Zumwalt tackles surface warfare basics in first operational employment

The first of the three Zumwalts built, the USS Zumwalt, cost $4.4 billion, making it the Navy's costliest destroyer at the time. The ship cost twice as much as some of the Navy's most powerful ships, its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, according to the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The stealth destroyer Zumwalt has returned from three months of operations in the Western Pacific, achieving a number of firsts for the new class of ship even as its primary payload — a hypersonic missile — remains under development. . .