The National Interest:
While most folks were getting ready to head out for Labor Day barbecues, American defense planners were preparing what could be a big upgrade of U.S. missile-defense platforms on the high seas.
In a press release last Friday by Lockheed Martin, the company detailed a new contract worth as much as $428 million over ten years to modernize the highly respected U.S. Navy Aegis Combat System’s hardware and software. And the timing could not be any better considering the news coming out of Asia these days.
Lockheed explained in its release that the upgrades, or the Ship Integration & Test (SI&T) program, “will will integrate Aegis onboard new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and modernize destroyers and cruisers to operate the latest iteration of the Aegis configuration, called Baseline 9.”
This is where things get interesting. The release continues, noting that: “[T]hrough Baseline 9, ships can simultaneously defend against airborne threats, such as aircraft or cruise missiles, while also targeting and intercepting ballistic missiles. It is the only naval combat system in the world to demonstrate the ability to conduct integrated air and missile defense simultaneously.”
Defending against multiple types of threats such as cruise and ballistic missiles simultaneously is a big deal and an important upgrade for AEGIS.
When one considers the possible threat environment, especially in the Asia-Pacific, U.S. naval assets in any contest against China would face challenges from both cruise and ballistic missile coming from multiple different domains (air, land and sea). Being able to take on several different types of threats at once is clearly of major importance—especially as anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) challenges seem to keep multiplying as the years go by (think Russia, North Korea, Iran and others).
“When a ship goes into harm’s way, the combat system must work 100 percent of the time – there is no margin of error,” explained Chris Minster, SI&T senior program manager of Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training. “Whether it is designing a system for a brand new ship or working hand-in-hand with sailors pierside, Ship Integration and Test is there to deliver…”
