Arleigh Burke Destroyer: The Belknap Fire, Aegis and the Zumwalt Reversal

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The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer was designed in the 1980s, commissioned its lead ship in 1991, and as of April 2026 has 75 ships in service, the longest production run of any U.S. Navy surface combatant. The design came out of fire. Earlier cruisers used aluminum superstructures to save top weight, and in 1975 USS Belknap collided with the carrier USS John F. Kennedy in the Mediterranean, after which its aluminum superstructure burned and collapsed. British losses in the 1982 Falklands War reinforced the lesson. Gibbs and Cox and Bath Iron Works returned to all-steel construction, added about 130 tons of Kevlar around vital spaces, and kept within an 8,300-ton congressional cap on a hull 50 feet shorter than the cruisers, using a wide flared bow for seakeeping and four GE LM2500 gas turbines raised from 80,000 to 100,000 shaft horsepower for over 31 knots.

The ship is built around the Aegis combat system and fixed SPY radar panels, SPY-1 on early flights and SPY-6 on Flight III, which track hundreds of targets at once with no rotating blind spot. Its Mark 41 vertical launch system has 90 to 96 cells that can hold Tomahawks, SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, ASROC and quad-packed Evolved Sea Sparrows. In the mid-2000s the Navy planned to end production with USS Michael Murphy, DDG-112, and shift to the stealthy Zumwalt, designed for coastal gunfire support. Around 2008 the rise of anti-ship ballistic missiles made ballistic missile defense the priority, and the Zumwalt was not optimized for it. The Navy cut the Zumwalt from 32 ships to three and restarted Burke production.

• Flight I ships had no helicopter hangars, and Flight IIA added hangars for two MH-60 Seahawks.
• Flight III ships carry 4,000-kilowatt generators to power SPY-6 and directed energy weapons.
• The ODIN laser dazzler blinds drone cameras, and USS Preble received the HELIOS high-energy laser.
• USS Bainbridge carries Raytheon Coyote launchers that send interceptor drones after enemy drones.
• Burkes fired Tomahawks in Operation Desert Strike in 1996 and the opening of Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and have spent months intercepting Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea.