SM-3s
- Thread starter fretburner
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I think the main reason some countries are interested in SM-3 is that GMD is too long range for them (unless its deployed within Russian or Russian aligned states). Sm-3 offers a more terminal solution but better/longer ranged than thaad.
Interesting. I wonder with SM-6 if you could make it land based and land attack?
Interesting. I wonder with SM-6 if you could make it land based and land attack?
fretburner
Banned Member
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- #23
Given that the GMD is more expensive and hasn't been performing in tests very well as of late, wouldn't you rather want to have more GMDs than SM-3s? I mean, you want to intercept ICBMs from as far as possible to the area/region you're protecting it right? Or would you rather have say fire 2 salvos of GMD for each ICBM, and if it fails, you fire like 4 salvos of SM-3 and if that fails, 8 salvos of PAC-3s?
You probably meant the opposite, i.e. GMD intercept before SM-3? Or are you saying, a boost phase intercept by an SM-3 from a Tico/Burke near the country/region launching it?
What for? Mimic Russia's S-300/S-400?
Although, an Air-Launched SM-6 is probably a good idea -- making it something like a new Phoenix Missile. An AWACS/Tanker killer perhaps?
no i mean SM-3 is designed to intercept IRBMs and GMD is designed to intercept ICBMs, an SM-3 would struggle to hit an ICBM but GMD could easily intercept an IRBM.
GMD/SM3 and Pac3 all intercept at different heights. ICBM is at different heights through its trajectory (projectile motion). GMD is a high altitude interceptor in the middle and highest part of the flight. SM3 intercepts at a lower altitude. Pac3 is basically when its on top of you, seconds away.
GMD won't be suitable for everyone, if you can't deploy it roughly in the middle of the flight path, (poland eg can't thats in russias territory), then its not suitable. SM-3 is more suitable for them, being more terminal yet still highly capable.
GMD won't be suitable for everyone, if you can't deploy it roughly in the middle of the flight path, (poland eg can't thats in russias territory), then its not suitable. SM-3 is more suitable for them, being more terminal yet still highly capable.
fretburner
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- #26
That makes sense. I wonder if there's any other location to put the GMD silos to intercept missiles from countries like Iran and NOT piss of the Russians. And if there is, if that country is willing to host these missiles?
I guess Obama's plan is okay? SM-3 Ticos/Burke's on constant "patrol" along the Mediterranean sea?
Well it offers protection at a price.
The main advantage of ship based intercepts is they can move around to where they are needed. And that may be in different positions depending on the requirements and threats.
I explored the posibility of putting GMD on a ship in the battleship thread. It would have to be a very large ship. It would still annoy the russians, but its proberly less anoying than GMD permanently located near their borders.
The main advantage of ship based intercepts is they can move around to where they are needed. And that may be in different positions depending on the requirements and threats.
I explored the posibility of putting GMD on a ship in the battleship thread. It would have to be a very large ship. It would still annoy the russians, but its proberly less anoying than GMD permanently located near their borders.
I have been following, in a completely unclassified way, ABM developments for over the past forty years. I would like to share with you what little I have learned to help clarify some of the many issues that are being brought up, in a somewhat disorganized and piecemeal fashion within this thread as they relate to the SM-3. But the SM-3 is only the most visible part of the discussion because it is in the process of not only proving itself but the very concept and has a development path to even greater utility.
I was once involved on the others-side of this equation, I once worked in the Polaris ballistic missile program at one time, so I once had some inside information on that side of the equation.
I have been promoting the ABM defense idea as an alternative to just making more and bigger bombs as the best way to address national security problems for a long time. I have done so as one group of self-promoting, self-professed peacenik egghead geniuses, one group after another has universally stated that the very idea of hitting a bullet with another bullet was flatly imposable.
As results have now shown, it is gratifying to prove once again that anything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics is just another engineering problem that only requires more work.
That said, there are still problems which have not been satisfactorily solved. Just to be clear there is no conceivable ABM system that will make nuclear war winnable, since it requires only one warhead to succeed in penetrating any kind of ABM defenses to destroy a large city, there will never be a tactical situation where anyone can safely start a nuclear war against another power with significant nuclear capacity of its own, without running the unacceptable risk of massive causalities. Causalities which would be so high as to make any conceivable gain from using nuclear weapons offensively in an aggressive manner worth the costs by any rational method of judgment. Unfortunately sanity is not a universal requirement for gaining national authority in some places.
