Upon completion of her sea-trials after construction, Lake Erie transferred to the Pacific Fleet and was commissioned on 24 July 1993 as the twenty-fourth Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser in her homeport of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

As part of a seven ship battle group, led by the aircraft carrier Constellation, Lake Erie entered the Persian Gulf 11 January 1995.

The arrival of Constellation and her escorts strengthened the U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf and supported U.N. initiatives in the region, including Operation Southern Watch.

During a deployment with the Constellation battle group in July 1997, Chosin turned over the duties of being regional Air Defense Commander to Lake Erie.

In early August 1997 Lake Erie was involved in two major Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (TBMD) exercises in the Persian Gulf named Arabian Skies.

On 16 May 1998 Lake Erie returned to the Persian Gulf with elements of the Constellation battle group before she concluded her tour in the 5th Fleet with a joint-combined exercise with military forces from Pakistan.

The purpose of this four-day training mission was to exercise the joint-combined naval and air capabilities of both countries, improve their respective levels of readiness and interoperability, and enhance military relations between the two nations.

Lake Erie and Port Royal were then to conduct at sea testing, develop core doctrine and tactics, and serve as focal points for putting the TBMD technology in the hands of the warfighters in the rest of the fleet.

On 17 December 1999, Lake Erie returned to her homeport at Naval Station Pearl Harbor after completing a six-month deployment to the western Pacific and Persian Gulf.

In January 2001, Lake Erie conducted the Aegis Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP) Intercept Flight Test Round (FTR-1A) mission in the mid-Pacific using the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii.

On 9 February 2001 Lake Erie sortied from Pearl Harbor to assist along with Coast Guard boats and cutters with rescue efforts after the attack submarine Greeneville struck a Japanese fishing vessel while surfacing at approximately 1:45 pm (HST) about nine miles south of the Diamond Head crater off Honolulu, Hawaii.

Lake Erie was expected to replace John Paul Jones as a rotational Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) deployer after the maintenance period.