USS Lake Erie (CG-70)

USS Lake Erie (CG-70): She Shot Down a Satellite

Commissioned on 24 July 1993, USS Lake Erie was named for the Battle of Lake Erie on 10 September 1813, where 28-year-old Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British squadron on the lake in one of the most significant American naval victories of the War of 1812. Perry's flagship was shot out from under him. He rowed through grapeshot fire to another ship, resumed command, and broke the British line. His report to General Harrison afterward entered American history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." The battle secured American control of Lake Erie and enabled the campaign that killed Tecumseh and ended the British-allied indigenous coalition in the Northwest.

USS Lake Erie added her own extraordinary chapter on 20 February 2008. Under Operation Burnt Frost, directed by the White House and executed by the Navy, Lake Erie fired a single RIM-161 Standard Missile-3 at USA-193, a malfunctioning American reconnaissance satellite that had lost all power and was decaying from orbit. The satellite was traveling at approximately 17,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 133 miles when the SM-3 intercepted it. The satellite was destroyed. Lake Erie became the first and only surface warship in history to shoot down an orbiting spacecraft.

The engagement demonstrated that the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system had matured to the point of engaging targets not just in the atmosphere but above it, in low Earth orbit. The operational and strategic implications of that capability were significant and immediately understood by every military in the world.

Tactically Acquired's USS Lake Erie (CG-70) collection honors Perry's freshwater victory and the crew that took naval gunnery to space.