NORFOLK – A few hours late, but two Norfolk-based Navy ships are headed out for six months.

USS Ramage and USS Vella Gulf are due to leave their piers at Naval Station Friday evening and Saturday, respectively, as part of the USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group.

The guided missile destroyer Ramage is carrying some of the highest-tech equipment in the Navy. It's the first East Coast surface ship to deploy with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. It allows the crew to find, track and engage targets above, on or below the ocean surface and destroy them with the ship's onboard missiles.

"Absolutely awesome," said Cdr. Pete Galluch, Ramage's commanding officer. "Absolutely exciting and it's a capability that's getting better every test the Navy runs."

The Aegis combat system's phased array radar scans in all directions at once to detect, track and engage hundreds of aircraft and missiles while continuously watching the sky for new targets from wave top to the stratosphere, the Navy said.

The rest of the Iwo Jima ESG deployed earlier this week.