Tico’s go for the 11/11 Plan
The most advanced Cold-War era warships developed were the CG-47 (Ticonderoga, or “Battle”)-class Aegis cruisers. These 27 ships, built on a Sprunance-class destroyer hull but with the revolutionary SPY-1 phased array radars and advanced battle control systems, were game-changing. They could manage the entire battlefleet’s anti-air campaign, making a carrier task force capable of defeating a massed cruise missile attack from a regiment or three of Soviet Bear or Backfire bombers.
At a billion dollars apiece, they were expensive to build and expensive to maintain. As a kid I watched these ships come down the ways at Ingalls in Pascagoula and went on Tiger cruises and tours of just about all of these ships.
The guided-missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) steams through the Atlantic Ocean during the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group composite unit training exercise (COMPTUEX). COMPTUEX provides a realistic training environment to ensure the strike group is capable and ready for its upcoming scheduled deployment. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel A. Taylor (Released)
Well by 2005, the Cold War was over and the first five of the class, twin-armed bandits not equipped with vertical launch systems (VLS), were retired. This left 22 cruisers in the entire U.S. Navy as older nuke boats were likewise put out to pasture. Since then, these ships have been on the chopping block off and on every FY with the Navy, Congress, and the White House taking turns saying they should be phased out.
The thing is, the principal surface combat ship in the big blue, the DDG-51 type destroyers, are Aegis and have VLS, but don’t have the same accommodations for a carrier battle-group’s air warfare commander– which the CG47s were designed for. Because of this, the Navy is now going with an 11/11 plan for these ships.
This will keep the 11 oldest cruisers at sea until 2019, while the newest 11 will be docked in reduced operating status while undergoing limited modernization. The magic ’11’ figure comes from the fact that the Navy *plans* to have 11 carrier battlegroups/11 amphibious ready-groups for the foreseeable future. (Dont mention that the refueling of the supercarrier USS George Washington still hasn’t been funded, leaving it in limbo)
At that point, one or two of the older Ticos will decommission every year, with one or two upgraded Ticos returning to service to replace them. The formerly laid-up cruisers will stick around until they, too, begin leaving the fleet one or two at a time starting in 2035. This will keep the class around until 2045-ish, which means the last Tico-class sailor is probably ten years away from being born.
Not bad for a 1970s design built by the lowest bidder.