Nuclear-powered icebreaker
On 17 August 1977, NS "Arktika" ("Arctic") became the first surface ship ever to reach the North Pole. "Arktika" was withdrawn from service in 2008 after clocking up 175,000 hours of reactor operation time and covering more than 1 million nautical miles. Rather than be scrapped, there are calls for her to be converted to a museum ship, like her predecessor "Lenin".
Arleigh Burke-class destroyer
The ships of the "Arleigh Burke" class are among the largest destroyers built in the United States. Only the , () and classes () are longer. The larger ships were constructed on "Spruance"-class hull forms, but are designated as cruisers due to their radically different mission and weapons systems than the "Spruance" and "Kidd"-class destroyers. The "Arleigh Burke" class were designed with a new, large, water-plane area-hull form characterized by a wide flaring bow which significantly improves sea-keeping ability. The hull form is designed to permit high speed in high sea states.
The designers of "Arleigh Burke" incorporated lessons learned from the "Ticonderoga"-class guided-missile cruisers, which were deemed too expensive to continue building and too difficult to further upgrade. With the "Arleigh Burke" class, the U.S. Navy also returned to all-steel construction. An earlier generation had combined a steel hull with an innovative superstructure made of lighter aluminum to reduce top weight, but the lighter metal proved vulnerable to cracking. Aluminum is also less fire-resistant than steel; a 1975 fire aboard gutted her aluminum superstructure. Battle damage to Royal Navy ships exacerbated by their aluminum superstructures during the 1982 Falklands War supported the decision to use steel. Another lesson from the Falklands War led the navy to protect the ship's vital spaces with double-spaced steel armor (creating a buffer against modern rockets) and kevlar spall liners.
The "Arleigh Burke" design incorporates stealth techniques, such as the angled rather than traditional vertical surfaces and the tripod mainmast, which make the ship more difficult to detect, in particular by antiship missiles. A Collective Protection System makes the "Arleigh Burke" class the first U.S. warships designed with an air-filtration system against nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. Other NBC defenses include a "countermeasure wash down system".
Their Aegis Combat System differs from a traditional rotating radar that mechanically rotates 360 degrees for each sweep scan of the airspace. Instead, Aegis uses a passive electronically scanned array, which allows continual tracking of targets simultaneous with area scans. The system's computer control also allows centralization of the previously separate tracking and targeting functions. The system is also resistant to electronic countermeasures. Their stand-alone Harpoon antiship missile launchers give them an antiship capability with a range in excess of .
With the retirement of the Tomahawk antiship missile variant, only the "Arleigh Burke"-class ships before Flight IIA versions are well-equipped for antisurface warfare with Harpoon launchers. Others are not, but are loaded with SM-2 missiles in their vertical launch cells capable of an antiship mode, though they have limited range and damage potential.