Slitherine

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U.S. company Northrop Grumman says it has demonstrated a successful launch of a Raytheon AIM-9X air-to-air test missile from a submerged Tomahawk Capsule Launching System. The successful test, part of the Littoral Warfare Weapon project, marks a milestone for a payload not designed for an undersea environment.

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General Characteristics, SM-2 Block III/IIIA/IIIB Medium Range Primary Function: Surface to air missile.
Contractor: Raytheon Missile Systems.
ate Deployed: 1981 (SM-2 MR).
Propulsion: Dual thrust, solid fuel rocket.
Length: 15 feet, 6 inches (4.72 meters).
Diameter: 13.5 inches (34.3 cm).
Wingspan: 3 feet 6 inches (1.08 meters).
Weight: SM-2: 1,558 pounds (708 kg).
Range: Up to 90 nautical miles (104 statute miles).

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The SM-6 selection surprised me at first, because its reported ranges are well short of the 1,000 miles the Army wants for the Mid-Range Capability. While the real range is classified, estimates range up to 290 miles (250 nautical miles).

However, the Navy is now developing an extended-range model of the SM-6, the Block 1B. (It’ll use the rocket booster from another Standard Missile variant, the ICBM-killing SM-3, which is known to have a range greater than 1,000 miles). What’s more, while the current SM-6 maxes out at Mach 3.5, the SM-6 Block 1B will reportedly reach hypersonic speeds, i.e. above Mach 5. While the Navy plans for Block 1B to complete development only in 2024, it wouldn’t be a stretch to have a handful of missiles available early for the Army’s MRC roll-out in late 2023.

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The Mid-Range Capability will slot in between the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), a 500-plus-km (310+ mile) replacement for the aging ATACMS, and the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), whose classified range is in the thousands of kilometers.

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The description, however, aligns with the known elements of the SM-6 Block 1B development program. In budget documents submitted last year for fiscal 2020, the Navy described a plan to field the SM-6 Block 1B by fiscal 2024 with a wider, 21-in.-dia. booster to increase the range and speed of the standard, Mach 3.5-class missile, but the documents did not say by how much. The fiscal 2020 budget documents also mention plans to add a new thermal protection system and update the guidance, navigation and control system for the SM-6 Block 1B.

Guerts’ testimony on March 10 is not the first to link the SM-6 Block 1B to the antisurface-warfare role. A presentation by the Navy at the Surface Warfare Association’s annual conference in January 2019 listed the SM-6 Block 1B on a chart as one of several antisurface-warfare weapons. But Guerts’ testimony adds a potentially important detail. He referenced a new “warhead design” for the new hypersonic weapon, addressing a flaw of the baseline version of the SM-6 for an anti-surface application. The warhead on the baseline SM-6 weighs only 140 lb., a mass the Congressional Budget Office cited as inadequate against a modern combat ship.