I don't think the Zumwalt was ever meant to be a mass production ship. I think it was built the prove the concept of lower signature vessels. Notably it's too small and lightly armed to accomplish most Navy objectives. The stealth technology makes it hard to modify for specific objectives.

Basically, what are you going to do with a Zumwalt that you couldn't do with a submarine? Is it better at any of those tasks than a conventional destroyer?

>>I don't think the Zumwalt was ever meant to be a mass production ship

You think wrong.

Maybe I should have clarified that the Navy never considered it to be a real ship, for the aforementioned lack of a role in the fleet. Bath Iron Works probably wanted to build hundreds of them but that was little more than a hopeful fantasy on their part.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/09defense.html states that 10 "were originally planned" though the intro to the wikipedia article says that "the class was intended to take the place of battleships in meeting a congressional mandate for naval fire support," so I'm not going to dispute your clarification because I know that Congress sometimes forces the Navy to buy things the Navy does not want.