0738 hours, 26 March CIC, U.S.S. Vicksburg
In Greek mythology the mirror-brilliant shield of Athena was Aegis. The hero Perseus used it in his battle with the gorgon Medusa, fighting her by watching her reflection in the shield.
It was a potent name for a potent modern air defense system. Linked by fifteen on-board computers and sophisticated electronics to the SPY-1 radar system, Aegis could track hundreds of targets simultaneously, could guide upgraded Navy Standard missiles, and could even coordinate fleet defense with other ships in the squadron. In the so-called “Armageddon mode,” Aegis could track and fire automatically, without any input at all from the crew beyond turning it on. Any target meeting certain criteria of speed, course, and altitude within ten miles of the ship would be fired on.
The vessel chosen to house Aegis was the end product of a long line of compromises. Originally designed as destroyers, the Ticonderoga-class cruisers had been intended as anti-air warfare complements to a new type of ship, the nuclear strike cruisers (CSGN) that were to have been fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Aegis was to have been fitted to both of diem, creating an electronically interlocked AAW system. Then Congress refused to fund the CSGN program, and cost overruns threatened to torpedo the Ticonderogas and their high-tech Aegis system as well.
At the beginning of 1980, the Navy changed the Ticonderogas’ classification from destroyer to cruiser, a move that made the cost overruns look better on the Pentagon’s books and better reflected the vessels* abilities. As Aegis cruisers, the Ticonderogas became a vital part of the Navy’s global strategy. A total of twenty-seven were planned, providing missile and air defense coordination for each Navy carrier battle group as well as the four battleship combat groups.
America’s Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers were
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widely regarded as the most capable antiair warships ever developed. U.S.S. Vicksburg, CG-66, was a recent addition to the class, having been laid down by Litton/Ingalls Shipbuilding, launched from the Ingalls floating dock in 1990, and formally commissioned early in 1991. Just over 532 feet long at the waterline, displacing 9,500 tons with a full load, Vicksburg’s hull was low and sleek with a sharply angled bow. Her superstructure was notoriously boxy, sandwiched between two massive gray cubes that faced fore and aft like gigantic .bookends. Those cubes housed Vicksburg’s SPY-IB phased-array radars, which were visible on the slightly angled upper surfaces as flat hexagons, one aiming in each direction. The bridge was a flat line of windows planted atop the forward cube, dwarfed by the blunt steel mountain on which it rested.
Vickburg’s complement was twenty-four officers and three
‘ hundred forty men. Through the tangle of antenna arrays, data
links, and satcom dishes, she was a high-tech spider at the
.center of a vast, electronic web, able to receive and process
data from any of the other ships or aircraft in the squadron or,
by satellite, to communicate with CINCPAC in Hawaii or the
, Joint Chiefs in Washington.
„ And the heart of the entire system was Vickburg’s CIC, the ship’s battle staff watched die electronic signatures within the reach of the ship’s senses and worked to together a strategy to deal with them. A seaborne analogue of the E-2C Hawkeye, Vicksburg could serve as a battle management system to coordinate the movements and responses of the entire fleet. Her SPY-1 was a marvel of “computer-directed electronics, constantly searching for small, pop-up targets such as aircraft or missiles within forty-five nautical miles of the ship, while simultaneously scanning a much vaster area out to a range of two hundred miles for larger targets.
;: Captain Randolph Cunningham of the U.S.S. Vicksburg had just entered the CIC. The Combat Information Center was part ljtf an operational complex called the Command and Control Suite. The room was large, larger than the fact that the ship was on a Spruance-class destroyer’s hull would have sug-sted, and it was dominated by four Large Screen Displays, or
Ds, set side by side above a bank of computer consoles.
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Ketth Douglass
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Elsewhere around the room were twelve smaller automated status boards, ASTABs in Navy jargon.
The array of screens was designed to present Vicksburg’s Tactical Department with every piece of information they might conceivably need during battle. Each screen was individually programmable. One LSD might be set to display surface shipping, a second close-in air contacts, a third distant targets, a fourth intelligence data or updates. ASTABs could show the status of ships or aircraft in the squadron, data on tanker loading, ship cargoes, engagement tracks, sub sightings, anything the tactical people needed to help them comprehend the incredible complexity and movement of the participants in modem combat. Seat after seat at console after console was manned by sailors monitoring the electronic world beyond the cruiser’s bulkheads.