The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency Test-Fired its New, Larger SM-3IIA Interceptor Missile in Space

Kris Osborn

Security,

Why Russia should be VERY worried. 

The SM-3 IIA can hit bigger targets, such as incoming enemy ballistic missiles, at longer distances than previous SM-3 interceptor missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency and Raytheon fired a new SM-3 missile variant into space and destroy an approaching enemy missile target - as a way to develop a new interceptor better able to detect and attack ballistic missile threats approaching the earth’s atmosphere from space.

For the first time, the new SM-3 IIA missile intercepted a ballistic missile target firing from the USS John Paul Jones - a Navy destroyer. 

"John Paul Jones detected and tracked the target missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1D(V) radar using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile which intercepted the target," a MDA statement said. 

The new SM-3IIA missile is slated to fire from a land-based missile defense site planned by the Pentagon for Poland by 2018, a Missile Defense Agency spokesman, told Scout Warrior in a statement.

The SM-3 Block IIA is being developed cooperatively by the United States and Japan to defeat medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor operates as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system and can be launched from Aegis-equipped ships or Aegis Ashore sites, MDA Spokesman Chris Johnson said in a written statement. 

SM-3 missiles, first deployed on Navy ships, are exo-atmospheric interceptor missiles designed to destroy short and intermediate range incoming enemy ballistic missiles in above the earth’s atmosphere. With the weapon, threats are destroyed in space during what’s described as the mid-course phase of flight.

"The SM-3 Block IIA missile is a larger version of the SM-3 IB in terms of boosters and the kinetic warhead, which allows for increased operating time. The second and third stage boosters on the SM-IIA are 21" in diameter,allowing for longer flight  times and engagements of threats higher in the exo-atmosphere," Missile Defense Agency spokesman Christopher Szkrybalo told Scout Warrior in a statement prior to this most recent test. 

The objective of the test, off the coast of Hawaii, is to demonstrate an intercept of a medium-range ballistic missile target by an SM-3-IIA launched from a U.S. Aegis BMD configured ship at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Szkrybalo added.