Steel & Sea
The guided-missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), lead ship of its class, under way in the Mediterranean Sea in March 2003.
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 2nd Class Patrick Reilly · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

· · Last updated

Contents
  1. Design and development
  2. Specifications
  3. Armament and sensors
  4. Variants
  5. Ships in class
  6. Service history
  7. Similar classes

The Arleigh Burke class is the US Navy’s class of guided-missile destroyers centered on the Aegis Combat System. The ships are multi-mission destroyers with an emphasis on air defense and open-ocean operations. The Navy has bought them since fiscal year 1985, 97 in all through fiscal year 2025. The first entered service in 1991, and 75 had been delivered by 1 October 2025. The Congressional Research Service calls the class one of the Navy’s numerically largest since World War II.

The class is named after Arleigh Burke. In World War II he commanded several destroyer squadrons in the South Pacific, and he was Chief of Naval Operations from August 17, 1955, to August 1, 1961.

Design and development

The program began in the late 1970s. The Navy started design studies with seven contractors in 1980, and by 1983 three were left: Bath Iron Works, Ingalls Shipbuilding and Todd Shipyards. Bath Iron Works received the contract for the first ship on 3 April 1985. That ship, USS Arleigh Burke, was commissioned in Norfolk, Virginia, on 4 July 1991.

The class was developed as a more affordable supplement to the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. It was built around a new hull design, took over the propulsion and machinery arrangement of the Spruance class and adopted the Aegis weapon system that was already deployed on the larger Ticonderoga-class cruisers. One lesson from those cruisers concerned the material. They combine a steel hull with a superstructure of lighter aluminum, and the aluminum proved vulnerable to cracking. The destroyers are made from steel. The class is also the first in the US Navy with protection against nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

Specifications

The first two versions, Flights I and II, are 505 ft (154 m) long, with a beam of 66 ft (20 m). Flights IIA and III were lengthened to 509.5 ft (155.3 m). The full-load displacement grew with each version, from 8,300 long tons for Flight I to 9,700 for Flight III.

The ships are powered by four GE LM2500 gas turbines that drive two shafts with controllable-pitch propellers, for a speed of more than 31 knots. The range is 4,400 nautical miles at 20 knots. A Flight I ship has a crew of 303, and a Flight IIA ship carries 23 officers and 300 enlisted sailors.

Armament and sensors

Every ship carries the Aegis combat system, for which Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor. The system is named for the mythological shield that defended Zeus. Lockheed Martin describes Aegis as a system that integrates a broad range of sensors and weapons for simultaneous air and missile defense, and says it serves the US Navy and six international allies.

Flights I, II and IIA use the SPY-1D radar. Flight III carries the SPY-6(V)1, which Raytheon designed for the DDG 51 Flight III destroyers with four array faces of 37 radar modules each. A smaller version of the radar is being backfitted onto Flight IIA destroyers.

The main weapons sit in two Mk 41 vertical launch systems, with 90 cells on Flights I and II and 96 on later ships. They fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and Standard surface-to-air missiles. The ships also carry the Evolved Sea Sparrow missile for self-defense against anti-ship missiles and the vertical-launch ASROC against submarines. Each ship has one 127 mm Mk 45 gun, the Phalanx close-in weapon system and two triple torpedo tubes. Many of the destroyers can also conduct ballistic missile defense operations.

Variants

The first 28 ships, DDG-51 to DDG-78, are known as Flight I and Flight II: DDG-51 to DDG-71 are Flight I, DDG-72 to DDG-78 Flight II. They have a platform for rearming and refueling a helicopter but cannot accommodate a helicopter of their own, because they have no hangars.

In fiscal year 1994 the Navy switched to Flight IIA, which added a helicopter hangar, and it bought 47 Flight IIA ships through fiscal year 2016. A Flight IIA ship can carry up to two MH-60R Seahawk helicopters.

Since fiscal year 2017 the Navy buys Flight III, built around the SPY-6 radar, with matching changes to the electrical power and cooling systems. The first ship of this version, USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG-125), was commissioned in October 2023. The second, Ted Stevens (DDG-128), was delivered to the Navy in December 2025.

Ships in class

Two shipyards build the class: General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi. HII says it has built and delivered more than thirty-five Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Of the 97 ships bought through fiscal year 2025, 22 were still in various stages of construction on 1 October 2025.

The Navy bought two to five ships a year from fiscal year 1989 through fiscal year 2005, and one to three a year since fiscal year 2010. The Congressional Research Service puts the price at about $2.7 billion per ship when two are bought in a year. The Navy’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 asks for two more ships.

Flight I and II ships have an estimated service life of 35 years, so the oldest could retire in the late 2020s, although some are certified for 40 years. Flight IIA and Flight III ships have an estimated service life of 40 years. The Navy is also modernizing existing ships to keep them effective to the end of their service lives.

Service history

From 21 September 2005 until the Zumwalt class became active in 2016, the Arleigh Burkes were the Navy’s only active destroyers, after the last Spruance-class destroyer had been decommissioned.

On 12 October 2000, USS Cole (DDG-67) was hit by a suicide boat attack in Aden, Yemen, in which seventeen sailors died and 37 were wounded. An earlier al-Qaida attempt in Aden, against USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) in January 2000, had failed when the overloaded attack boat got stuck in the mud. Cole was repaired and returned to duty in 2001.

In October 2011 the Navy announced that four ships of the class would be based at Rota, Spain, to support NATO missile defense.

Similar classes

Japan and South Korea operate destroyer classes based on the Arleigh Burke: the Kongō, Atago and Maya classes of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Sejong the Great class of the Republic of Korea Navy. In the US Navy, the Ticonderoga-class cruisers are equipped with the same Aegis system. The three Zumwalt-class destroyers were bought in fiscal years 2007 to 2009, when the Navy bought no Arleigh Burkes.