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.
Congress Fights for More Aircraft Carrier Funding
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.
Del Toro elaborated, “We’ve been deploying SM-2s and SM-6s, and just over the weekend, SM-3s, to effectively neutralize the ballistic missile threat emanating from Iran.” Prior to this, US officials had reported that two destroyers, the USS Arleigh Burke and USS Carney, operating in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, had intercepted and neutralized at least four Iranian ballistic missiles. However, the exact method employed by the warships to neutralize the threats was not immediately disclosed.
The SM-3, a component of the Navy’s advanced Aegis Combat System, is designed to intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles during the midcourse phase of flight using a kinetic kill vehicle. What sets the SM-3 apart is its ability to perform exo-atmospheric intercepts, enabling it to neutralize targets beyond Earth’s atmosphere, a capability not found in the Navy’s other air-defense systems. This makes the SM-3’s mission particularly challenging due to the high mid-course speed and the requirement to target the re-entry vehicle instead of the separated booster.
Likewise, Israel’s Arrow 3 missile-defense system, another exo-atmospheric weapon capable of neutralizing enemy threats in space, was also deployed. It successfully intercepted many of the 120 ballistic missiles that Iran launched at Israel. The Arrow 3, along with its predecessor, Arrow 2, forms the upper tier of the country’s sophisticated air-defense network.
It was reported that 99% of the threats launched by Iran and its proxies, which included one-way attack drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, were intercepted by Israel’s military and its allied forces in the Middle East. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated that American forces specifically destroyed more than 80 drones and at least six ballistic missiles.
OLAWALE ABAIRE is a Warrior researcher, writer and analyst who has written many published nonfiction books
