How reliable is AEGIS in real combat?

Shield of the fleet?

The AEGIS defense system on U.S. Navy ships is a big money maker.

Yet, during combat qualifications, an AEGIS ship with weapons on it, let a target drone hit it.

"Chancellorsville was in the midst of testing the new Baseline 9 configuration when an errant Northrop Grumman BQM-74 target drone struck the ship during its Combat System Ship Qualification Trials in November."

How "errant" will a BrahMos or other super-sonic ship-killing missile be in the coming years. Prince of Wales and Repulse?

The Navy has had a bad history telling the truth about AEGIS. Much of this started with the shoot-down of the Iranian airliner in 1988. See this article from The Boston Globe of that year:


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Then there are other statements by the U.S. GAO of that same year that big Navy sanitized AEGIS test reports.

Chelimsky suggested Aegis has been tested mostly against high-flying whiffle balls. Worse, she asserted, test failures were stamped secret and kept hidden from the public and from the members of Congress who will vote billions of dollars for a modified version of the Aegis system going aboard the Navy`s new ``Arleigh Burke`` destroyers.

Finishing with this from 2010:

The 2010 final report of the Fleet Review Panel of Surface Force Readiness (short-handed as the Balisle Report, after panel leader, retired Vice Adm. Philip Balisle) found the condition of the Aegis systems fleet wide suffering due to lack of parts, training and lack of qualified personnel.

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