The USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81), the U.S. Navy’s first ship running a fully virtualized Aegis Combat System, has intercepted an air target with a missile during the final phase of the ship’s combat system ship qualification trials.
Rear Adm. Seiko Okano, the program executive officer for integrated warfare systems, said the milestone indicates that the Navy has “gone from a testbed virtualized combat system on USS Monterey (CG 61) that was not connected to the ship’s weapons to a fully virtualized system that controls all of the weapons and sensors.”
DDG 81 has been operating with a virtualized Aegis Combat System since July 2023, becoming the first Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to use the automated weapon control system.
The Navy anticipates installing the virtualized system into another Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the USS Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee, and five more ships and four land-based test sites.