Non-Standard: Navy SM-6 Kills Cruise Missiles Deep Inland

Non-Standard: Navy SM-6 Kills Cruise Missiles Deep Inland
Non-Standard: Navy SM-6 Kills Cruise Missiles Deep Inland

You wouldn’t expect the Navy to test its weapons in the desert. But that’s just what happened Thursday at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, an Army facility 500 miles from the sea, where a Standard Missile-6 successfully intercepted a mock cruise missile flying low and slow over land. Hitting that target is one sign…

Aegis BMD Passes Key Test; Multiple Launches At Multiple Targets Next

Aegis BMD Passes Key Test; Multiple Launches At Multiple Targets Next
Aegis BMD Passes Key Test; Multiple Launches At Multiple Targets Next

At 1:30 am this morning – 7:30 pm yesterday Hawaiian time — the Navy’s newest missile defense system marked its second successful shootdown in a month. Under what Lockheed Martin called an “operationally realistic scenario” – more on that in a moment – the USS Lake Erie picked up the target with its Aegis Ballistic Missile…

Missile Defense: SM-3 Interceptor Makes A High-Altitude Hat Trick

Missile Defense: SM-3 Interceptor Makes A High-Altitude Hat Trick
Missile Defense: SM-3 Interceptor Makes A High-Altitude Hat Trick

After failing its first test back in 2011, the Raytheon-built SM-3 Block IB missile looks like it’s back on track, with yesterday marking the third successful test in a row, each against increasingly difficult targets launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai island in Hawaii. The SM-3 IB is the latest iteration of…

Pentagon’s Global Strike Weapon Stuck In Limbo; Congress Fears Accidental Nuclear War

As part of its ongoing strategic “pivot” towards the Pacific, early this year the Defense Department announced it would design a new missile able to quickly cross long distances and penetrate sophisticated air defenses, of the kind rapidly proliferating across Asia. The so-called “conventional prompt strike option” would be submarine-launched, the Pentagon said in its…