[3] The new AEGIS system allowed Ticonderoga to track and engage many aerial targets more effectively than any previous U.S. Navy warship.

Ticonderoga was delivered to the U.S. Navy on 13 December 1982 and commissioned in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 22 January 1983 with Captain Roland Guilbault in command.

Departing for her new homeport of Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, soon after her commissioning in Pascagoula, Ticonderoga completed exercises in the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

Although stopping in Portsmouth, England, for a brief port visit, Ticonderoga was dispatched to the coast of Beirut following the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks on 23 October 1983.

During her 48 days on station, she fired her five-inch guns at hostile artillery units attempting to shoot down two F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft performing a reconnaissance mission over Lebanon.

On 8 September 1984, while Ticonderoga was conducting exercises east of Mayport, Florida, a fire broke out in her aft main engine exhaust uptake.

[4] On 23 March 1986, Ticonderoga, while conducting a Freedom of Navigation exercise in the Gulf of Sidra, moved south of the "Line of Death" in Libya, covered by fighter aircraft.

[4] In the late 1980s, she served in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will while under the command of Captain James M. Arrison III, USN.

For a time in the late 1990s, she was based at Pascagoula, Mississippi, as part of Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic's Western Hemisphere Group.

Ticonderoga successfully intercepted five cigarette-shaped “go-fast” smuggling boats, and one fishing vessel, netting over 14,000 pounds of cocaine, and detaining 25 suspects in the process.

[9] In October of the same year, The Ticonderoga Historical Society reported that the US Navy was going to scrap the ship after a number of potential museum sites were unable to add her to their collections.