In the New Mexico desert is a US Navy vessel that never leaves port, but is continually at work. It is the USS Desert Ship, also known as Landlocked Vessel One, LLS-1. It is a concrete facility at the White Sands Missile range that functionally duplicates the fire control capabilities of a surface combatant and is owned and operated by the US Navy Sea Weapons Command (NSWC). It is known also as the NWSC detachment of the White Sands Missile range.
It was constructed originally to test the Talos missile system and has been retained to test the Standard Missiles, the AEGIS Weapons system, and is now testing the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) and other advanced US Naval weapons. As such, USS Desert Ship performs live-fire test and evaluation of Navy weapons encompassing missiles, guided munitions, and high-energy laser technologies. The Detachment mission also includes Research Rockets as well as derivative rocket systems providing for the test and evaluation of ballistic missile defense at sea.
As part of the Tri-Service National Range Test Facility, the Desert Ship makes it possible to test a variety of network-centric and battle-space management scenarios. The White Sands Missile Range is fully instrumented to cutting edge, high definition radar, optical, telemetry, meteorology, and scenario control over the entire range. The US Navy has been part of the test community at White Sands since 1946.
Key features and reasons for this facility being located at White Sands in New Mexico include:
• Land-based testing provide a level of rigor, control and flexibility in the testing of Navy weapons that is not achievable at sea
• The precision instrumentation at White Sands Missile Range provides state of the art data collection, reduction and analysis.
• The ability to economically recover flight hardware for forensics and material performance and reliability assessment is not as achievable at sea
• White Sands provides the largest overland DoD controlled land and airspace within the Continental United States for testing long range Navy weapons.
• USS Desert Ship Weapons Testing involves sailors in an entire process from assembly, to system integration testing ,to actual live-fire testing against actual targets.
• The resources at White Sands provide a wide variety of options and opportunities for joint and stand-alone testing/training.
USS Desert Ship is being constantly upgraded to meet the live-fire testing requirements for today and tomorrow. The facility is taking increasing roles in cooperative, integrated synthetic testing.
USS Desert Ship was the first of two sophisticated landlocked ship facilities set up by the US Navy for system and weapon testing. USS Desert Ship in New Mexico, and the USS Rancocas, also known as the Cruiser in a Cornfield, the US Navy CSEDS facility in New Jersey.
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