USS Cowpens (CG-63)

USS Cowpens (CG-63): Named for the Revolution's Perfect Tactical Victory

Commissioned on 11 March 1993, USS Cowpens was named for the Battle of Cowpens on 17 January 1781, the engagement that military historians and strategists consider one of the most perfectly executed tactical battles in American history. Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, commanding a mixed force of Continental regulars and militia, chose his ground carefully on an open pasture in South Carolina. He positioned his least reliable militia troops in the front and told them explicitly: fire two volleys, then fall back. When Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion pursued the apparent retreat, Morgan's regulars wheeled, the militia reformed, and the British force was enveloped from both flanks simultaneously.

Tarleton's Legion was destroyed as a fighting force. Morgan suffered fewer than 75 casualties. The double envelopment at Cowpens is studied in military academies worldwide as a model of combining regulars and militia, managing troop psychology under fire, and using terrain and controlled retrograde movement as tactical weapons.

USS Cowpens CG-63 was home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan, as part of the forward-deployed naval force assigned to the Seventh Fleet , the highest-tempo billet in the American surface fleet. Operating as part of the forward-deployed carrier strike group, she accumulated extensive Western Pacific operational experience in the most strategically active theater in the world.

Tactically Acquired's USS Cowpens (CG-63) collection honors the crew who served in the Pacific's most demanding deployment rotation and the Revolutionary War battlefield whose tactical genius their ship was named for.