USS Ticonderoga (DDG/CG-47), nicknamed "Tico", was a guided-missile cruiser built for the United States Navy. She was the lead ship of the Ticonderoga-class and the first U.S. Navy combatant to incorporate the Aegis combat system. Originally ordered as a guided-missile destroyer, she was redesignated as a cruiser after capabilities from the cancelled Strike cruiser program were implemented into the ship's design. The new AEGIS system allowed Ticonderoga to track and engage many aerial targets more effectively than any previous U.S. Navy warship.
Ticonderoga entered service in 1983 and deployed later that year to the Mediterranean. Over her first ten years of service, Ticonderoga deployed multiple times to the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans and the Persian Gulf. During Operation Desert Storm, she was attached to Battle Force Zulu and served as Arabian Gulf Track Coordinator. Although she was built with a 35 year service life, the limited missile capacity of Ticonderoga's twin Mark 26 missile launch systems rendered her obsolete by the end of the Cold War. As a result Ticonderoga adopted a primary mission of counternarcotics in the 1990s and 2000s and made multiple patrols of the Caribbean in that role.
After being decommissioned in 2004, Ticonderoga was stored at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia. She arrived in Brownsville, Texas for scrapping in 2020.
