The Navy needs some seven or eight more ballistic-missile-defense (BMD) Aegis weapon system surface ships immediately to meet demands of combatant commanders, and the sea service definitely will need more of the BMD ships later, Rear Adm. Brad Hicks, Aegis BMD program director, said.

But he didn’t supply even a ballpark estimate as to just how many Aegis ships with the BMD upgrade ultimately will be required, in response to a question from Space & Missile Defense Report. Hicks spoke before a conference of the Surface Navy Association at a hotel near the Pentagon.

The Navy currently has built or in progress a total 84 DDG 51 Arleigh Burke Class destroyers, and Ticonderoga Class cruisers as well. Some 18 older ships are upgraded to the BMD capability, and three more are planned. Also, new-build ships will have the BMD capability built in at the yards.

Further, the Navy may opt to build some seven to eight more of the Burkes, instead of building the final four planned futuristic DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class destroyers, which would make a total fleet of 91 or 92 destroyers and cruisers with Aegis systems.

Hicks said he can’t estimate how many of those ships eventually will be BMD capable.

With 18 ships upgrading, he said, "Right now, to meet the current combatant commander requirements, I need about seven or eight more ships. Now! So it’s just going to get — as sure as the sun rises, it’s going to get more. And so we’re looking at those options."

For example, the United States is planning to construct a European Missile Defense (EMD) system in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in ground silos), to protect Europe and the United States from enemy missiles launched by rogue nations in the Middle East, such as Iran.. While administrative leaders of those nations have approved the EMD, parliaments there haven’t given final approval yet. And in Washington, Congress has placed multiple preconditions on building the system, such as demanding test-flights of the interceptors.

The Navy would be hard pressed to defend Europe from Iranian missiles using BMD Aegis ships, Hicks indicated.

"If you want 7 by 24 by 365 days a year defense of Europe, we can underlay and surge to help protect Europe," he said. "But right now, until we get the next version of the [Standard] Missile Block IIA [interceptor], defending all of Europe, it’s so asset-intensive, I think, we’d have to re-look in the whole force structure issue, for our ship capacity," Hicks said.

Hicks referred to Adm. Robert Willard, Pacific Fleet commander overseeing missile defense ships near North Korea.

"Because right now, I guarantee you, and I do have these discussions with Adm. Willard … he has his own opinion of how he would like to use his Aegis ships. It’s not necessarily just to do BMD, [but rather to also] go on to do other things.

Because he has to do ASW, assured access, he’s got a lot things to do with his ships. So while it looks like we have a lot of Aegis ships available, they are a high-demand asset right now," Hicks said.