SM-6
The US Navy's multi-role interceptor — Standard Missile 6 combines long-range air defense, terminal ballistic-missile defense, and anti-ship strike into one round, and became the first US weapon to down an anti-ship ballistic missile in combat.
The Standard Missile 6 — a multi-role ship/ground/air-launched interceptor that fuses long-range air defense, terminal ballistic-missile defense, and anti-surface strike into a single round, and the first US weapon to engage an anti-ship ballistic missile in combat.
Overview
The SM-6, formally the RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM), is a Raytheon-built interceptor that arms the US Navy’s Aegis fleet, the Army’s Typhon ground launchers, and — in its air-launched AIM-174B guise — carrier-borne Super Hornets. By merging the airframe of the SM-2, the booster stack of the SM-3, and an AMRAAM-derived active radar seeker, the weapon delivers layered anti-air warfare, sea-based terminal ballistic-missile defense, and offensive anti-ship/land-attack capability in a single magazine round, according to the CSIS Missile Threat profile. It is the only US fleet weapon that covers all three mission sets, a fact Raytheon and the Navy have used to streamline shipboard magazines across the surface force.
Development
The Extended Range Active Missile program was approved in 2004 and aimed to replace the SM-2 Block IV with a weapon that could engage over the horizon without relying on shipboard illuminators. Raytheon married the SM-2’s airframe to the dual-thrust motor stack of the SM-3 family and outfitted the round with an enlarged active seeker derived from the AIM-120 AMRAAM, as detailed by CSIS. The first guided test launch occurred in June 2008 at White Sands, and production began the following year. After a rocky initial operational test phase — including fuze and seeker-debris failures in 2010-11 — the SM-6 reached full-rate production in FY 2013 and deployed operationally aboard USS Kidd (DDG-100) in November 2013, Wikipedia notes. The terminal BMD role (Dual I software increment) was proven in 2015, and the anti-surface warfare capability was publicly acknowledged by Defense Secretary Carter in February 2016, following a secret SINKEX that January.
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