The Drive:

The U.S. Navy’s quartet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers that are forward-deployed to Rota, Spain, and makeup Destroyer Squadron 60, sport a unique configuration. The most notable alteration is the inclusion of the self-contained SeaRAM Rolling Airframe Missile launcher system on the ships’ rear pedestal mount. This is in addition to the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System located on their bows. It was installed to beef-up the destroyers’ defenses against advanced anti-ship cruise missiles due to the high-threat areas they would be regularly operating in—especially the Black Sea, which is a nearly land-locked super anti-ship missile engagement zone. They were also among the first to receive an upgraded SEWIP Block II electronic warfare suite. But another unique and so far totally overlooked enhancement involves a far more obscure electronic warfare system, one that, as far as we know, is totally unique to these vessels.

We noticed the funky, WALL-E-looking installations on the bridge wings of USS Porter and USS Donald Cook as they exited the Black Sea through the Bosphorus, which provides a link to the Sea of Marmara, and from there to the Mediterranean, recently. They had deployed to the tense body of water sequentially, and along with a support ship, they represented the biggest U.S. Navy presence in the Black Sea in years while operating together.

Upon closer review, the odd installations have been there for a number of years, on all the forward-deployed destroyers that call Rota home. In fact, they seemed to have appeared around the same time these vessels received SeaRAM as part of their unique upgrade program. So, these are at least semi-permanent installations, but we still weren’t sure what they actually did.

At first, we thought they were an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) system, as it seemed similar in basic configuration to other existing EO/IR systems deployed aboard U.S. Navy vessels. It is also worth noting that the Arleigh Burke class was designed with one of the most powerful EO/IR systems around, which you can read more about in this past piece of ours. After more closely examining images of this mystery system, the depth of its ‘cans’ seemed too shallow…

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