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Susan Collins says at $800,000 a Shell, Zumwalt’s Ammo is Too Pricey

Mark Vogelzang
/
Maine Public
The USS Zumwalt in September.

At $800,000 a shell, the ammunition for the new cannon on the Bath-built USS Zumwalt is just unaffordable, but one of the reasons for building the ship is that cannon.

Navy contractors say each long-range shell for the cannon on the USS Zumwalt built at Bath Iron Works will cost more than some guided missiles, some $800,000 each. Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says the Navy needs to work with contractors to reduce the price of the shell, designed to hit targets up to 80 miles inland.

“Part of the purpose for the Zumwalt and the other DDG-1000s was to have this long-range land attack capacity,” she says.

Collins says when the Navy went from 32 ships to just 3, the per-unit cost of the special shells went way up. And she says at $880,000 a shell, the weapon is too expensive to use and the Navy must work with contractors to get the price down to an affordable level.

“The increase in the cost is outrageous, despite the fact that the quantities have decreased so much. But, we do need to buy this new capability,” she says.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.