US Navy building hypersonic hub in Hawaii
The U.S. Navy is re-centering a large portion of its time-sensitive strike force in the Pacific. The service is moving hypersonic-armed ships and submarines to Hawaii in a modernization push intended to shave days off transit times to contested waters near China and Taiwan.
The step signals a major operational bet on hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) weapons and the Zumwalt-class destroyers that will carry them — but it also raises questions about numbers, targets and the evolving countermeasures that could blunt the advantage.
Hypersonics’ home in Hawaii
The Navy’s plan includes homeporting just about every ship in the fleet that can shoot a hypersonic missile in Hawaii by 2030. That includes all three Zumwalt-class destroyers and eventually some Virginia-class attack submarines. The move comes as tensions in the Indo-Pacific are on the rise, and is seen as a deterrent to China’s plan to reunify with Taiwan.
By concentrating the service’s most time-sensitive strike assets at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, they can reach the western Pacific faster. Construction and electrical upgrades already underway at multiple Pearl Harbor wharves and dry docks are being driven by the need to berth, power and maintain the Zumwalt hulls and an influx of Virginia-class attack submarines, including variants fitted with the Virginia Payload Module (VPM). That upgrade allows the submarines to shoot additional Tomahawk cruise missiles, or up to 12 CPS weapons.
According to reporting by Naval News and Navy planning documents, upgrades are scheduled in phases, with much of the shipyard and wharf work set to be finished by mid-2028 and further force adjustments through 2030.
What the Zumwalt reboot actually brings
The Zumwalt-class of destroyer began life as an experimental, stealthy surface combatant with radical design features. Designed for operation in littoral environments, the Zumwalts feature tumblehome hulls, composite structures and huge electrical generation capacity intended to power future directed-energy weapon systems — think lasers.
The program’s original Advanced Gun System proved prohibitively expensive and the ammunition never became affordable at scale, shrinking procurement numbers to just three hulls.
The ships were repurposed rather than scrapped. Their large internal volume, electrical generation and stealth make the Zumwalts uniquely suitable to host new strike and defensive systems. The class’s Mk-57 Peripheral Vertical Launch System cells are larger than the Navy’s standard Mk-41 and can accommodate larger weapons. Retooling and modernization work on the class is ongoing to integrate CPS, new signals-intelligence suites, datalinks and SM-6 area air-defense capability.
Still a numbers game
Retired Rear Admiral and former congressman Joe Sestak, who once commanded the George Washington Carrier Strike Group, praised the move but cautioned about limited munition counts.
“I think it’s a good step. I think it is. Because these hypersonic missiles — [no nation has] a defense against them,” he said. “Not just because of their speed, up to Mach 22 according to the Russian’s version, but also the maneuverability of the glide ones.”
Sestak said while the weapons are amazing because of their combination of speed and maneuverability — attributes that make interception difficult — he also warned about the arithmetic of war. He’s glad to see the Navy sending the hypersonic-armed Zumwalts to Hawaii. However, since each boat can only carry 12 hypersonics apiece, that isn’t exactly going to stop an invasion force should China launch one.
“If I was the commander of the seventh fleet, yes, I would like to have a couple hundred of those, because surely you are going to have miscues,” Sestak said. “Surely the network is going to go down. And it might only go down in one place, but not the other, so redundancy of this would be critical.”
With three Zumwalts each carrying roughly a dozen CPS missiles, the surface component contributes just 36 hypersonic rounds total. Add the planned shift of two to three Virginia-class submarines with VPM cells — each VPM-equipped Virginia can carry up to 12 CPS missiles — and Pearl Harbor could host at least five CPS-armed ships and submarines by 2030. That still leaves total counts modest compared with the scale of potential maritime or amphibious operations.
When would the US use hypersonics?
Sestak said there’s basically two scenarios where he sees the use of CPS as an option: if China tries to put a blockade around Taiwan, or if China launches an outright amphibious invasion with dozens — maybe hundreds — of smaller vessels. In either event, the U.S. will have a limited supply of the first-strike hypersonics, so picking the right targets will be a key to victory.
Sestak argued that strategic calculus will matter. Commanders will need to choose whether to strike forward logistics such as ports launching swarms of landing craft, or the larger surface combatants that form the protective shield around an invasion force.
“Because really, the strategic [targets] to take out will be those that potentially could be on the homeland of China,” Sestak said. “If they’re going after Taiwan, that makes us the first to strike the other nation. So, the decision is going to have to be made: do you take out some of those strategic assets? Like the ports from whence the small LCM-like vessels are coming? You’re not going to be able to pick them all off with 36 of these. So do you take that port? Or do you aim it on the major surface combatants?”
Regardless of the targets, Sestak said they won’t have the ability to defend against a hypersonic strike. For that matter, the U.S. doesn’t either, at least not right now.
The defense side: Where are the lasers?
Currently, there isn’t a widely-deployed, effective defense against hypersonic weapons. That cat-and-mouse game between missiles and missile defense could be evening out soon, though.
Japan is making strides in developing a ship-mounted electromagnetic railgun. Israeli firm Rafael said its Iron Beam laser system is ready for wider deployment, and it is collaborating with Lockheed Martin on a maritime variant. The Zumwalts — designed to produce ample electrical power — are logical platforms to host directed-energy defenses as well as hypersonic offense, creating a potent “one-two punch” of long-range strike and localized missile defense, Sestak noted.
“To have that missile defense capability that truly can handle anything — ballistics or hypersonics — that would be an awesome capability to bring about along with the hypersonics,” Sestak said.
By incorporating the two advanced systems onto a single ship, the retired naval officer said, the Zumwalts wouldn’t just be capable of defending themselves, “but for surety that carrier battle group as well.”
The future of hypersonic defense may be brighter than it was just a year ago, but directed-energy and railgun defenses are still developmental. Making them reliably effective against maneuvering hypersonic vehicles — particularly in the complex environment of the western Pacific — will take time.
What it all means
Pearl Harbor’s transformation into a forward hub for the Navy’s most time-sensitive strike capability reflects a strategic choice: shorten timelines to the western Pacific and rely on a mix of stealthy surface platforms and upgraded submarines armed with a small number of very powerful, hard-to-intercept weapons.
For now, the move increases the Navy’s reach and survivability in a crisis, and it signals to potential adversaries Washington intends to contest gray zone coercion and large-scale force projection in the Indo-Pacific. But the limitations are obvious: hypersonic stocks are finite, integration across platforms and networks is complex and countermeasures are emerging. As Sestak and Navy planning documents make clear, the deployment is both an upgrade in capability and a working bet on doctrine, logistics and the future battlefield.
Whether the concentrated force of Zumwalts and VPM-equipped Virginias in Hawaii will “make China think twice” depends not only on speed and stealth, but on how commanders choose targets, how well networks hold up under fire and how quickly both sides field effective defenses to counter the next generation of missiles.
The post US Navy building hypersonic hub in Hawaii appeared first on Straight Arrow News.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
