The Navy Is Teaching This Old Missile Some New (And Deadly) Tricks

Hunter Stires

Security,

With the resulting new capabilities from the SM-6’s sophisticated guidance system, U.S. surface ships will be able to use SM-2s to conduct offensive strikes against enemy aircraft and surface ships out to ninety nautical miles while simultaneously remaining at emissions control and preserving their limited stock of SM-6s for more distant or challenging targets.

The SM-2 Block IIIC upgrade is a program that has largely flown “under the radar” of press attention for the past few months. This lack of popular scrutiny belies the profound operational significance of this initiative for the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet.

The RIM-66 Standard Missile 2-Medium Range has long been the staple of U.S. naval air defense against enemy aircraft and guided missiles. The current versions in the fleet, the SM-2 Block IIIA and Block IIIB, possess a range of approximately ninety nautical miles, giving Aegis surface combatants a broad-area anti-air capability to protect other forces under their umbrella.

For guidance, the SM-2 uses semi-active radar homing, a method in which the firing ship uses its tracking radar to acquire the target, and a narrower beam emitted by the ship’s trainable illuminator to “paint” the target with a radar signal that an airborne SM-2 can follow. Semi-active radar homing was state of the art when Aegis ships were first designed and built during the late Cold War. At the time, the ratio between computing power and space/weight was lower than it is today, leading designers to reserve the heavier active sensors (the radar) for shipboard use, instead placing lighter, passive sensors on the missile itself, thereby reducing weight and increasing range.