The carrier and its 5, 000-person crew were to leave Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg.

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America certainly took careful notes: the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, visited Estonia.

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In addition to the Mount Whitney, U.S. ships under Odyssey Dawn included the Kearsarge and Ponce and the guided-missile destroyers USS Stout and USS Barry, along with logistics and refueling ships.

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The United States has 27 active Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers in active service.

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Shadows are now being armed with a small, still-classified guided missile.

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Meanwhile, the American navy has been working on its own cheap guided missile, the Low-Cost Imaging Terminal Seeker (LCITS), which it tested successfully last year.

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The self-guided Russian R-77 medium-range air-to-air missile is almost as good as the U.S. AIM-120 AMRAAM.

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During operations, Nimitz-class carriers sail at the centre of a carrier battle group of ships that includes guided missile cruisers, destroyers, frigates, logistics ships and submarines.

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While this means they have a similar role to the guided missile cruisers, destroyers are smaller and faster and are designed to reduce their profile on enemy radar - though it is unclear whether this technology is successful.

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