The Pentagon has been surging into production with its latest, most high tech ship-launched interceptor called the SM-3 Block IIA, a larger, longer-range and more precise interceptor engineered with software and propulsion technologies sufficient to track and destroy ICBMs right near the boundary of the earth’s atmosphere.
The SM-3 has long been an effective ballistic missile interceptor fired from Vertical Launch Systems on warships, yet in recent years the newest SM-3 Block IIA has been tested as an additional layer of support for ICBM defense at sea.
DoD “Missile Defense Review” from several years ago explore the prospect of using an advanced SM-3 IIA to “underlay” and assist existing Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI), adding new dimensions to the current US missile defense posture. This ability has now been successfully tested and the Pentagon is making sea-based missile defense more robust. An ability to destroy an ICBM from sea offers a wide range of angles and “apertures” through which to destroy incoming ICBMs, as ships do not have to operate from a specific fixed location. Missile defenses could move to high threat areas and blanket or protect key areas with a layer of ICBM detection.
A mobile, sea-based ICBM defense could massively expand the protective envelope for identifying and intercepting enemy attacks. As opposed to fixed, land-based GBIs, Navy ships could maneuver into key positions based on warnings or intelligence information. Should they operate closer to the shore, Navy ships armed with SM-3 IIAs could bring the possibility of taking out an ICBM early in its flight, perhaps just after it enters space.
“Due to the mobility of sea-based assets, this new (SM-3 IIA) underlay capability will be surged in a crisis or conflict to further thicken defensive capabilities for the US homeland,” the DoD Missile Defense Review adds.
The SM-3 IIA, which has achieved several new test milestones and already demonstrated an ability to intercept short and medium range ballistic missiles, is the latest, most high-tech SM-3 variant; compared to previous SM-3 variants, the SM-3 IIA is larger, more precise and longer range. SM-3 missiles, launched from both Navy ship Vertical Launch Tubes and land-based Aegis Ashore systems, have had an ability to travel beyond the roughly 60-mile limit of the earth’s atmosphere. However, until now, SM-3 IIAs have not generally been thought of as a weapon able to intercept or destroy larger, faster, space-traveling ICBMs.
Not only are ICBMs obviously operating at much higher altitudes than short or intermediate range ballistic missiles, but they are much faster. Traveling as fast as 10,000 miles per hour in some cases, ICBMs present a harder target to hit, particularly if traveling with decoys and other countermeasures. The SM-3 IIA’s size, range, speed and sensor technology, the testing suggests, will enable it to collide with and destroy enemy ICBMs toward the beginning or end of their flight through space, where they are closer to the boundary of the earth’s atmosphere.
