Navy Bets On Arleigh Burkes To Sail Until 2072http://defense.aol.com/2012/10/05/navy-bets-on-arleigh-burkes-to-sail-until-2072-40-years-afloat
These destroyers are and will long remain the Navy's mainstay. The Arleigh Burke class to which the Murphy belongs is built to carry the Aegis anti-aircraft system that defends the entire fleet, including the prized aircraft carriers. The Chief of Naval Operations himself, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, has explicitly said that the Navy is building the smaller, cheaper Littoral Combat Ships to take on supporting missions, so the fleet can free up destroyers to face the most dangerous and high-tech foes: submarines, long-range missiles, jet fighter-bombers, and more, all integrated into "anti-access" networks like those being developed by the Chinese. Updating the Arleigh Burkes to keep up with the threat will be a heroic effort.
Central to those upgrades is a radically new radar, the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), using a technology already proven in aircraft called an "active phased array" or Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA). The "passive" SPY-1 arrays on current destroyers draw their power from a single transmitter inside the ship; "active" systems have hundreds or thousands of tiny transmitters built into the array's surface, which lets them generate a larger number of more powerful beams, all individually scanning for targets.
