European Ballistic Missile Defense Operational
25th May 2016
Two years after the movement process began the only land-based Aegis anti-aircraft/missile system in existence (in New Jersey) has been taken apart, packed into 60 large (40 foot) shipping containers and sent to Romania where Aegis where it has been be put back together, tested and became operational in May 2016 as an anti-missile system. This took six months longer than expected but this was seen as a possibility because this was the first time land-based Aegis was disassembled and moved and then set up in a combat zone. The U.S. is building two more ground-based Aegis systems; one in Poland and one in Hawaii. All three, including new Aegis components for two of them and needed missiles (24 per location) and launching hardware for all of them will cost $2.3 billion. That’s nearly $800 million per system.