US Navy Fires SM-3 To Destroy Iranian Missiles in First Combat Use

By Olawale Abaire, Warrior Editorial Fellow

For the first time in combat, guided-missile destroyers fired missiles developed to intercept ballistic missiles during the U.S. response to the Iranian attack on Israel4. The USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) and USS Carney (DDG-64), in the Eastern Mediterranean, fired four to seven Standard Missile 3s to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles headed toward Israeli targets.

In an unprecedented act of defense, the US Navy’s warships successfully intercepted Iranian ballistic missiles using the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) missile interceptor, marking its first-ever use in a combat scenario. The US Navy’s warships have indeed made a significant achievement. The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1B interceptor missile was launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie.

The SM-3s don’t carry normal explosive warheads but “exo-atmospheric kill vehicles”, EKVs, designed to destroy targets travelling at immense velocities beyond the Earth’s atmosphere in space. The SM-3’s EKV payload is unusual. It doesn’t explode but destroys targets by hovering precisely in their way and letting them collide with it, wrecking themselves as much or more by their own kinetic energy as that of the EKV.

This successful interception has big implications for US forces as they plan for a possible war with China. Not only is the American fleet counting on destroyers and cruisers armed with SM-3s to protect aircraft carriers and amphibious ships from the biggest and most dangerous Chinese ballistic missiles, US forces on the island of Guam – one of America’s main Pacific outposts – plan to include the SM-3 in a new missile-defense system for the island.

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The Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, confirmed the deployment of the SM-3 during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing. He stated that the American forces launched the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) to counter the Iranian ballistic missiles, which were part of a massive onslaught involving over 300 missiles and drones initiated from Tehran and its allies.