The mystery is not that the Zumwalt was canceled. The mystery is why it took so long for it to be canceled. Do you agree with this assessment?

Today, the United States has the most powerful and most combat-ready naval forces in the world. However, the American Navy also has "dark" sides. One of them is the latest Zumwalt type destroyers. In December 2018, the USS Zumwalt was required to interrupt the tests and return to the shipyards in Maine. As the cause, a ship breakdown was called. There have been malfunctions in equipment that protects sensitive electrical equipment from unwanted power fluctuations. But in summer 2018 it became known that the second destroyer of the Zumwalt type - "Michael Monsoor" - needed to replace one of the turbines due to the fact that during the acceptance tests of the ship its blades were damaged.

In general, such problems cannot be called "critical" for the program. In one form or another, they accompany any model of new military equipment, and even more so - revolutionary one. Zumwalt is a truly revolutionary ship. Sooner or later, the difficulties described above are likely to be resolved. However, the destroyer risks entering the history of the fleet as a symbol of complete failure.

Of course, political changes cannot be unequivocally attributed to the shortcomings of a particular type of military equipment. However, in this case, it was the strengthening of the US global role that had a decisive effect. One should recall that the new destroyer appeared in the framework of the SC-21 (Surface Combatant for the 21st century) program, which implied the delivery of a number of new "invisible" surface ships to the fleet. This also included the promising cruiser CG (X), which was completely abandoned. What is most surprising is that such a large-scale program appeared in 1994, after the Cold War, and it was conceived as an instrument of new politics. In simple terms, ideally the SC-21 was supposed to be economical, but did not become it.

The SC-21 program did not fit into the new policy of the Americans, since the United States first overestimated external threats, and then underestimated them. Perhaps, if it appeared now, when the Chinese began to sharply strengthen their naval forces, the fate of the program would be different.