A guided missile destroyer is a destroyer designed to launch guided missiles. Many are also equipped to carry out anti-submarine, anti-air, and anti-surface operations. The NATO standard designation for these vessels is DDG. Nations vary in their use of destroyer D designation their hull pennant numbering, either prefixing, or dropping it altogether. The U.S. Navy has adopted the classification DDG in the US hull classification symbol.
In addition to the guns that destroyers have, a guided missile destroyer is usually equipped with two large missile magazines which store the missiles for the ship, usually in Vertical Launch Cells. Some guided missile destroyers contain powerful weapon system radars, like the United States’ Aegis combat system, and may be adopted for use in an anti-missile role or a ballistic missile defense role. This is especially true of navies that no longer operate cruisers, as other vessels must be adopted to fill in the gap.
Read more about Guided Missile Destroyer: Former Guided Missile Destroyer Classes
Famous quotes containing the words guided missile, guided, missile and/or destroyer:
“The guided missiles,
The black-and-white angels follow each quirk and jink of
The evasive sheep, play grandmother’s-steps behind them,
Freeze to the ground, or leap to head off a straggler”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, the LORD alone guided him...”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 32:11,12.
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the world, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.”
—Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–59 B.C.)