It's the focus on a single mission at the expense of all else that's probably my biggest problem with the class.
Do you know the story behind why it became SO specialized? My first thought is that there must have been a drastic capability shortfall to come up with such a drastic 'solution'; which then leads me to wonder what would have happened if there wasn't such a drastic capability shortfall?
The end of the Cold War prompted very dramatic rethinks of what the US Navy was supposed to do. No more escorting REFORGER convoys across the Atlantic. No more trying to penetrate Soviet submarine bastions. There was still expeditionary strike, and that quickly assumed even more importance. Based on Desert Storm, and various other small brushfire wars throughout the 1980s, the US Navy conclusion was that they needed to refocus towards littoral warfare and support of amphibious assaults inland. They also needed to start thinking about replacing the Spruance-class destroyers, which would reach the end of their service lives in rapid succession in the 2010s at the latest.
Thus the Zumwalt class, a dual-role ASW and land attack large littoral vessel, and one of a wide variety of concepts studied. It would provide deep strike inland with missiles, fire support from a standoff distance, and ASW cover for amphibious task forces near the shore. For survivability purposes it needed maximal stealth, hence the composite deckhouse and tumblehome hull, and enhanced self-defense AAW capabilites, hence the dual-band radar. There was also a desire to reduce manning numbers in the wake of the Peace Dividend.
Ironically, it was that focus on self-defense AAW only, which IMO was a necessary cost-reduction measure, that did the class in. In the littoral mission, shore-based antiship firepower, particularly the sensor nets needed to effectively utilize maximal missile range, had advanced and proliferated by the mid-2000s, with the Houthi missile attacks on USS Mason back in 2016 a good example of what the Navy was worrying about. The US Navy promptly rethought its amphibious doctrine for even more standoff range, and that meant the AGS suddenly couldn't provide timely fire support anymore - a problem, by the way, the Mark 71 would've shared. Worse, this was around when the Chinese naval buildup began in earnest, at which point the US Navy suddenly found itself with a geopolitical rival cranking out antiship missiles and AAW combatants with AESA radars like they were going out of style. Now they needed more AAW ships ASAP, which meant restarting Burke production, and which meant they did not want the AAW-light Zumwalts clogging up the building queue and eating up the shipbuilding budget.
Ironically,
now the US Navy has a requirement for the Zumwalts again as the core of surface action groups, which are making a return as part of the distributed lethality doctrine. But with DDG-Next underway, the ship has sailed for restarting Zumwalt production.
