An expanded suite of ballistic missile defenses including 20 Patriot and 10 THAAD battalions and acquisition of sufficient Standard Missile 3s to fully load every Aegis BMD-capable ship.
Three features make this test particularly significant: For the first time, the hardware and software utilized was the operational configuration (known as AEGISBMD 3.0) that will be installed in all other AEGIS missile defense ships.
The Navy, driven to meet a near-term requirement contained in a dramatically changing national ballistic missile defense (BMD) strategy, has, without any supporting analysis, chosen to back-fit and concurrently build more of the 30-year-old-design Aegis Arleigh Burke class DDG51 destroyers with only the most basic BMD capability.