The Navy's Air Defense Missile Will Become a Supersonic Ship Killer

Popular Mechanics ^ | February 10th, 2016 | By Eric Tegler

[Mariner]

Back in 2014, the guided missile-carrying destroyer USS John Paul Jones made history. During a live fire missile tests, one of its SM-6 air defense missiles completed the longest surface-to-air engagement in naval history. The Navy wouldn't say the exact range of the missile for security's sake, but the ability to take out incoming missiles or aircraft at long range is obviously valuable.

Now, that ability is expanding. The Navy says it will modify the Raytheon-built Standard Missile-6 to act as a supersonic anti-ship missile. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has confirmed the service was developing the anti-ship SM-6 in an effort to give Navy cruisers and destroyers a weapon capable of reaching such targets more than 200 nautical miles away.

"We are going to create a brand-new capability," Carter said during a February 10 press conference in San Diego. "We're modifying the SM-6 so that in addition to missile defense, it can also target enemy ships at sea at very long ranges."

[Mariner]

"What if they were able to make a fusion bomb. "

They've had fusion bombs for over 30 years.

[spetznaz]

Neither the Russian or Chinese missiles match the SM-6 for range and speed

Are you sure about that? The Standard SM6 version has a range of 200 nautical miles (230 miles or 370 km), goes at Mach 3.5 and carries a warhead that's just 125 pounds.

The main Russian missile, the Oniks, has a range of 370 miles (600 km), and carries a 250KG warhead at mach 3. While the SM6 is faster (3.5m vs 3.0m), the Oniks is still fast enough to spoof virtually any defense system and operational procedure is to ripple launch them. Moreover, the Oniks has a significantly longer range and carries a vastly larger warhead.

Anyway, the purpose of my first post was not really a , erm, stick measuring contest. I'm very glad the USN has a supersonic ASM that can enable it to reach out quickly and disable enemy surface combatants, and enable slower missiles like the ASM version of the Tomahawk or the Harpoon to successfully hard kill that which has already been soft killed. Also, as you mentioned before, a fast missile hitting the aluminum superstructure of a ship would result in a bad day for the ship's crew.

However, the USN will still need to come up with a heavy supersonic/hypersonic ASM that is a real ship killer, and the enhancement of the SM6 shows that thinking has started to shift that way (there is some good info on the failed DARPA supersonic missile project, which apparently seems to have been resurrected. A true HYPERSONIC ASM to put to shame anything from Russia).

[Crucial]

The blast from a hydrogen bomb is only initiated by fusion but is not the result of fusion itself.