Aegis Turns 20

Some weapons don’t age well. Designed to counter the threat of the day, they go into moth­balls when the threat evap­o­rates. Take the Bradley Linebacker, an M-​​2 Bradely infantry fight­ing vehi­cle with a Stinger anti-​​air mis­sile mod­ule attached to the tur­rent. The Linebacker was designed to pro­tect armored for­ma­tions against Soviet attack jets and heli­copters. Well, the Soviet Union went away in 1989 and the Bradley Linebacker lasted just a few years before the Army began strip­ping off the Stingers and return­ing them to their orig­i­nal role haul­ing troops.
Other weapons just keep on tick­ing, years or decades past their planned expi­ra­tion date. The Boeing B-​​52 is still our pri­mary bomber 50 years after its intro­duc­tion. The Vietnam-​​era M-​​14 rifle has enjoyed a recent revival for squad marks­men in Iraq. And the Navy’s Aegis radar, built by Lockheed Martin and designed to defend air­craft car­ri­ers from Soviet mis­sile attacks, has reached 20 years and 100 units deliv­ered, as I describe over at Military​.com. These days the pow­er­ful radar (the stop-​​sign-​​shaped thingy on the pic­tured cruiser’s super­struc­ture) has taken on roles in the lit­torals and against bal­lis­tic mis­siles. In fact, of all our bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense sys­tems, Aegis cou­pled with the Raytheon SM-​​3 mis­sile is the only one that works con­sis­tently.
The key to Aegis’ longevity is its raw power and smart pro­gram man­age­ment. Aegis did incre­men­tal “spi­ral devel­op­ment” years before that was a Pentagon stan­dard. And Aegis has adopted a com­mer­cial open archi­tec­ture in order to keep up with rapid advance­ments in computing:

Engineers at [Lockheed Martin’s] Moorestown [facil­ity in New Jersey] have been rip­ping out Aegis’ tra­di­tional military-​​grade com­put­ers and replac­ing them with cheaper, faster com­mer­cial com­put­ers such as IBM’s Blade server. Going to so-​​called “com­mer­cial off-​​the-​​shelf” com­put­ers means Aegis can be upgraded every time IBM comes out with a faster com­puter — say, every two or three years. This helps the Navy keep up with the ever-​​increasing pace of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment.
“We have not reached the limit of Aegis,” [Aegis engi­neer Alan] Ostrow says.

– David Axe

November 22nd, 2006 | Ships and Subs | 22821 Comment »http://defensetech.org/2006/11/22/aegis-turns-20/Aegis+Turns+202006-11-22+22%3A30%3A05wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.