The beginning of construction of the Desert Ship coincided with the start of testing of the RIM-8 Talos missile. Although there was a mock christening upon completion of the building, the Desert Ship has never been commissioned and special permission from Congress was required to name the building "USS Desert Ship".^[3] The designation "LLS" stands for "Land Locked Ship".

Desert Ship was originally used to test the Talos missile. Subsequent uses have included testing the Standard Missile,^[4] Aegis Weapons System,^[5] and, in mid-2008, the Standard Missile 6.^[6]

The Desert Ship is one of two "Land-Locked Ships" operated by the U.S. Navy, the other being the USS Rancocas in New Jersey.^[7]

• 13 April 1941 – Alamogordo Army Airfield established.^[1]
• December 1941 – Public land grazing leases were canceled on the newly formed Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.^[1]
• 20 February 1945 – White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG) established as a missile test range.^[1]
• 26 September 1945 – A modified Navy Tiny Tim (rocket) configured as a booster for WAC Corporal became the first missile launched by the Army at WSPG.^[1]
• October 1945 – United States Army Air Corps Chief of Ordnance (OCO) invited the Navy to participate in the WSPG guided missile program.^[1]
• January 1946 – OCO offered Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) use of captured V-2 rockets for research; and NRL established the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel chaired by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Dr. James Van Allen.^[1]
• 17 May 1946 – WSPG Naval Ordnance Missile Test Facility established.^[1]
• July 1946 – Navy Bureau of Ordnance began construction of the WSPG Navy Cantonment Area.^[1]
• May 1947 – Navy began construction of the Launch Complex 35 (LC-35) blockhouse with two tiltable, 140-foot Aerobee launch towers.^[1]
• 24 November 1947 – Navy launched the first fully configured Aerobee sounding rocket, which carried cosmic-ray instruments to an altitude of 36.7 miles.^[1]
• 3 May 1949 – First launch of the Navy's Viking (rocket) reached an altitude of 50 miles.^[1]
• Late 1949 – After a V–2 was launched at sea from the deck of USS Midway, the Navy intentionally toppled and exploded a fully fueled V–2 on a segment of carrier flight deck (Operation Pushover) at WSPG.^[1]
• 21 November 1950 – Viking 5 set a single-stage altitude record of 107 miles.^[1]
• August 1951 – Viking set a single-stage altitude and speed record of 135 miles at 4,100 miles per hour.^[1]
• 1951 – Talos program testing moves to WSPG from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.^[1]
• August 1952 – First Talos missile launch at WSPG.^[1]
• May 1953 – Base name formally changed from White Sands Proving Ground to White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).^[8]
• June 1953 – Construction completed for USS Desert Ship blockhouse.^[1]
• May 1954 – Viking 11 set a single-stage altitude record of 158 miles.^[1]
• April 1957 – Aerobee-Hi set a single stage altitude record of 190 miles.^[1]
• 1957 – Completion of the Desert Ship deckhouse addition enabled missile assembly to be moved from headquarters to Desert Ship.^[1]
• September 1957 – The first land-based Talos Defense Unit (TDU) was completed just west of Desert Ship.^[1]
• December 1957 – The first launch of a TDU-directed Talos scored a direct hit on the target drone.^[1]
• March 1961 – First launch of the Typhon Combat System^[1]
• 1966 – Testing of RIM-2 Terrier and RIM-24 Tartar missiles was shifted to WSMR from China Lake.^[9]
• 1983 – Aegis fleet fire-control system completed development at WSMR and entered fleet service.^[9]