Anti-Aircraft Missile Sinks Ship: Navy SM-6
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on March 07, 2016 at 4:41 PM
The supersonic SM-6 Standard Missile, designed to shoot down incoming aircraft and cruise missiles, has sunk a target ship in a test. The decommissioned frigate Reuben James went down off Hawaii in the January event, just disclosed today. The test was part of the Navy’s effort to rebuild its firepower to destroy enemy fleets, a concept called Distributed Lethality. Repurposing defensive missiles as offensive ones also reflects a Pentagon push to make old weapons do new tricks for a minimum added cost.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the US Navy refocused from fighting hostile fleets to striking land targets. Air defense for carrier task forces and ballistic missile defense for friendly nations also became ever-higher priorities. As a result, destroyers and cruisers increasingly filled their missile tubes with Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles and defensive Standard Missiles — leaving less and less room for anti-ship weapons. What’s more, the anti-ship weapons we do have are almost all variants on the venerable Harpoon, which is outranged by newer Russian weapons and their Chinese copies. So with the return of Russia’s navy and the rise of China’s, the shortfall in fleet-vs.-fleet firepower has become painfully apparent.
(...SNIPPED)
