W.E.B. Du Bois
04-27-2011, 06:59 AM
I first read news about the navy's new SM-6 missile and thought to myself: SM-6?!!?! I thought they were still working on SM-3!!! SM stands for Standard Missiles and it's the Navy's primary defensive weapon against hostile aircraft and inbound anti-ship cruise missiles. Recently with the SM-3, the Navy has taken the technological leap of making Aegis destroyers floating Anti-Ballistic Missile Batteries (currently deployed against North Korea) as well.
So you expect SM-6 to be really fucking cool. It's not. It blows. It's an AMRAAM missile strapped onto a booster rocket. That's all it is. The AMRAAM missile is the Air Forces standard anti-aircraft missile. It's a decent missile, I'm ball parking at around 10-15 years old. I think it's inferior to new European missiles like the French Aster and British Meteor (if I recall correctly).
So anyway, I expect more from a Standard Missile than just strapping an AMRAAM onto a booster rocket. It's got advantages: it's got 200 miles range, it's cheap and it can operate independently from its home ship (at 200 miles range it's well over the horizon and so it needs that independence). However, I don't think it's got new technologies or techniques to lock in on cruise missiles. Rather, it's targeting the plane that drops the cruise missiles itself. That leaves a gap in terms of capability.
If Russia, China or India develop a longer range missile, the SM-6 now finds itself perhaps incapable of the job it's assigned to. Russia and India already have such missiles. I'm sure the Brahmos missile and it's upgraded variants can find a way to get inside a 200 mile radius without the platform (like an Su-27 variant) being destroyed by SM-6. So boom there it is, the missile is pretty close to obsolete and it hasn't even been mass produced yet.
Fuck.
WEB
Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/sm-6.htm
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Raytheon_Delivers_First_Standard_Missile_6_To_US_N avy_999.html
So you expect SM-6 to be really fucking cool. It's not. It blows. It's an AMRAAM missile strapped onto a booster rocket. That's all it is. The AMRAAM missile is the Air Forces standard anti-aircraft missile. It's a decent missile, I'm ball parking at around 10-15 years old. I think it's inferior to new European missiles like the French Aster and British Meteor (if I recall correctly).
So anyway, I expect more from a Standard Missile than just strapping an AMRAAM onto a booster rocket. It's got advantages: it's got 200 miles range, it's cheap and it can operate independently from its home ship (at 200 miles range it's well over the horizon and so it needs that independence). However, I don't think it's got new technologies or techniques to lock in on cruise missiles. Rather, it's targeting the plane that drops the cruise missiles itself. That leaves a gap in terms of capability.
If Russia, China or India develop a longer range missile, the SM-6 now finds itself perhaps incapable of the job it's assigned to. Russia and India already have such missiles. I'm sure the Brahmos missile and it's upgraded variants can find a way to get inside a 200 mile radius without the platform (like an Su-27 variant) being destroyed by SM-6. So boom there it is, the missile is pretty close to obsolete and it hasn't even been mass produced yet.
Fuck.
WEB
Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/sm-6.htm
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Raytheon_Delivers_First_Standard_Missile_6_To_US_N avy_999.html