On October 27th, 2004, the United States put forth the first operational Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) capability on its Ships with the Aegis BMD systems. It remains the best missile defense platform in the world today and is globally deployed on 38 Ships and 1 Land Site in Europe. 14 years later, Aegis BMD continues to evolve at all levels of missile defense capabilities from soon to be ICBM Interceptors to Hypersonic Interceptors providing multiple layers of active defense, from ballistic missiles in space all the way down to close range air defense that can be deployed around the world.
“If you look at the whole program it is shocking how far we have come from the early 2000s where we took a system designed to do air warfare, a 1970s design, really fielded in the 1980s, brought to sea by Ticonderoga. We have taken that strong firm foundation and built on it in a very innovative way to bring new capability, and today in a modern U.S. Navy, Aegis destroyers dominate under the sea, on the sea and in the air. Not only can we defend ourselves, we can defend the carrier, we can shoot smart missiles over the horizon against targets we cannot even see. We can defend against the most dynamic threats that are out there, anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and we can shoot things down in space.” – Rear Admiral Tom Druggan, Program Executive, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, Missile Defense Agency (October 11, 2018, New Jersey Champion Event Camden, NJ)
The Aegis combat system for all of the U.S. BMD Navy Ships, four Japanese Aegis BMD ships and three Aegis Ashore sites (Hawaii, Romania and Poland) have all been developed, ground tested, and produced within the state of New Jersey.
“I rely on my team to ensure the quality of these systems that we are producing so when the sailors get it, the Aegis sailors, or the modernization ships currently at PTC and getting the most recent systems, that when they flip the on switch it actually works.”– Captain Phillip Mlynarski, Commanding Officer, AEGIS Technical Representative (October 11, 2018, New Jersey Champion Event Camden, NJ)
We took this anniversary of Aegis BMD operations to host our 3rd New Jersey Champion Event honoring and recognizing the best and the brightest in winner & leader development in New Jersey, that have brought forth this remarkable capability that is operationally deployed globally to make our nation and allies safer around the world.
2018 New Jersey Warfighter Missile Defense Champions:
FCAC (SW) Jeremiah J. Wright
CTT1 (SW) Robert M. Amrine
CTT1 (SW) Jeffery Smith
FCA1 Daniel Hopkins
FCA2 (SW) Randall Anderson
OS1 (SW/AW) Troy A. Scott
Mr. Thomas Napholz
SCA1 (SW) Brady Aborn
2018 New Jersey Engineer Missile Defense Champions:
Joe Cook
Stu Ducker
Mike Fusco
Christine Malek
Chris Mascioli
Bill Miasek
Keith Philo
Dan Ruch
Jim Schreiber
Dylan Thorner
Juma Thorpe
Steve Young
Jason Tricoche
Wendy Haniman
Victoria McDermott
As our country moves towards a 355 Ship Navy, the more capacity of those ships with Aegis BMD, the more able the U.S. Navy is to force project multiple missions of a maneuverable force that include the defense of the United States Homeland. In addition to new ships, it is essential to increase ship modernization of the current Navy fleet to provide this missile defense capability at a much faster rate of increasing capacity then new ship production.
We recognize the tremendous technical accomplishments of integration that the Aegis BMD team has done and continues to do to make our world and nation a safer place.
To see pictures from the event, visit the MDAA website here.
