The Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. Navy will test a new variant of SM-6 missile
designed to counter specific types of hypersonic threats.
The plan will see the missile taking on an "advanced maneuvering threat,"
a term that has been used in relation to unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicles or HGVs.
As per reports, the new variant of SM-6 missile named Block IB
is already under development for this purpose and will itself be able to reach hypersonic speeds.
This will create a whole new dimension to American military capabilities
and help it protects its important assets like supercarriers from Chinese & Russian HGVs.
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how U.S plans to defeat Hypersonic Glide Vehicles
with SM-6 Block 1B missile? Let's get into the details.
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Barbara McQuiston, a senior U.S. official currently performing the duties of the
Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering stated in written testimony,
"MDA [the Missile Defense Agency], in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, demonstrated early capability
against maneuvering threats during flight-testing of the Standard Missile (SM)-6 Sea-Based Terminal
(SBT) defense, and it will further demonstrate this capability against an advanced maneuvering
threat-representative target later this year. We will continue to advance our SBT capability to
address the regional hypersonic threat and will test that capability in the FY 2024 timeframe."
Viewers may note that U.S Navy currently uses Aegis Missile Defense System for missile defense.
The Aegis Missile Defense System is a United States Department of Defense
(DoD), Missile Defense Agency program developed to provide missile defense against short to
intermediate-range ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles.
Aegis-equipped vessels like Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers to shoot
down enemy missiles in the terminal flight phase by expanding the Aegis Combat System
with the addition of the AN/SPY radar and Standard missile or SM technologies.
The system will likely be enhanced with the new variant of SM-6 to counter HGVs.
An object is said to be hypersonic once they exceed speeds of Mach
5 or 5 times the speed of sound.
This is about 1,715 meters per second or 3,836 mph or 6,174 kph.
There are currently 3 methods being applied to make hypersonic weapons.
The first is through the use of ALBM or Air-Launched Ballistic missile.
As the name suggests, this kind of missile is ballistic in nature but is launched from air,
unlike traditional ballistic missiles which are launched from land or sea-based platforms.
The second is using a Scramjet engine. The scramjet is an innovation on the Ramjet.
Ramjet engine can power flight to supersonic speeds but scramjet can
enable the missiles to reach hypersonic speeds. These engines have no moving parts and rely on
the huge pressures created by fast airflow into the engine to ignite the fuel and generate thrust.
In this method, a rocket booster is used to accelerate the missile to hypersonic speed,
then the scramjet engine kicks in and enables the missile to fly at sustained hypersonic speed.
The third is using HGV or Hypersonic Glide Vehicle.
In this method, the system is launched to extremely high altitudes using a Ballistic Missile
or an aircraft where it skips across the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The vehicle then separates from
the carrier and glides back to the earth towards its intended target attaining hypersonic speed.
This is the type that U.S. Navy hopes to overcome using SM-6 Block 1B missile.
Russia & China are the only countries to have HGVs under limited operational deployment.
In 2018, during the 'state of the nation' address, President Putin had unveiled several new weapons
and one of them was Avangard. At that time Mr. Putin had described
it by saying “It heads to target like a meteorite, like a fireball”
Avangard has been deployed using a UR-100UTTKh ICBM and in one of the tests,
it reached a speed of Mach 27 as per Yury Borisov, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia.
China has developed DF-17 missile along with DF-ZF HGV.
Dongfeng-17 is a Chinese solid-fuelled road-mobile medium-range ballistic missile
that mounts the DF-ZF Hypersonic Glide Vehicle.
The DF-17's hypersonic armament gives China significant leverage over current conventional
weapons due to the glide vehicle's unpredictable ballistic trajectory.
The DF-17 & DF-ZF, was officially unveiled at the National Day military parade on 1 October 2019.
The RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM), or Standard Missile 6
(SM-6) have been deployed by the US Navy to counter different kinds of threats.
It was designed for extended-range anti-air warfare
(ER-AAW) purposes providing capability against fixed and rotary-wing aircraft,
unmanned aerial vehicles, anti-ship cruise missiles in flight, both over sea and land,
and terminal ballistic missile defense. It can also be used as a high-speed anti-ship missile.
The missile uses the airframe of the earlier SM-2ER
Block IV (RIM-156A) missile and some targeting elements from AIM-120C AMRAAM.
It can discriminate targets using its dual-mode seeker,
with the semi-active seeker relying on a ship-based illuminator to highlight the target,
and the active seeker having the missile itself sends out an electromagnetic signal.
SM 6 has a max speed of Mach 3.5 and has a 140 lb or 64 kg blast fragmentation warhead.
The Block 1B variant is expected to see some major upgrades to propulsion and guidance.
It is to be noted that America’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released
some time back has stated that the U.S currently lacks the defenses required
to protect against the latest crop of hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.
The report states, “China and Russia are pursuing
hypersonic weapons because their speed, altitude, and maneuverability
may defeat most missile defense systems, and they may be used to improve long-range
conventional and nuclear strike capabilities. There are no existing countermeasures.”
In its response to the GAO, the Department of Defense described the report as “an accurate
although sobering macro picture of how the US stands in the world against emerging threats.”
This situation is expected to change with the introduction of the SM-6 Block 1B missile.