The U.S. Navy’s Aegis is the world’s most advanced air/missile defense system. Currently it is fitted in 22 U.S. cruisers and 64 destroyers, with more Aegis destroyers on the building ways. The system also is installed in several foreign warships.
Aegis owes some of its technology and concepts to a system that never was—the Typhon fleet air defense system. More than a half-century ago, in May 1957, the U.S. Navy began development of a radical new weapon system that was planned to replace the Talos, Terrier, and Tartar (3-T) surface-to-air missiles.
The Terrier was the world’s first operational shipboard surface-to-air missile, going to sea in 1955–56 in the converted heavy cruisers Boston (CAG-1) and Canberra (CAG-2). This was a medium-range missile, considered effective out to 20,000 yards and up to 40,000 feet. The Terrier was followed by the longer-range Talos and close-in Tartar missile systems, with the two CAG conversions followed by scores of conversions and new construction ships armed with the 3-T missiles.
The increasing threat from mass raids of Soviet bombers armed with stand-off antiship missiles led to work beginning almost immediately at several U.S. laboratories for a successor to the 3-T weapons. The new system was developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University and Westinghouse under the direction of the Bureau of Ordnance. It was named Typhon for the hundred-headed monster of Greek mythology.
Typhon was to have medium- and long-range missiles with planned ranges of 40 and 200 nautical miles, respectively.1 The missiles—with advanced warheads—would be linked to a new fire-control/radar system that could counter saturation air attacks and would be able to operate in a heavy electronic-jamming environment. The Typhon’s “critical element” was the AN/SPG-59 fire-control/radar system, a fixed, phased-array system that scanned electronically rather than rotating.2 It was similar in concept—albeit not technology—to the problem-plagued AN/SPS-32 and -33 “billboard” radars that were being fitted in the nuclear-powered cruiser Long Beach (CGN-9) and the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVAN-65).
Westinghouse was awarded a contract in December 1959 for a prototype of the Typhon radar. The C-band AN/SPG-59 would combine the functions of radar search, fire control, missile guidance, and target homing, greatly reducing reaction time as well as possible errors created by the transfer of data.
Designed by an APL team led by Dr. John Garrison, the AN/SPG-59 applied the properties of an optical Luenburg lens to radio frequencies. Within the ship there would be a Luenburg lens to serve as a phase generator for the radar signals of the transmitter array, and three Luenburg lenses for the receiving array. The fixed, circular antenna had 10,200 radiating elements. The system was to be capable of simultaneously tracking hundreds of targets and guiding missiles to 30 different targets.
There were two missiles in development for the Typhon program: the long-range SAM-N-8 (later designated RIM-50A) and the medium-range SAM-N-9 (later RIM-55A). The former, as large as the Talos, was to have both nuclear and conventional warheads.
After launch with a solid-propellant rocket booster, the long-range missile’s Bendix ramjet sustainer engine was to provide Mach 4 speed; the SAM-N-9 would dispense with the booster, thus the reduced range. Each missile would have a 150-pound high-explosive warhead; the W60 nuclear warhead was considered for the long-range missile. Guidance for both missiles was to be command with terminal radar homing on AN/SPG-59 radar beams reflected by the targets.3 By 1963, prototype Typhon missiles were being launched from shore sites.
A new class of 10,000- to 12,000-ton—or larger—nuclear-powered frigates (DLGNs) was planned to take Typhon to sea. Preliminary designs provided for one long-range Typhon missile launcher forward and two medium-range launchers aft. A scaled-down version of the AN/SPG-59 and the Typhon medium-range missile were contemplated for installation in smaller warships. The larger Typhon DLGNs would have 60 missiles (including ASROC antisubmarine rockets) for the long-range launcher and 40 missiles for each of the two medium-range launchers. Two 5-inch/54-caliber single gun mounts were included in the designs.
At the time, the Navy had only three nuclear-powered surface ships in commission: the Long Beach, Enterprise, and Terrier-armed frigate Bainbridge (DLGN-25) of 8,700 tons completed in 1962. The comparatively high costs of these ships and need for specialized training for their engineers made it questionable whether the Navy could afford a force of Typhon DLGNs. (The next nuclear surface ship, the Truxtun [DLGN-35], was authorized in fiscal year 1962 and completed in 1967; there was a seven-year interval until the next DLGN joined the fleet.)
Meanwhile, a partial AN/SPG-59 radar prototype was erected at the APL facility near Columbia, Maryland; that system contained a 100-element spherical receiving lens. A full prototype AN/SPG-59 was installed in the weapon trials ship Norton Sound (AVM-1, formerly AV-11) and at-sea testing began in June 1964. Although the AN/SPG-59 held great promise, historian Malcolm Muir wrote: “Nevertheless, this radar proved to be the downfall of Typhon. It was complex, heavy, and extremely expensive.”4 The protoype radars also had reliability problems and lost too much signal strength during processing.
Further, continuing problems with the 3-T missiles led Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth in November 1963 to request that Congress shift funds from the planned Typhon DLGNs to the “get well” program for the older missiles. At the same time, the recently formed Bureau of Naval Weapons—which had been created in 1959 by the merger of the Bureau of Aeronautics and Bureau of Ordnance—expressed concern about the potential performance of Typhon, especially its resistence to jamming.5 And, with cost estimates for Typhon increasing rapidly, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara canceled the program on 7 January 1964. (Testing of the AN/SPG-59 radar at sea in the Norton Sound continued into 1965; it was removed the following year.)
Another fleet air defense fire-control/radar system would have to be initiated to counter the growing threat of Soviet aircraft and antiship missiles—the Aegis.
1. See CDR Milton Gussow, USN (Ret.), “Typhon: A Weapon System Ahead of Its Time,” Naval Engineers Journal (July 1997), 543–62.
2. David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy (Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society, 1999), 379.
3. Ryan Crierie has catalogued the published material on the Typhon/AN/SPG-59 system on the Alternate Wars website at: www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Radar/AN/SPG-59.htm.
4. Malcolm Muir Jr., Black Shoes and Blue Water: Surface Warfare in the United States Navy, 1945–1975 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1996), 141.
5. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea, 380.