Guided missile cruiser
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The guided missile cruiser - often just called a missile cruiser - is a medium-sized warship that is armed with steerable missiles .
history
The genus of the guided missile cruiser ( English guided missile cruiser ) was created by conversions of cruisers . Here, the rear turrets of the first ships were replaced by a launch system and a magazine for the guided missiles . The first ship in this series of conversions was the USS Boston , which was put back into service with the United States Navy on November 1, 1955 after its conversion (formerly Baltimore class ) . The guided missiles of this first generation of modern missile cruisers were aimed at threats from the air. In the years that followed, Cleveland-class cruisers were equipped with guided missiles. The USS Long Beach , 1957 keel laid, was in two ways an innovation in warship building. She was the first ship planned and built as a guided missile cruiser and at the same time the first atomic cruiser in the world. Here the Navy originally planned to produce a pure guided missile cruiser without any guns, but was instructed by President John F. Kennedy to install at least anti-ship artillery. From 1959, the first series production began with the Leahy class .
Today guided missile cruisers are used in particular for air defense , but they are also carriers of high-precision cruise missiles such as the BGM-109 Tomahawk .
The US Ticonderoga class and the Russian Kirov class are considered to be the most modern in their class . The Kirov-class cruisers are considered to be the largest surface combat ships in the world after the aircraft carriers . From 2007 a new type of cruiser called the CG (X) was developed for the US Navy. However, this program was discontinued in 2010 for cost reasons.
literature
- Maritime dictionary. Compiled by Jürgen Gebauer and Egon Krenz. Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-327-00679-2 , pp. 115–118.