ABM capacity was once thought to be a completely strategic issue but that is no longer true. As technology is developed for tactical non-nuclear ballistic missile applications it concurrently effects strategic operations and vice versa. The two are now blending together both along technological and functional command lines.
At this point strategic defensive capacities are at best very uncertain both in the state of its technology and degree of deployment though there are probably secret capacities in existence somewhere that are unknown outside of national command authority. But whatever they may be, they are considered to be so unreliable that revealing them publicly would have a more destabilizing negative effect than any possible gain coming from their exposure. Only when a reliably demonstrated ABM system capacity is produced for the world to see for itself and be validated in public will the benefits of publicly claiming such capacity then outweigh the risks, if those capacities currently exist at all.
I will discuss only the difficulties in disabling a ballistic missile after it is launched. All of the possible methods of disrupting the launch sequence including preemptive strike will not be considered.
Surprisingly it is easy to disable a ballistic missile of any size if you know exactly when it will be launched and know the time, speed, and place on every point along its trajectory no matter how fast it is moving. That said these are things that are extremely hard to know. In fact what many people do not know, is that for many technological reasons that would take me too long to explain, two identical guided missiles, fired at the same time, from the same place, to the same stationary target, will not fly exactly the same paths to their targets nor will they arrive at exactly at the same times.
All ballistic Missiles are most vulnerable at the beginning of their flight. The longer the range of the missile the faster and the longer it will accelerate from its point of origin, the more relatively vulnerable it is. This is the best place for it to be disabled. It is traveling at its slowest speed, it is in its most fragile condition, and it is then in its easiest of all of its various phases and configurations to be detected and tracked because of its great energy output and its overall size. But for obvious reasons that is a hard weakness to exploit but there are ways.
Leaving aside STARWARS solutions requiring orbital engagement platforms, to address land based missiles of a tactical nature, where the launch points may not be too far inside the national borders of a nation state or if it is of a smallish size state, orbiting aircraft, be they RPV or manned, can both detect, track and fire specialized air–air and air-to-near-space weapons now under development to intercept enemy missiles at their most venerable boost stage of flight. Though this window of opportunity is a narrow one to exploit, it can be done. High and very high flying air breathing platforms can see and track missiles at far greater ranges than they can engage them. Which is a useful fact in and of itself.
These antimissile weapons are just variants of currently existing long range Air-to-air weapons already in existence. In many ways ballistic missiles, when they are in this stage of their flight are much easier target to hit than small maneuvering air breathing jets. The targets are far bigger and fly more predictable paths than do aircraft. These new weapons do require longer ranges and far faster intercept speeds than normal Air-to Air weapons but the tradeoffs in the requirements of simpler tracking methods and their lack of a need to have high G maneuvering ability to make fatal contact, makes them easier to build. There is also the multiple kilowatt solid-state laser option coming from cargo sized aircraft that can be good up to a range of a couple hundred miles that we could see as a deployment option as well.
There may be a place within these situations, for some versions of the SM-6 to be used to intercept both short range ballistic missiles as well as cruse-missiles, beyond the line of sight of war ships when controlled by E-2D or some similar platform on remote launch depending on the situation.
For the needs of this discussion we will assume that intermediate missiles can carry ether conventional or WMV warheads and that intercontinental missile will carry only WMD loads.
The midcourse intercept is technically the most difficult one of all to master. The short range missiles are not aloft long enough to get a good firing solution and for them we must then rely on terminal defenses. Leaving aside again possible STARWARS engagement from orbital platforms, midcourse intercepts do have the great tactical advantages for neutralizing medium and intercontinental missiles. It gives you multilayered defense capacity. What they like to call shoot look shoot. And in the strategic application it’s more like shoot, look, shoot, look , and if necessary shoot a third time. The greatest advantage of the mid-course intercept, if successful, is that it defends a far greater amount of territory than terminal defense could ever defend. If you could get it to work reliably to then shoot down any enemy offensive missiles you would only need twice the number of defensive missiles that attacking ones, while using only terminal defense system would require many more times the defensive missiles and related equipment and still leave some areas not defended.
It seems from open sources that the systems, as it is currently planned will be developed so that eventually the SM-3 block II A and later the planed and even longer rang block II B variant, be these msilliles land based or sea based, will be the first line of defense in the terminal area of engagement. The second layer at sea will be the Sm-3 Block I variants, and then lower down SM-2 variants. On land after the SM-3 block II variants it will be the High Altitude theater area defense (THAAD) then PAC III. They may eventually discontinue the SM-3 block I variants and Quid pack (THAAD) missiles in ship strike length launchers they may do this for many reasons.
