The ships — two cruisers and one destroyer — will all be from the Atlantic Fleet, Lisa Callahan, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Maritime Ballistic Missile Defense programs, told reporters during a teleconference about Lockheed’s BMD programs.The article goes on to note that all 18 of the existing AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense ships will receive the upgrade from 3.6.0 to 3.6.1 by June, at least according to John Holly, Lockheed’s vice president of Space Systems company. If that is true, that means the MDA and Navy are well ahead of the BMD roll out outline we ve used in previous discussions regarding the AEGIS BMD rollout on the blog.
Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) — which oversees all Pentagon BMD programs — would not confirm that three ships have been selected, but acknowledged that “MDA and the Navy are discussing how to do two to four additional ships as soon as possible.”
The Navy would make no official comment on the situation. But one source said “two to four” more ships would receive the upgrade. Pending notifications to Congress, an announcement might come as soon as next week, the source said.
The current 18 warships configured for AEGIS BMD are 15 destroyers and 3 cruisers. The destroyers are USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53), USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54), USS Stout (DDG 55), USS John S. McCain (DDG 56), USS Russell (DDG 59), USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62), USS Stethem (DDG 63), USS Benfold (DDG 65), USS Milius (DDG 69), USS Hopper (DDG 70), USS Decatur (DDG 73), USS Higgins (DDG 76), and USS O’Kane (DDG 77). The three cruisers are USS Shiloh (CG 67), USS Lake Erie (CG 70), and USS Port Royal (CG 73).
Only the USS Stout (DDG 55) and USS Ramage (DDG 61) are in the Atlantic Fleet.
I don't know which destroyer(s) the Navy intends to upgrade in Norfolk, but if we were taking bets, I'd bet the two cruisers will be USS Anzio (CG 68) and USS Vella Gulf (CG 72), mostly because they are the two youngest cruisers in Norfolk.
I get asked a question a lot, why doesn't the Navy simply upgrade all the cruisers? What many people may not be aware of is that the Block III (CG52-CG55) and Block IV (CG56-CG58) Ticonderoga class cruisers cannot be upgraded to support AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense without an enormously expensive hardware upgrade. Why? Because AEGIS BMD only works with the AN/SPY-1B radar on Block V (CG59-CG73), and doesn't work with the AN/SPY-1A on the earlier versions of the cruiser class.
Which btw, have you ever done the math? Why a requirement for only 7 DDG-1000s, that doesn't make any sense right? Actually it does, the long term thinking considered how 7 DDG-1000s can replace the 7 Ticonderoga class cruisers still in service with the AN/SPY-1A. Now you know the rest of the story...
Strategically speaking, what we are seeing here is the Navy developing a Mediterranean Sea squadron, with expected operations in the Black Sea as well. In the article Chris Cavas notes the Navy is concerned about the ballistic missile threat from Iran, and while the BMD development in the Pacific (with 16 of the current 18 ships with AEGIS BMD homeport in the Pacific) was originally developed to counter North Korea's developing capabilities, the need to develop capabilities in the Atlantic to quickly respond to a ballistic missile threat to Israel and Europe is an emerging requirement.
Adding 2 cruisers and another destroyer builds a 2 CG and minimum of 3 DDG BMD capability for the Atlantic Fleet as a quick response force into the Mediterranean Sea, and likely will form the foundation of a rotational deployment into the NATO squadron always operating there. I would not be surprised to see the Navy actually request 2 CGs and 2 DDGs for the Atlantic Fleet, because in reality AEGIS BMD works best when it is conducted with 2 BMD platforms, one for tracking and one for intercept with the expectation both ships can operate in either role, presumably in the case of Iran one ship in the Med and another in the Black Sea together guarding Israel and Europe from Iranian threat. The current BMD deployment in Europe has become an unpopular political strategy, so counting on a land based tracking capability may not be a capability the US Navy (or Congress) can count on, although in theory the Navy should be able to work with the tracking capability in Israel.
Naturally, I love AEGIS BMD, it removes the burden of spending political capital on land based BMD in foreign countries, and it is flexible enough to be deployed rapidly to just about anywhere in the maritime domain. It is also the most mature ballistic missile defense system the US military fields today.
With the opposite perception of the land system globally, an example being with Japan who continues to integrate the AEGIS BMD system into their Navy (with other potential partners including Spain, the Dutch, the South Koreans among others), this is true international partnership program that builds political capital towards joint capabililities and cooperation.
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