USS Antietam

The USS Antietam 's primary mission is to operate with carrier battle group five and actions of the ship affect the fleet and the safety and security of the mother carrier. The job that the ship has requires many different aspects of security. The Aegis Radar is the first part of the security, the second part of security is the weapons systems. The last part is speed, the smaller the ship is usually the faster.

USS Antietam (CG-54) is a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy. Antietam was named for the site of the 1862 Battle of Antietam, Maryland, between Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee and Union forces under Major General George McClellan, during the American Civil War. She was built by the Litton-Ingalls

There are three-missile class weapons 1 torpedo, and two lightweight multi-function weapons. The missile class weapons are first the MK41 vertical launching system Standard Missile. Sixty-four different cells hold these missiles all at once. The second weapon is the Vertical Launch Missile; this missile is an anti-submarine missile. The missile goes into the air gain speed and the dives into the ocean taking out the target. These missiles are launched from a massive shaft on the ship that has enough power for the missile to destroy its target.

Third is the Tomahawk Cruise Missile. Tomahawk carries a nuclear or conventional payload. The conventional, land-attack, unitary variant carries a 1,000-pound-class warhead while the sub-munitions dispenser variant carries 166 combined-effects bomblets. The Block III version incorporates engine improvements, an insensitive extended range warhead, time-of-arrival control and navigation capability using an improved Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator and Global Positioning System which can significantly reduce mission-planning time and increase navigation and terminal

The ship is 567 feet long and the beam is 55 wide. Since the ship is smaller than an aircraft carrier and battleship, the ship aerodynamically is faster than the other ships in the fleet. The ship can reach 30+ knots on the open sea. The builders at Ingalls shipbuilding take pride in their build and have been making the new ships like Antietam 30+ years. This specific ship is located in Yokosuka, Japan and patrols the Sagami Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The average time the ship is out patrolling these waters is 4 months. This ship has 1 helicopter pad that can hold 2 Sikorsky SH-60B or MH-60R Seahawk LAMPS III helicopters. These helicopters are really mission helicopters than combat