January 31, 200818 yr So, can the SM-2 and company use off-board targeting or relay via helo over the horizon? That would make the SAMs a decent anti-ship missile against most targets imho. If they can, its not something that is talked about much in open sources afaik. As you know, the SM-2 is semi-active radar guided, so the missile is provided in-flight targeting data by the ship through an RF link until the target enters the seeker field-of-view. The Block IIIA/B and later missiles have Co-operative Engagement Capability (CEC) that allows other ships to provide target tracking data to the ships that are launching the missiles. This permits control of the missile to be transferred to another ship either during the midcourse phase or during the transition into the terminal phase, in what is known as a "Forward Pass" engagement. Now, keep in mind that the Hawkeye 2000 (and later) also has CEC, and will cue SM-2/SM-3 against distant airborne targets, so theoretically, I suppose, there's no reason why it couldn't do the same against surface targets.
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