When the first cruisers of the U.S. Navy’s Ticonderoga class entered service in the early 1980s they ranked as the world’s most capable surface combatants. These 9,500-ton warships were fitted with advanced antiaircraft, antiship, and antisubmarine weapons. Subsequently, the second, upgraded “flight” of 22 ships (CG-52 to -73)—fitted with vertical-launch missile cells—provided additional antiship and impressive land-attack capabilities with the Tomahawk cruise missile.
The Aegis weapons control and AN/SPY-1 radar system in the Ticonderoga class gave these ships the most advanced air/cruise missile defense system afloat—and probably ashore. Then, to demonstrate that even a good thing could be improved, the Aegis/SPY-1 system was further enhanced to provide a ballistic-missile defense (BMD) capability. As of late 2013, six Ticonderoga-class cruisers—as well as 22 Aegis destroyers—have BMD upgrades.
Of these ships, the USS Lake Erie (CG-70) stands out as the first among many as the test ship for the Aegis BMD system—and for having successfully shot down an in-orbit satellite. Now, after having served as the Aegis BMD test ship, the Lake Erie is returning to regular Fleet operations.
Following her BMD modifications in the early 1990s, the Lake Erie began live-firing of intercept missiles in January 2002. The ship gained international attention when, on 20 February 2008, a Standard SM-3 missile was launched to destroy an errant satellite traveling at 17,000 miles per hour and carrying 1,000 pounds of highly dangerous hydrazine rocket fuel. The “spy satellite”—designated USA 193—had malfunctioned at launch. It weighed an estimated 5,000 pounds and, reportedly, was some 15 feet long and 8 feet in diameter; with its radar antennas extended it was about the size of a basketball court. The satellite had been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on 14 December 2006, atop a Delta II rocket. It immediately malfunctioned.
The Lake Erie was 420 miles northwest of Hawaii at the time of the intercept, which occurred at an altitude of 150 miles. While the Aegis BMD system was designed to destroy incoming targets, the satellite was in a decaying orbit, a very different and complex intercept problem. The successful intercept was dubbed Operation Burnt Frost.
(This is believed to have been the second time that a missile launched from the surface of the Earth had shot down an object in space. The first such event apparently occurred in January 2007, when the Chinese employed an SC-19 ballistic missile to fire directly at and destroy an outdated Feng-Yun-1C weather satellite in orbit 527 miles above the Earth.)
Following the satellite kill, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, then-Commander, U.S. Pacific Command, presented the Lake Erie with the Meritorious Unit Commendation as well as nine individual awards to crewmen for their successful accomplishment of Operation Burnt Frost. In addition, the ship received an award for meeting or exceeding the Pacific Fleet’s retention goals for the year. The Lake Erie exceeded all such goals for three out of four quarters in 2007 and paid out almost $320,000 in selective reenlistment bonuses; for Fiscal Year 2008 the Lake Erie had more than 91 percent zone “A” reenlistments and paid out nearly $600,000 in reenlistment bonuses. She was a “happy ship.”
Following the satellite intercept, the Lake Erie continued to serve as the nation’s BMD test ship, conducting at-sea system tests, helping to develop new BMD doctrine and tactics, and training personnel in BMD operations. One notable aspect of the ship’s work has been linking U.S. Navy fire-control data with Aegis destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The lessons learned from this experience, conducted on multiple occasions with Japanese Aegis ships, are directly applicable to the several European navies that are acquiring Aegis/SPY-1 ships, as well as for target and fire-control data exchange for the four U.S. Aegis destroyers—the USS Carney (DDG-64), Ross (DDG-71), Donald Cook (DDG-75), and Porter (DDG-78)—being assigned to operate in the Mediterranean in the BMD role. (The four destroyers are being based at Rota, Spain, the site of a U.S Polaris submarine operating base until 1979.)
This “linkage” also is important for the land-based—“Aegis Ashore”—installation being built in southern Romania and in Poland as part pf the Phased Adaptive BMD strategy. Those Standard SM-3 missile sites, linked to a BMD radar in Turkey and to a command-and-control center in Germany, with the four Aegis destroyers in the Mediterranean, can provide defense for Western Europe against possible missile attacks from Iran.
The Aegis Ashore sites are scheduled to become operational in Romania by 2015 and in Poland by 2018. They will be manned primarily by U.S. Navy personnel, undoubtedly many of them having been trained on board the Lake Erie.
The long list of challenging BMD missile shots by the Lake Erie reveals a high rate of success. On 18 September, the ship succeeded, on the first attempt, to engage a sophisticated, separating short-range ballistic missile target with two SM-3 Block IB missiles that were launched and guided almost simultaneously to a successful intercept. Launching two missiles ensured an almost perfect probability of “kill.”
The latest Lake Erie BMD test occurred on 4 October 2013, when the ship launched a single SM-3 Block IB missile that shot down a short-range ballistic-missile target outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. This was a kinetic kill, with the SM-3 warhead destroying the target by ramming it.
The target missiles are launched from the Barking Sands, Kauai (Hawaii), site of the Pacific Missile Range. The October shot was the 28th successful intercept in 34 flight-test attempts for the Aegis/SPY-1 BMD system since 2002. Of course, most of the unsuccessful attempts still provided valuable test data.
The final Lake Erie intercept test in the current series is scheduled for early 2014. In that effort the ship will fire multiple missiles at multiple incoming targets. (The exact numbers had not been released at press time.) If that test succeeds, the Aegis BMD 4.0.2 update operational test and evaluation phase will have been completed, and the system will be ready for installation on ships—and ashore. And the Lake Erie, which retained all of her combatant capabilities while serving as the Aegis BMD test ship, will return to a regular Fleet deployment schedule.
The Lake Erie’s impressive intercept success rate for the sea-based BMD program, coupled with its selection for installation ashore in Romania and Poland, in the opinion of this columnist ranks the Aegis/SPY-1 system as the world’s most effective and flexible missile defense system. As more nations acquire medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, the Aegis BMD capability will have increasing strategic importance, both afloat and ashore. The Lake Erie has been a key participant in this BMD evolution and revolution.