by Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
The US Navy is looking for a way to ward off the threat posed by China’s hypersonic weapons. It may have found the answer in a weapon normally fielded by the US Army.
According to a report from Reuters, the Navy is going ahead with a plan to place Patriot interceptor missiles on some of its ships. The news agency quotes two senior defense officials, and also published a statement from the Navy.
“More testing is required in the development roadmap that will include launching PAC-3 MSE (Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement) from a ship and validating communication with the SPY-1 radar,” which is used in the Aegis missile system.
Last year, an American intelligence report reportedly said that China had tested an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). The missile, which is known as the DF-27, was said to have flown for 12 minutes, covering roughly 1,300 miles. The Pentagon says the missile may have a range of up to 5,000 miles.
Tim Wright of the International Institute of Strategic Studies told Reuters the DF-27 appears to use a warhead that can maneuver to evade defenses or more easily hit a moving target.
Which is why the Patriot could prove valuable. Its latest version, the PAC-3, uses steering rockets in the nose to make “hit-to-kill” interception possible. Older missiles were designed to explode in the target’s vicinity, counting on shrapnel to destroy it.
The Patriot is currently built by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, and went into operational service in 1984. It was designed to be the Army’s primary high to medium air defense system, as well as to play a role in the Army’s anti-ballistic missile system.
The Patriot made its public debut during the 1991 war, defending Israel and Saudi Arabia against Scud missile attacks from Iraq. Pentagon officials later scaled down their claims about the system, saying the Patriot had a 40 percent success rate in Israel and 70 percent in Saudi Arabia.
It has since been used in the second Gulf war, by the Israeli air defense command and by the Saudis and Emiratis against Houthi missile attacks. And the updated PAC-3 version has been used to shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles in Ukraine.
There has already been one Navy test of the PAC-3 interceptor – it was tested last May on what was described as a “virtual Aegis ship”, using a Mk 70 vertical launcher.
