A favourable assessment of Zumwalt's hull and power system

Was the Zumwalt class itself a bad design?

The favourable assessment concerns the hull, power and crew-support systems; the criticism centres on attaching weapons programmes that did not deliver the intended capability.

The favourable assessment of Zumwalt rests on its hull, electrical power, crew support, and room for future systems. The proposed alternative armament would replace part of the Advanced Gun System installation with Mark 41 vertical launch cells and a conventional gun. Follow-on hulls could then carry an air-defence capability comparable to Flight III Burke requirements. This was a suggested alternative, not a completed conversion. The criticism concerns the decision to tie the class to weapons expected to mature over the following decades, allowing payload failures to discredit a promising platform.