Navy's Hypersonic Missile Line Builds Half the Rounds It Needs
Summary
The Navy wants to arm three destroyers with a hypersonic missile that can hit distant, heavily defended targets in minutes. A Government Accountability Office audit released July 17, 2026 found the ship conversions running 24 months behind, the missile's own shipboard flight test pushed from 2025 to 2027, and the shared Army-Navy production line capable of building only 6 to 7 rounds a year against the 12 it needs -- while the Pentagon plans to spend more than $50 billion across both services with no single strategy coordinating how.
A ship 94% built, a missile line running slow
USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), the lead ship, was 94% complete as of January 2026⧉ but still behind schedule because of unplanned work. In August 2025, the Navy modified its modernization contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries to add 230,000 labor hours -- at a cost of $20 million -- to address problems like cabling the contractor had to cut and remove for the missile launch tubes, and the first time the Navy has shut down and restarted the ship's complex electrical system. The Navy now expects to finish converting DDG 1000 in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026, 10 months later than the September 2025 target, and has raised its estimate⧉ to convert all three ships from $1.8 billion to at least $2 billion.
View data as table
| Earlier estimate | 1,800,000,000 | Before the past year's cost and schedule slippage |
|---|---|---|
| Current estimate | 2,000,000,000 | At least -- includes $20M in contract changes for unplanned work alone |
The flight test that keeps slipping
Testing has followed the same pattern. Missile-production and launcher software anomalies drove a two-year delay⧉ to CPS's planned flight tests aboard DDG 1000, pushing the Navy's land-based rapid-prototyping phase from a planned September 2024 finish to October 2025 -- a phase the program did complete, with a successful cold-gas launch test in April 2025. But the ship-based test that matters for actually fielding the weapon was separately pushed back: the Navy told it originally planned to begin flight testing CPS aboard DDG 1000 in 2025; that target was revised in May 2024 to the third quarter of fiscal year 2027, and as of January 2026 the program was still about 10% behind even that revised schedule, though it still expects to hit 2027.
A line built for 12 rounds a year, delivering 6 to 7
The Army and Navy field the identical missile body off one shared production line at Lockheed Martin and Dynetics facilities in Huntsville and Courtland, Alabama -- and that line is running well short⧉ of what both services need. found the facility currently capable of a maximum of six to seven rounds a year, against the 12 rounds a year the program needs to stabilize production and hit its cost and schedule targets. Part of the shortfall is workforce, not just equipment: Navy and Army officials told the missile's work instructions are written as engineering specifications too complex for the average worker -- many of them recent high-school or vocational-school graduates -- to follow, and that it takes about a year before a new hire can work independently. The contractor recently grew its manufacturing headcount from about 60 to 80 workers, but under the existing contract, the government's own oversight role is limited to assessing output rather than directing how the contractor fixes its process.
View data as table
| Current maximum output | 7 | 6 to 7 rounds a year, per GAO |
|---|---|---|
| Production goal | 12 | The rate GAO says is necessary to stabilize production |
The bill is growing while the missile count shrinks
CPS's own price tag has moved the same direction as its schedule. In fiscal year 2020, early in development, the Navy estimated the missile program would cost about $31 billion in total lifecycle costs to deliver 262 missiles; by 2024⧉, that estimate had grown roughly 30% to $41 billion -- for 224 missiles, 38 fewer than planned. That $41 billion covers the Navy's full cost to field CPS on both DDG 1000 and Virginia-class submarines; the Army separately plans to spend more than $10 billion on its own 48 missiles and ground equipment. Per-missile, the movement is just as steep: the Navy's original 2021 planning figure was nearly $50 million a missile; as of April 2026, put the actual unit-cost estimate at $63 million to $71 million, averaging about $67 million -- roughly a third more than planned, with the final number still dependent on stable annual funding and the contractor's production efficiency.
View data as table
| FY2020 estimate -- 262 missiles | 31,000,000,000 | Early in the rapid-prototyping phase |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 estimate -- 224 missiles | 41,000,000,000 | About 30% more money, 38 fewer missiles |
$50 billion, two services, no shared plan
's central finding is less about any single cost or schedule slip than about how is managing all of them together: the Navy and Army are collectively planning to invest more than $50 billion⧉ to deliver CPS capability, but the Navy is largely making its investment decisions program-by-program rather than from a portfolio-wide view. When the Army paid about $6 million in fiscal year 2025 for a consultant to diagnose the shared production line and recommend fixes to reach the 12-missile goal, Navy officials told in January 2026 that while the study confirmed problems they already knew about, they "did not necessarily embrace its overall findings" -- and instead sent their own teams to the contractor's facility. recommended 's acquisition chief, working with the Navy and Army secretaries, build a comprehensive strategy to coordinate CPS investment decisions across every program involved. concurred.
- The production line both services depend on is running at roughly half capacity. Lockheed Martin's shared missile-body facility can currently build 6 to 7 CPS rounds a year against the 12 says the program needs -- a shortfall ties partly to work instructions too complex for the workforce building them.
- Every cost line checked moved the same direction. DDG 1000 conversion costs grew from $1.8 billion toward $2 billion-plus; CPS's total lifecycle estimate grew about 30% to $41 billion for fewer missiles; and the per-missile cost estimate rose roughly a third, from a planned ~$50 million to an average ~$67 million.
- is spending $50 billion-plus across two services with no portfolio-wide strategy governing it, found -- the Navy manages CPS investment decisions program-by-program, and when the Army funded outside diagnosis of the shared production bottleneck, the Navy didn't fully embrace the results. concurred with 's recommendation to build a coordinating strategy; no completion date is attached.
This piece keeps two Navy cost figures separate on purpose: the roughly $2 billion estimate to physically convert the three DDG 1000 hulls to carry CPS launch systems, and CPS's own $41 billion total lifecycle estimate to develop, produce, and field the missile itself across DDG 1000 and Virginia-class submarines -- the report treats them as distinct budget lines, and this piece does not add them together. The $50-billion-plus cross-program figure is 's own stated total across CPS, Virginia-class integration, the Army's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, and other programs "among others"; this piece's cross-check summing the Navy's $41 billion and the Army's $10-billion-plus figures ($51 billion) is offered only as an internal-consistency check against that total, not a substitute for it. The 6-to-7-rounds-a-year production figure is 's own reported range as of the audit, not a single precise count.
Sources(1) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Navy Ship Modernization: DOD Needs Comprehensive Strategy to Field Hypersonic Missile Capability (2026-07-17) — -26-107974, a report to the House Armed Services Committee examining the status of the Navy's DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer modernization to host the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic missile, and the extent to which has a comprehensive strategy for fielding CPS capability across the Navy and Army. The sole evidentiary basis for this piece's figures: the 24-month schedule slip and 94%-complete status (Highlights), the ship-modernization (BYMP) cost and schedule growth (p. 10) and its unplanned-work driver (p. 12), the CPS lifecycle cost and unit-cost estimates (pp. 13-14), the flight-test delay history (pp. 14-15), the missile production shortfall and its labor-related causes (pp. 17-18), and the fragmented, $50-billion cross-program investment picture 's recommendation addresses (p. 19). gao.gov · original document
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
The Navy wants three Zumwalt-class destroyers armed with a hypersonic missile that flies at least five times the speed of sound on a flight path hard to predict or intercept. A Government Accountability Office audit released July 17, 2026⧉ found the Navy 24 months behind schedule modernizing those three ships to carry the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missile, and found , across the Navy and Army together, with no comprehensive strategy for the more than $50 billion both services are spending to field it.