2024-04-19 14:02:05
US warships launched a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) over the weekend to defend Israel against an unprecedented Iranian attack. Unlike other means of air defense of the Navy, it can eliminate targets outside the Earth’s atmosphere, Business Insider pointed out.
The US launched a ballistic missile over Hawaii, followed by an SM-3 missile to destroy it in space. | Video: Reuters
“We fired the SM-2, the SM-6, and just this weekend the SM-3 to counter the real ballistic missile threat from Iran,” Undersecretary of Defense Carlos Del Toro said at a Senate Defense Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, according to Business Insider.
Two destroyers, USS Arleigh Burke and USS Carney, operating in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, engaged and destroyed Iranian ballistic missiles, although it was not immediately clear how they shot them down. On Monday, unnamed defense officials initially said the two ships fired between four and seven SM-3 missiles. Del Toro’s statement before the legislators is thus the first public admission to the deployment of this super-modern weapon.
The SM-3 missile is part of the Navy’s Aegis Advanced Combat System. It can engage and destroy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles mid-flight in the exoatmosphere. Which means it can take out targets outside the Earth’s atmosphere in the nearest universe.
“The SM-3 is unique in that it is the only standard missile designed to operate in the vacuum of space,” states the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies in its missile defense project. There are several variants of SM-3 missiles that can be launched from warships’ vertical launch system.
Most ballistic missiles, after gaining altitude, enter the intermediate phase, which is suborbital space flight, in which the ballistic missile chooses the shortest path to the target, taking into account the rotation of the Earth. It is at this stage that the SM-3 can destroy such a missile.
Instead of a classic fragmentation warhead, the SM-3 has a third stage with rocket propulsion and a LEAP (Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectile) maneuvering body. This device has infrared guidance and destroys its target only with the kinetic energy of a direct hit. PR Newsire magazine describes the energy of the impact as the impact of a truck weighing 10 tons, traveling at a speed of 1000 km/h, into a concrete wall, Armádní noviny wrote.
Despite dozens of tests over a period of twenty years, the SM-3 missile has not been used in combat until now. The US command said US forces destroyed at least six Iranian ballistic missiles over the weekend. The attacked Israel also used an exo-atmospheric weapon. Its Arrow 3 system, which can also eliminate enemy attacks in space, shot down another of the 120 ballistic missiles Iran fired at the Jewish state on Saturday.
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Witnesses recorded footage of explosions over the skies of northern Israel | Video: Reuters