The second Zumwalt lesson concerns the accumulation of new design choices rather than the railgun alone. The critique asks why the class needed peripheral vertical-launch cells when a somewhat larger hull could have retained a more conventional missile arrangement or divided air-defense and strike weapons between different cell groups. The destroyers are not treated as useless; the objection is that the program attached too many novel ideas to one platform. The railgun's power problem is compared with electromagnetic aircraft launch systems, which work aboard ships possessing very large or nuclear power plants. Conventional choices in one part of a warship can leave room to mature revolutionary technology elsewhere.
Notable Point · 27:44-29:50
Zumwalt design overreach reaches the peripheral VLS arrangement
A critique of Zumwalt's peripheral launch cells shows how insisting that every feature be novel can turn an interesting destroyer into a perceived failure.