arguably the centerpiece of the ships’ design is the Advanced Gun System, a unique, 155-millimeter-diameter cannon that can shoot GPS-guided shells as far as 60 miles. Each Zumwalt-class ship has two AGSs along with vertical launchers for at least 80 missiles.

The idea was that the Zumwalts would be able to sail close to enemy-held beaches and bombard defenses with smart shells, clearing the way for US Marines to storm ashore.

But as the number of ships in the class shrank, so too did the number of shells the Navy needed to arm them. A Zumwalt can pack up to 600 rounds in its magazine. As production volume contracted, efficiencies dwindled and the per-shell cost rose to nearly $1 million.

In late 2016, the Navy admitted it couldn’t afford to spend $600 million per vessel to arm just three ships with a full ammo load. The service cancelled its planned first batch of 2,000 shells, and also suspended a $250 million effort to modify the AGSs to be compatible with different, cheaper rounds.

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