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense systems still under development is seen useful only for use agenest ICBM’s and so far has had a troubled history but if the past is any indication they will eventually it up and running.
I have even at this long length, vastly simplified all the issues and the choices. There are many things of note I have not even brought up. But I hope these few paragraphs have cleared up some of the general questions and the SM-3 development into perspective.
I was once involved on the others-side of this equation, I once worked in the Polaris ballistic missile program at one time, so I once had some inside information on that side of the equation.
I have been promoting the ABM defense idea as an alternative to just making more and bigger bombs as the best way to address national security problems for a long time. I have done so as one group of self-promoting, self-professed peacenik egghead geniuses, one group after another has universally stated that the very idea of hitting a bullet with another bullet was flatly imposable.
As results have now shown, it is gratifying to prove once again that anything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics is just another engineering problem that only requires more work.
That said, there are still problems which have not been satisfactorily solved. Just to be clear there is no conceivable ABM system that will make nuclear war winnable, since it requires only one warhead to succeed in penetrating any kind of ABM defenses to destroy a large city, there will never be a tactical situation where anyone can safely start a nuclear war against another power with significant nuclear capacity of its own, without running the unacceptable risk of massive causalities. Causalities which would be so high as to make any conceivable gain from using nuclear weapons offensively in an aggressive manner worth the costs by any rational method of judgment. Unfortunately sanity is not a universal requirement for gaining national authority in some places.
ABM capacity was once thought to be a completely strategic issue but that is no longer true. As technology is developed for tactical non-nuclear ballistic missile applications it concurrently effects strategic operations and vice versa. The two are now blending together both along technological and functional command lines.
At this point strategic defensive capacities are at best very uncertain both in the state of its technology and degree of deployment though there are probably secret capacities in existence somewhere that are unknown outside of national command authority. But whatever they may be, they are considered to be so unreliable that revealing them publicly would have a more destabilizing negative effect than any possible gain coming from their exposure. Only when a reliably demonstrated ABM system capacity is produced for the world to see for itself and be validated in public will the benefits of publicly claiming such capacity then outweigh the risks, if those capacities currently exist at all.
I will discuss only the difficulties in disabling a ballistic missile after it is launched. All of the possible methods of disrupting the launch sequence including preemptive strike will not be considered.
Surprisingly it is easy to disable a ballistic missile of any size if you know exactly when it will be launched and know the time, speed, and place on every point along its trajectory no matter how fast it is moving. That said these are things that are extremely hard to know. In fact what many people do not know, is that for many technological reasons that would take me too long to explain, two identical guided missiles, fired at the same time, from the same place, to the same stationary target, will not fly exactly the same paths to their targets nor will they arrive at exactly at the same times.
All ballistic Missiles are most vulnerable at the beginning of their flight. The longer the range of the missile the faster and the longer it will accelerate from its point of origin, the more relatively vulnerable it is. This is the best place for it to be disabled. It is traveling at its slowest speed, it is in its most fragile condition, and it is then in its easiest of all of its various phases and configurations to be detected and tracked because of its great energy output and its overall size. But for obvious reasons that is a hard weakness to exploit but there are ways.
Leaving aside STARWARS solutions requiring orbital engagement platforms, to address land based missiles of a tactical nature, where the launch points may not be too far inside the national borders of a nation state or if it is of a smallish size state, orbiting aircraft, be they RPV or manned, can both detect, track and fire specialized air–air and air-to-near-space weapons now under development to intercept enemy missiles at their most venerable boost stage of flight. Though this window of opportunity is a narrow one to exploit, it can be done. High and very high flying air breathing platforms can see and track missiles at far greater ranges than they can engage them. Which is a useful fact in and of itself.
These antimissile weapons are just variants of currently existing long range Air-to-air weapons already in existence. In many ways ballistic missiles, when they are in this stage of their flight are much easier target to hit than small maneuvering air breathing jets. The targets are far bigger and fly more predictable paths than do aircraft. These new weapons do require longer ranges and far faster intercept speeds than normal Air-to Air weapons but the tradeoffs in the requirements of simpler tracking methods and their lack of a need to have high G maneuvering ability to make fatal contact, makes them easier to build. There is also the multiple kilowatt solid-state laser option coming from cargo sized aircraft that can be good up to a range of a couple hundred miles that we could see as a deployment option as well.
