The vessel's radar picks up objects as small as a fly, sensing potential hazards more than 100 miles away. Its 100,000-plus-horsepower jet engines go from full speed ahead - about 45 mph - to a dead stop in less than a length and a half of the 510-foot ship. And the systems that fire its Tomahawk missiles and torpedoes are wired with high-speed optical fiber.
The new USS Sterett, a $1.3 billion missile destroyer, ranks among the world's most technically advanced warships. It officially starts duty in Baltimore in early August, the first major naval ship to be commissioned here in nearly a quarter-century.
"The crew's very excited about bringing the ship home to Andrew Sterett's birthplace and bringing our ship to life in a city with such a rich nautical tradition," said Cmdr. Brian Eckerle, the Sterett's captain and a Charles County resident. "Without the crew, the ship is just a hunk of steel and wires. The crew provides the life and vitality."
Named for a Baltimore-born 19th-century naval officer, the Sterett DDG-104 comes to port Aug. 2 for a week of festivities before its official commissioning at the South Locust Point Cruise Terminal. It is the Navy's 54th of 62 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, considered its most potent warships. The vessel is also the fourth naval ship to bear the storied Sterett name.
The warship, which took four years to build, left its shipyard in Bath, Maine, last week for a month of at-sea testing. It will dock in Newport, R.I., and Norfolk, Va., before sailing up the Chesapeake to Baltimore.
Now the Sterett's green crew will learn how to man its Aegis air defense weapons system and how to refuel the vessel from an adjacent oil tanker on open water. The sophisticated ship can simultaneously fight air, surface and underwater offensive and defensive battles. Its MK 41 vertical missile launchers were locally made at Lockheed Martin's Middle River facility, company spokesman James Gring said.
Among the Sterett's crew of 285 sailors and officers are several recent Naval Academy graduates. Only a quarter of the crew has ever been assigned to a naval ship before, Eckerle said.
"It's a brand-new crew," said retired Navy Vice Adm. Kenneth C. Malley, an Edgewater resident and chairman of the Sterett commissioning committee. "A lot of them are right out of boot camp. Some have never been to sea before."
