Stars and Stripes:
The Navy welcomed the destroyer USS Barry to its Japan-based fleet Monday, giving the force a seventh ballistic missile defense-capable ship in the midst of North Korean boasts about advances in its nuclear weapons program.
Ballistic missile defense ships, or BMDs, are among the most oft-deployed ships in the Navy. On top of that, sailors say the operational tempo at Yokosuka is one of the Navy’s most demanding.
The USS Barry and the USS Benfold, which arrived in October, each come equipped with new versions of the Aegis combat system, which includes significant upgrades on the bridge, in engineering and in the combat information center.
“We have much more capacity now that Benfold and Barry are here,” said Capt. Christopher Sweeney, commodore of the Yokosuka-based Destroyer Squadron 15. “We know the operational availability will go up, and the sustainment will become a little easier now that Barry is here.”
Having enough ships to fill commander requests has been a challenge for the Navy in recent years, particularly for submarines, BMD ships and surface ships deploying in carrier strike groups. During a House subcommittee meeting in June, Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., reviewed a list of BMD-capable ships averaging 9.2 months of deployment, a figure the Navy wants to reduce to seven months across the BMD-capable fleet.
There are 33 BMD-deployable ships, but the Navy says it needs 40 to fill its requests and hold down deployment times. Nine of those 40 ships would be Japan-based, according to a December 2015 Congressional Research report. The service would have 39 ships ready to deploy by 2020 at current shipbuilding and maintenance rates, according to the report.