There may be a place within these situations, for some versions of the SM-6 to be used to intercept both short range ballistic missiles as well as cruse-missiles, beyond the line of sight of war ships when controlled by E-2D or some similar platform on remote launch depending on the situation.
For the needs of this discussion we will assume that intermediate missiles can carry ether conventional or WMV warheads and that intercontinental missile will carry only WMD loads.
The midcourse intercept is technically the most difficult one of all to master. The short range missiles are not aloft long enough to get a good firing solution and for them we must then rely on terminal defenses. Leaving aside again possible STARWARS engagement from orbital platforms, midcourse intercepts do have the great tactical advantages for neutralizing medium and intercontinental missiles. It gives you multilayered defense capacity. What they like to call shoot look shoot. And in the strategic application it’s more like shoot, look, shoot, look , and if necessary shoot a third time. The greatest advantage of the mid-course intercept, if successful, is that it defends a far greater amount of territory than terminal defense could ever defend. If you could get it to work reliably to then shoot down any enemy offensive missiles you would only need twice the number of defensive missiles that attacking ones, while using only terminal defense system would require many more times the defensive missiles and related equipment and still leave some areas not defended.
It seems from open sources that the systems, as it is currently planned will be developed so that eventually the SM-3 block II A and later the planed and even longer rang block II B variant, be these msilliles land based or sea based, will be the first line of defense in the terminal area of engagement. The second layer at sea will be the Sm-3 Block I variants, and then lower down SM-2 variants. On land after the SM-3 block II variants it will be the High Altitude theater area defense (THAAD) then PAC III. They may eventually discontinue the SM-3 block I variants and Quid pack (THAAD) missiles in ship strike length launchers they may do this for many reasons.
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense systems still under development is seen useful only for use agenest ICBM’s and so far has had a troubled history but if the past is any indication they will eventually it up and running.
I have even at this long length, vastly simplified all the issues and the choices. There are many things of note I have not even brought up. But I hope these few paragraphs have cleared up some of the general questions and the SM-3 development into perspective.
Awesome post Rip.
They haven’t even had their first test of the SM-3 block IIA yet. But since they are reusing many parts and technologies already in use in other variants the critical path does not appear to be a risky one. The SM-3 block IIB is going to be a completely new animal and at this point no one can say how long it will take to develop or to test. That is I think will be the deciding factor.
fretburner
Banned Member
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #36
THAAD has a 200km range, and is optimized to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. SM-3 has a 500km range, and is designed for exo-atmospheric interception of IRBM and ICBM in an area defense role
Which is best depends on what you want it to do. THAAD can intercept in the atmosphere, but SM-3 cannot. The SM-3 is 3x faster than THAAD and much better at crossing intercepts.
The proposed ground based interceptors to stop IRBMs from Iran to be stationed in Eastern Europe would be SM-3s. The Russian Iskander ballistic missile uses a ‘suppressed trajectory’ that is supposed to keep it below the level that the SM-3 can make an interception.
fretburner
Banned Member
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- #38
How will this work? Raytheon is the manufacture for the SM-1, SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6. Can the USG just give the drawings to Lockheed or Boeing if they win the SM-3 block 2B contest?
Assuming that the SM-3 block 2B makes significant changes in the design, then much of the Raytheon design may not be relevant.
Besides, the Prime Contractor is often not the one who actually builds the pieces, just the one who oversees the process, and maybe assembles the final product. Hopefully the prime has people experienced enough to spot when subcontractor designs are diverging or failing to perform. Even Raytheon worked this way as the prime.
Lastly, if you keep using the same prime then you are likely to get stuck with a NIH philosophy that blocks anything other than incremental improvements in performance (lighter parts and faster electronics for the most part), because they know how it has to be done. If you want a fundamental rethink of the concept (clean sheet of paper) you almost have to get an outsider. And frankly, neither Lockheed or Boeing would really qualify.
As examples I would offer the classic example, the Sidewinder missile, which was not developed by industry, but as a private project at the Naval Air Weapons Station. Another would be the ‘Land Warrior’, which, while it eventually failed, only achieved a critical weight reduction, performance improvement, and cost reduction AFTER it was transferred from Hughes Aerospace to a Silicon Valley startup.
:coffee
If the USG owns the IP for the missile then yes it can. Doesn't happen very often though.