Cold War Admiral Guided Navy's Antimissile Program
When Wayne E. Meyer was named to lead the first comprehensive U.S. naval antimissile system during the Cold War, Pentagon planners feared the nation's warfleet was vulnerable to attacks by Soviet bombers.
Rear Adm. Meyer, who died Sept. 1 at the age of 83, eventually brought to fruition Aegis, the missile-defense system that helped set the course for modern U.S. Navy strategy. The Aegis system grew into the longest continuous shipbuilding project in Navy history, as well as one of the most expensive.
The problem Aegis was created to address had bedeviled military strategists at least since Kamikaze fliers began sinking U.S. Navy warships during World War II: How to defend against incoming missiles? The question took on increased urgency as Soviet missile technology improved in the 1960s and 1970s.
The solution, which Adm. Meyer pushed through Congress despite fierce initial opposition, was an integrated system of radar, antimissile defenses and computerized communications equipment aboard specially designed ships. When the first Aegis-equipped cruiser, the U.S.S. Ticonderoga, was commissioned in 1983, memories of two British ships sunk during the Falklands War by missiles were still fresh.
"We had no system to handle them until the Aegis system was developed," says Vice Adm. James H. Doyle, a former deputy chief of naval operations who worked on Aegis with Adm. Meyer.
Gruff and barrel-chested, Adm. Meyer grew up far from the sea in Brunswick, Mo. He enlisted in the Navy in 1943 at 17, and studied electrical engineering, radar and sonar at the University of Kansas and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For two decades, he served on cruisers and destroyers while working with guided-missile systems.
In 1963, he turned down command of a destroyer to lead a Navy task force on defending against surface missiles. He was selected as the founding project manager of Aegis in 1970.
As the cost of the system -- ultimately up to $1 billion per ship -- became apparent, opposition emerged in Congress. Adm. Meyer developed a reputation for stubbornness. He refused to use competing vendors, which his critics said would cut costs but which he held would be unwieldy.
"Ticonderoga was on-time and on-budget," Adm. Meyer said in a 1994 history of Aegis produced by the U.S. Naval War College. "They can harp all they want about there being too much money in Aegis. I say that's jealousy."
Aegis remains a mainstay of the modern Navy, even as the threats the U.S. military confronts have shifted. Yet the system has seen action only once, in 1988, when the Aegis-equipped U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet over the Indian Ocean, killing 290 people, in what U.S. officials later described as an accident...
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
Rear Adm. Meyer, who died Sept. 1 at the age of 83, eventually brought to fruition Aegis, the missile-defense system that helped set the course for modern U.S. Navy strategy. The Aegis system grew into the longest continuous shipbuilding project in Navy history, as well as one of the most expensive.
The problem Aegis was created to address had bedeviled military strategists at least since Kamikaze fliers began sinking U.S. Navy warships during World War II: How to defend against incoming missiles? The question took on increased urgency as Soviet missile technology improved in the 1960s and 1970s.
The solution, which Adm. Meyer pushed through Congress despite fierce initial opposition, was an integrated system of radar, antimissile defenses and computerized communications equipment aboard specially designed ships. When the first Aegis-equipped cruiser, the U.S.S. Ticonderoga, was commissioned in 1983, memories of two British ships sunk during the Falklands War by missiles were still fresh.
"We had no system to handle them until the Aegis system was developed," says Vice Adm. James H. Doyle, a former deputy chief of naval operations who worked on Aegis with Adm. Meyer.
Gruff and barrel-chested, Adm. Meyer grew up far from the sea in Brunswick, Mo. He enlisted in the Navy in 1943 at 17, and studied electrical engineering, radar and sonar at the University of Kansas and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For two decades, he served on cruisers and destroyers while working with guided-missile systems.
In 1963, he turned down command of a destroyer to lead a Navy task force on defending against surface missiles. He was selected as the founding project manager of Aegis in 1970.
As the cost of the system -- ultimately up to $1 billion per ship -- became apparent, opposition emerged in Congress. Adm. Meyer developed a reputation for stubbornness. He refused to use competing vendors, which his critics said would cut costs but which he held would be unwieldy.
"Ticonderoga was on-time and on-budget," Adm. Meyer said in a 1994 history of Aegis produced by the U.S. Naval War College. "They can harp all they want about there being too much money in Aegis. I say that's jealousy."
Aegis remains a mainstay of the modern Navy, even as the threats the U.S. military confronts have shifted. Yet the system has seen action only once, in 1988, when the Aegis-equipped U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet over the Indian Ocean, killing 290 people, in what U.S. officials later described as an accident...