It's not a binary thing. But the main limit of the Zumwalts in missile defense is lacking the right radars and the combat management software. There's a kinda l

It's not a binary thing. But the main limit of the Zumwalts in missile defense is lacking the right radars and the combat management software. There's a kinda long history to all this, and it's a little muddled. My understanding of roughly what happened is originally a larger stealth cruiser design was going to handle missile defense, while the Zumwalts would handle strike. Then the cruiser project got canceled, so they started talking about adding the capabilities to the Zumwalts. That fell through when the development contract for the needed radar went to Raytheon (I don't fully understand why this killed it, seems to be something political?). What no one in the navy wants to say clearly and openly is: the Zumwalts, as well as the 2 LCS designs, are pretty much useless as built. They won't be used for more than training, development testing, and perhaps mine sweeping duties. Out of all 3 of those classes, the only fully capable ship anyone is talking about is a new, stretched version of the Freedom class LCS that tries to be a mini-frigate. And that's only getting talked about because foreign customers are interested. It's an incredible waste of taxpayers money.