"It was a costly blunder but the Navy could take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some utility out of them by making them into a hypersonic platform," said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.
Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added maneuverability making them harder to shoot down.
One of the U.S. programs in development and planned for the Zumwalt is '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 U.S. 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 U.S. military to hasten their production.
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