In May, the official opening of the
Aegis Ashore site at Deveselu made headlines following an immediate — and negative — reaction from Russia. In The New York Times, Dmitri S. Pes- kov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, was quoted saying, “We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM [anti-bal- listic missile] system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation.” Aegis Ashore leverages the suc-
cess of the Aegis Weapon System and Standard Missile family in conduct- ing ballistic missile defense (BMD). It’s integrated into the BMD archi- tecture in Europe, which includes four Navy BMD-capable destroyers based in Spain, the Army’s TPY-2 early warning radar in Turkey, other
52 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2016
BMD systems such as Patriot and THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense), and the Air Force’s 603rd Air and Space Operations Cen- ter in Ramstein, Germany. The Aegis deckhouse structure
houses an octagonal SPY-1 radar array and combat information center, just like the superstructure on a guided missile destroyer. In fact, it has the lat- est Lockheed Martin Aegis “baseline” as well as the newest Raytheon SM-3 IB missile and BAE System Mk 41 ver- tical launch system fitted aboard USS John Finn (DDG-113), which currently is under construction.
Ship to shore Aegis first went to sea in 1983 aboard USS Ticonderoga (CG-47), lead ship of a class of 27 guided-
Aegis got its start as a ship-based sys- tem aboard guided- missile destroyers such as USS Hopper (DDG-70).
missile cruisers. In 1991, the first Aegis guided-missile destroyer, USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), joined the fleet. Since then, 62 guided missile destroyers have been commissioned, with more ships on the way, and Aegis combatants also serve in the navies of Australia, Japan, Norway, South Korea, and Spain. There are quite a few similarities
between the shore- and ship-based systems — not only because replicat-
PHOTO: USN
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