The USS Lake Erie, one of the Navy’s last Ticonderoga-class cruisers, has returned to San Diego following an unusually long deployment that mostly involved helping to disrupt drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea as part of Operation Southern Spear.
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The 33-year-old warship quietly arrived at Naval Base San Diego on Saturday, nearly one year after it left on its final deployment. Such deployments typically last six to eight months. The Navy did not comment on why the Lake Erie was gone for such a long period of time.
The 567-foot vessel performed various maritime security missions, including the seizure and disruption of more than 2,900 pounds of narcotics, the Navy said.
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The ship has been homeported in San Diego since 2014, a stay that will come to an end in September when it is decommissioned. When that happens, the Navy will have only six of its fabled Ticonderoga-class cruisers left. The aging Cold War-era vessels — famous for their ability to spot and track missiles — are being replaced by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, widely regarded as the modern workhorse of the Navy.
The most notable moment in the Lake Erie’s history occurred in February 2008 when it used a missile to shoot down a malfunctioning U.S. reconnaissance satellite to prevent it from reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
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