Wayne E. Meyer, father of Aegis, dies at 83 - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Wayne E. Meyer, father of Aegis, dies at 83

Retired Rear Adm. Wayne E. Meyer, a technical innovator whose contributions to the air defense systems on today’s Navy surface combatants earned him the nickname “the father of Aegis,” died Tuesday at Washington Hospital Center, the Pentagon announced. He was 83.

Meyer headed the engineering team in the 1970s that developed the Aegis air defense system carried aboard today’s cruisers and destroyers, a combination of powerful radars, missiles and computers designed to defend U.S. carrier strike groups at sea. Aegis has since been upgraded to track and hit ballistic missile targets, and in 2008 the Aegis-equipped cruiser Lake Erie even destroyed a satellite in low orbit.

“I am deeply saddened by a great loss to our Navy family,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said in a statement Tuesday. “Rear Admiral Meyer’s passion, technical acumen, and war-fighting expertise served as the foundation of our Navy combatant fleet today. On behalf of the men and women of the United States Navy, I extend my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the Meyer family. He was a close friend and mentor to so many of us. His legacy will remain in the Navy forever.”

Meyer was born April 21, 1926, in Brunswick, Mo., where he was educated in one- and two-room schoolhouses, and then a 140-student high school, before enlisting in the Navy Reserve in 1943. His first duty was to study engineering at the University of Kansas, where he was commissioned as a reserve ensign in 1946, and then went on to the surface fleet.

He returned to school in 1951, according to a Defense Department announcement, and attended the Joint Guided Missile School, Fort Bliss, Texas, and the Naval Line School, Monterey, Calif., and eventually served as an instructor at Special Weapons School, Norfolk, Va. Meyer would also go on to hold a master’s degree in astronautics and aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School.

An enthusiastic missile and electrical engineer from the beginning of his Navy career, Meyer’s time in the service paralleled the surface fleet’s shift away from World War II-style heavy guns in favor of guided missiles. He was heavily involved with both the Navy’s Terrier and TALOS missile programs, which pre-dated Aegis.

The Cold War Navy in which Meyer grew up was built to fight major open-ocean battles with its Soviet arch-nemesis, and so it needed not only the ability to strike its opponents, but also defend against incoming aircraft and missiles.

In Aegis, Meyer and Navy engineers combined powerful new phased-array radars — the distinctive SPY-1 “oyster crackers” on the superstructures of today’s cruisers and destroyers — and air defense missiles with new computers to tie it all together. With Aegis, the Navy’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers can find, track and shoot at hundreds of air and surface targets. Aegis also sails on Japanese, Korean and other international warships.

After rising to the rank of rear admiral and overseeing the Navy’s Aegis shipbuilding projects, Meyer retired in 1985 and began working as a consultant in Northern Virginia. Still, he remained a familiar presence in the surface fleet; he attended the commissioning of almost every Aegis warship.

In 2006, Navy Secretary Donald Winter announced the destroyer known as DDG 108 would carry the name “Wayne E. Meyer.”

Although Meyer was in poor health, he traveled to Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, for the light-off of the destroyer’s Aegis system and its christening the next day, Oct. 18, 2008. His wife, Ana Mae, smashed the traditional champagne bottle against the destroyer’s sonar bulb.

The Navy and shipyard officials had hoped Meyer would be able to attend the destroyer’s commissioning, scheduled for Oct. 10 in Philadelphia.