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US Navy To Double Aegis Missile Defense Fleet
by the end of 2006, the U.S. Navy will have a total of six warships capable of tracking and shooting down ballistic missiles, the Navy Times reported Friday. Three cruisers -- the USS Shiloh, USS Lake Erie and USS Port Royal -- already have the capability to track ballistic missiles with upgraded Aegis radar. They also have the ability to hit a ballistic missile with an SM-3 missile, shot out of standard Navy vertical launch system tubes, the report said.By the end of December, the destroyers USS Stethem, USS Decatur and USS Curtis Wilbur will also have ballistic-missile defense capability, Lt. Tommy Crosby, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon, told the Navy Times. Crosby told the newspaper that all three destroyers are getting the upgrade to shoot SM-3 missiles from their VLS tubes, which requires a brief yard period. The USS Decatur also needs the long-range surveillance and tracking software update. Crosby said the upgrades did not affect maintenance schedules and that the new capabilities should not adjust deployment schedules, either. "We're not taking these ships out of rotation to do this," he said. Asked if the ships will take turns patroling off the coast of North Korea, he told the Navy Times, "They patrol the Pacific." The USS Lake Erie has been used in agreement with the Missile Defense Agency to test seaborne anti-ballistic missile systems. Eventually, the U.S. Department of Defense wants 18 cruisers and destroyers with the missile-defense capability. During a test June 22 off Hawaii, an SM-3 launched from the cruiser Shiloh hit a target warhead 100 miles above Earth. That intercept was the seventh successful hit out of eight tries in ship-borne tests, the Navy Times said. Posted by: 3dc 2006-08-23 |
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