The Importance of Being Prepared
Lockheed Martin Delivers 75th Aegis Weapons System

By GORDON I. PETERSON
Senior Editor

On the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it is worth noting several events linked to the horror of that day.

Shortly after three of the four passenger aircraft hijacked on 9/11 hit their intended targets, ships of the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific fleets were pressed into action to defend the U.S. homeland. Aircraft carrier battle groups and Aegis guided-missile cruisers and destroyers quickly deployed along the East, West, and Gulf Coasts, and to the waters off Hawaii and Guam, to monitor U.S. airspace and protect against the possibility of additional attacks.

The Aegis weapons system, developed at the height of the Cold War, is now deployed on 63 U.S. Navy Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided-missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers to counter 21st-century threats to U.S. security. Today's Aegis system--based on the most powerful radar in the world, the SPY-1D(V)--is eight times more capable than the original, and it is produced at one-third the cost of the Aegis radar of three decades ago.

In January 2002, and again in June, the Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie launched a Standard missile and guided it to a successful intercept and destruction of an exoatmospheric target missile over the Pacific Ocean--demonstrating the Aegis system's capability to detect, track, and destroy tactical ballistic missiles.

The significance of the Lake Erie's historic achievement was not lost on the participants in a 31 July ceremony at Lockheed Martin's Moorestown, N.J., facility celebrating the delivery to the Navy of the 75th Aegis system--destined for installation on the guided-missile destroyer Momsen (DDG 92). The Momsen and its space-age weapons system will likely see service for another 30 years following the ship's commissioning in 2004.

"Each and every system upgrade takes Aegis to a higher level of performance," said Fred P. Moosally, vice president of Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems­Surface Systems. "It is the undisputed superior weapons system in the world." Mitchell B. Waldman, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy (ships), noted that the Aegis system pioneered "spiral development" before that acquisition strategy became "cool" in the Department of Defense.

Rear Adm. William W. Cobb Jr., the program executive officer for theater surface combatants--who accepted the Momsen's Aegis system from Lockheed Martin for the Navy--observed that, "When you are the commanding officer of a ship, you always want to know where the threat is, especially the air threat.

"The nice thing about Aegis," Cobb commented, "is that it works every time--the first time."

Retired Rear Adm. Wayne Meyer--known as the "Father of Aegis" for his pioneering work as the Navy's Aegis program manager for 13 years following his appointment to that position in 1970--also spoke to the 1,400 guests and company employees at the Moorestown ceremony in July. Commenting on the manner in which the Navy's Aegis fleet was sortied on 9/11, Meyer noted that no senior officials at the national level of government asked any questions. "It was their belief that whatever came, we were prepared to handle it," he said.

Looking further ahead into the 21st century, the U.S. intelligence community has identified a growing number of nations--including some potentially hostile to the United States--that are seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them (via cruise or, more likely, ballistic missiles). The question in the minds of many is not if, but when. Meyer and other visionaries do not wish to jeopardize U.S. security on an imperfect ability to predict the future.

In the minds of those most closely associated with the Aegis weapons system--an already deployed system with virtually unlimited potential for continued evolutionary development--the Navy's Aegis fleet will be prepared for the future, whatever it might bring. That fleet is not in danger, Meyer believes, unless the nation decides not to provide the funding needed to build it. That risk also is real--because, as Meyer also pointed out, "We are in danger--a state of siege; we are going to be consumed by imaginary and virtual approaches."

Meyer sees no real missile-defense alternatives to Aegis on the horizon. And, he said, commenting on the present and even greater future capabilities of the system, "You ain't seen nothing yet." *