High-tech US stealth ship breaks down in Panama Canal

America's newest warship, the super high-tech USS Zumwalt, broke down in the Panama Canal just a few weeks after the vessel was commissioned, the Navy and reports said Tuesday.

The guided missile destroyer needed to be towed Monday to a nearby former US naval station after suffering an "engineering casualty," the US Naval Institute's news site reported.

The Zumwalt was en route from Baltimore, where it was commissioned on 15 October, to San Diego.

Navy spokesman Commander Ryan Perry said in a statement that "the timeline for repairs is being determined now."

"The schedule for the ship will remain flexible to enable testing and evaluation in order to ensure the ship's safe transit to her new homeport in San Diego," Perry said.

An unnamed defence official told USNI News that repairs to the Zumwalt could take up to 10 days.

The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt’s port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, he said.

The AIMs are the electrical motors that are driven by the ship’s gas turbines and in turn electrically power the ship’s systems and drive the shafts.

The $4.3 billion Zumwalt is the first in a new line of revolutionary guided missile destroyers.

The ship is roughly 180 meters long and weighs nearly 15,000 tonnes, making it the largest destroyer in the US fleet, and its angular, unconventional shape to make it difficult to detect with radar.