Navy Fires New SM-6 to Prep for Combat Use

By Kris Osborn

With upgraded software – enabling it to perform a range of functions to inlcude air-warfare, ballistic missile terminal defense and anti-surface warfare capabilities, service officials said.

The Navy successfully executed four flight tests of the surface-to-air Standard Missile-6 Block I (SM-6 Blk I) off the Hawaiian coast between April 6 and 13. The test mark a key step along the way to delivering a combat-ready weapon to Navy ships.

“I’m very proud of my team for the seamless planning and execution of these flight tests, which are the culmination of disciplined systems engineering efforts. These latest flight test successes demonstrate once again the versatile capability of SM-6 Blk I,” Capt. Michael Ladner, major program manager for Surface Ship Weapons, Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, said in a written statement from Naval Sea Systems Command.

These tests come shortly after recent Missile Defense Agency and Navy testing which simultaneously fired two Standard Missile-6 weapons in rapid succession at a single ballistic missile target to asses performance against medium-range ballistic missile threats in the final stage of flight.

Using an “active seeker” technology, two SM-6 missiles were able to simultaneously track and destroy a single target, greatly improving the probability of a target kill.

“You now have absolute assurance of hit no matter what the threat is doing. If the threat takes a turn and does some strange maneuver and the first missile is unable to sense it and engage it, the second missile will,” Mike Campisi, SM-6 Senior Director, Raytheon, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

A statement from the Missile Defense Agency described how a Navy destroyer “fired a salvo of two SM-6 Dual I missiles against a complex medium-range ballistic missile target, demonstrating the Sea Based Terminal endo-atmospheric defensive capability.”