TICONDEROGA CLASS CRUISER

The '''Ticonderoga''-class' of missile cruisers is a class of warships in the U.S. Navy, first ordered and authorized in FY 1978. The class use phased-array radar; the increased combat capability offered by the Aegis combat system and the AN/SPY-1 radar system justified the changing of the classification of ''Ticonderoga'' and ''Yorktown'' from DDG (guided missile destroyer) to CG (guided missile cruiser). ''Vincennes'' and ''Valley Forge'' may or may not have been authorized as DDGs; regardless, the DDG sequence continued with USS ''Arleigh Burke'' as DDG-51.
Of the “''Tico''s”, at least eight (''Ticonderoga'', ''Cowpens'', ''Anzio'', ''Yorktown'', ''Valley Forge'', ''Bunker Hill'', ''Antietam'' and ''Princeton'') share names with World War II aircraft carriers. Only one, ''Thomas S. Gates'', is not named for a battle.

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Vertical Launching System

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Iran Air Flight 655

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Vertical Launching System

In addition to the added radar capability, the ''Ticonderoga'' class built after ''Thomas S. Gates'' are outfitted with two Vertical Launching System (or VLS). The two VLS systems allow the ship to have 122 launch tubes that can carry a wide variety of missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile, the Standard surface-to-air missile, and the ASROC anti-submarine missile. More importantly, the VLS system enables all missiles to be fully standing by at any given time, shortening the ship's reaction time. The original five ships, including ''Thomas S. Gates'', had MK. 26 twin arm launchers which limited their missile capacity to a total of 88 missiles, and which could not fire the Tomahawk missiles increasingly vital to the role of the US Navy's surface warships. After the end of the Cold War, the lower capability of the original five ships limited them to home-waters duties. Due to the cluttered superstructure of the ships, inherited from the Spruance class destroyers they were derived from, two of the radar transceivers are mounted on a special pallet on the portside aft corner of the superstructure, with the other two mounted on the forward starboard corner. Later Aegis ships, designed from the keel up to carry the SPY-1 radars, have them all clustered together. The high weight of the ships - 1,500 tons heavier than the "Spru-cans", resulted in a highly-stressed hull and some structural problems in early service, which were generally corrected in the late 1980s and mid-1990s. Several ships had superstructure cracks which had to be repaired, also relating to weight problems.

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Originally, the Navy had intended to replace its fleet of ''Ticonderoga''-class guided missile cruisers with cruisers produced as part of the CG(X) missile cruiser program; however, severe budget cuts from the 21st century surface combatant program coupled with the increasing cost of the ''Zumwalt''-class guided missile destroyer program have led to wide spread rumors that the CG(X) program was cancelled. If this is in fact correct, then the ''Ticonderoga''-class guided missile cruisers do not yet have an intended replacement.
All five of the twin-arm (Mk-26) cruisers have been decommissioned. The newer 22 of the 27 ships (CG-52 to CG-73) in the class will be upgraded to keep them combat-relevant, giving the ships a service life of 35 years each [1]. In the years leading up to their decommissioning, the five twin-arm ships had been assigned primarily home-waters duties, acting as command ships for destroyer squadrons assigned to the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic areas.

Iran Air Flight 655

Main articles: Iran Air Flight 655

One ship of the class, USS ''Vincennes'', became infamous in 1988 when she shot down Iran Air Flight 655, resulting in 290 civilian fatalities, which the captain of ''Vincennes'' had believed from misinterpreted radar returns was an Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat jet fighter on an attack vector. ''Vincennes'' was decommissioned in 2005.

External links

★ navysite.de: The Ticonderoga (CG 47) - Class

★ Federation of American Scientists Report: Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers