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USS Port Royal
Class overview
Builders:	Ingalls Shipbuilding Bath Iron Works
Operators:	United States Navy
Preceded by:	Virginia
Followed by:	CG(X) development program
Commissioned:	January 22, 1983
Ships in class:	27
Ships active:	USS Antietam USS Anzio USS Bunker Hill USS Cape St. George USS Chancellorsville USS Chosin USS Cowpens USS Gettysburg USS Hué City USS Lake Champlain USS Lake Erie USS Leyte Gulf USS Mobile Bay USS Monterey USS Normandy USS Philippine Sea USS Port Royal USS Princeton USS San Jacinto USS Shiloh USS Vella Gulf USS Vicksburg
Ships laid up:	USS Thomas S. Gates USS Ticonderoga USS Vincennes USS Yorktown
Ships out of service:	USS Valley Forge
General characteristics
Displacement:	9,500 tons
Length:	567 feet (173 m)
Beam:	55 feet (17 m)
Draught:	31 feet (9.5 m)
Propulsion and power:	4 × General Electric LM2500 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 80,000 shp
Speed:	32+ knots (exact maximum classified)
Range:	6,000 miles
Armour:	limited Kevlar splinter protection in critical areas
Complement:	360
Armament:	2 x Mk 26 Guided Missile Launching System (CG-47 through -51) • 122 cell Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (CG-52 on) • SM-2 Standard SAM (has an ASuW mode) • 8 x RGM-84 Harpoon SSM • BGM-109 Tomahawk (CG-52 on) • ASROC Anti-submarine Missile • 2 x 5 inch (127 mm/54) Mk-45 (lightweight gun) • 2 x 20 mm Phalanx CIWS • 2 x Mark 32 triple Torpedo tubes (6 x Mk-46 or Mk-50 torpedoes)
Aircraft carried:	2 x SH-60B Seahawk LAMPS III helicopters

The Ticonderoga-class of missile cruisers is a class of warships in the U.S. Navy, first ordered and authorized in FY 1978. The class use phased-array radar; the increased combat capability offered by the Aegis combat system and the AN/SPY-1 radar system justified the changing of the classification of Ticonderoga and Yorktown from DDG (guided missile destroyer) to CG (guided missile cruiser). Vincennes and Valley Forge may or may not have been authorized as DDGs; regardless, the DDG sequence continued with USS Arleigh Burke as DDG-51.

Of the “Ticos”, at least eight (Ticonderoga, Cowpens, Anzio, Yorktown, Valley Forge, Bunker Hill, Antietam and Princeton) share names with World War II aircraft carriers. Only one, Thomas S. Gates, is not named for a battle.

See also: Vertical Launching System

In addition to the added radar capability, the Ticonderoga class built after theThomas S. Gates are outfitted with two Vertical Launching Systems (or VLS). The two VLS allow the ship to have 122 launch tubes that can carry a wide variety of missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile, the Standard surface-to-air missile, and the ASROC anti-submarine missile. More importantly, the VLS enables all missiles to be on full stand-by at any given time, shortening the ship's response time. The original five ships, including theThomas S. Gates, had MK. 26 twin arm launchers which limited their missile capacity to a total of 88 missiles, and could not fire the Tomahawk missile. After the end of the Cold War, the lower capabilities of the original five ships limited them to home-waters duties. The ship's cluttered superstructure, inherited from the Spruance class destroyers , required two of the radar transceivers to be mounted on a special pallet on the portside aft corner of the superstructure, with the other two mounted on the forward starboard corner. Later Aegis ships, designed from the keel up to carry the SPY-1 radars, have them all clustered together. The high weight of the ships - 1,500 tons heavier than the "Spru-cans", resulted in a highly-stressed hull and some structural problems in early service, which were generally corrected in the late 1980s and mid-1990s. Several ships had superstructure cracks which had to be repaired.

Ticonderoga class cruiser was built on the same hull as the Spruance class destroyer.

Originally, the Navy had intended to replace its fleet of Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers with cruisers produced as part of the CG(X) missile cruiser program; however, severe budget cuts from the 21st century surface combatant program coupled with the increasing cost of the Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyer program have led to wide spread rumors that the CG(X) program was cancelled. If this is in fact correct, then the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers do not yet have an intended replacement.

All five of the twin-arm (Mk-26) cruisers have been decommissioned. The newer 22 of the 27 ships (CG-52 to CG-73) in the class will be upgraded to keep them combat-relevant, giving the ships a service life of 35 years each [1]. In the years leading up to their decommissioning, the five twin-arm ships had been assigned primarily home-waters duties, acting as command ships for destroyer squadrons assigned to the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic areas.

Main article: Iran Air Flight 655

One ship of the class, USS Vincennes, became infamous in 1988 when she shot down Iran Air Flight 655, resulting in 290 civilian fatalities, which the captain of Vincennes had believed from misinterpreted radar returns was an Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat jet fighter on an attack vector. Vincennes was decommissioned in 2005.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Cruiser of Ticonderoga class

• navysite.de: The Ticonderoga (CG 47) - Class
• Federation of American Scientists Report: Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers
• http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/cg-47.htm