A possible century of Arleigh Burke influence

Admiral Arleigh Burke's long hours, volatile temper, and expectation that his staff would work equally hard introduce the comparison with his namesake destroyers. The ships were conceived as general-purpose escorts connecting carriers, cruisers, submarines, and frigates, with another class expected to follow a limited production run. Their development spanned the final decades of the Cold War, when planners still had to consider a violent Soviet collapse. Conception in the 1970s, construction extending into the 2030s, and a further thirty years of service for the last ships could give the design roughly a century of influence. That is a forecast about the class's life from conception to retirement. Its sustained role as the benchmark for later US destroyers explains why replacing it has proved difficult.