The ASBM Threat

From Aviation Week's ARES Blog

Navy Reacts To Missile Threats

Posted by Bill Sweetman at 8/14/2008 7:00 AM CDT

Tests this summer of Raytheon Standard Missile 2 weapons from the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie were intended to demonstrate technology for a quick-reaction defense against ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. In the dry terminology of missile defense, this may not sound critical, but it indicates that the Navy is very worried about a new threat: the anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM).

Indications are that China, in particular, is developing an ASBM - an intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a guided warhead. The weapon outranges any sea-based weapon, including strike aircraft, and is hard to intercept with the most widely used versions of the Standard Missile, which are designed to hit aircraft.

The Navy is responding rapidly, according to RAdm Alan Hicks, program director for Aegis missile defense at the Missile Defense Agency. (Hicks spoke at the Space & Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville on Tuesday.)

The first step involves modifying the inventory of some 100 SM-2 Block IV missiles. These were high-performance weapons designed to knock down the supersonic high-altitude cruise missiles carried by Tu-22M3 Backfire bombers. (The Block IV program was terminated with the end of the Cold War.)

The FTM-14 missile defense test, carried out off Hawaii on June 5 (and featured on the cover of the latest DTI) demonstrated the ability of the modified Block IV and the 3.6.1 upgrade to the Aegis computer system to defeat ballistic missiles. Despite an overall shortage of engineering manpower to implement its missile-defense program, the Navy is rushing the 3.6.1 modifications into service and will complete them before the end of 2009, Hicks said.

The Navy has also budgeted $488 million over six years to develop a hit-to-kill anti-ASBM capability for Aegis - the Block IV uses a blast-fragmentation warhead, a less assured kill - and would like to accelerate that program too, Hicks said. The missile would either be the new SM-6 - under development to defeat cruise missiles - or the PAC-3, modified to carry an anti-missile kill vehicle.

Missile Defense Agency director Gen. Trey Obering said in Huntsville on Wednesday that he envisages a "limited competition" between Lockheed martin and Raytheon, with a request for proposals to hit the streets in "a couple omf months... this is very critical, a high priority, and we'd like to see it in four to five years."