The United States deployed SM-6 anti-aircraft system at 240 km, which can even hit ships
The U.S. military is also interested in the option of using an anti-aircraft missile as a ballistic weapon
This week, the US Navy conducted joint exercises with the Danish Armed Forces to protect maritime convoys that will take place near Bornholm Island in the Baltic Sea. In general, there is almost no publicly available information about these exercises, but there is one interesting detail: the use of a “modular launcher” for SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles was practiced to provide air cover for convoys.
This is actually a very interesting missile system, the characteristics of which deserve a separate description.
Judging by the photos in the public domain, the US Navy most likely used a launcher from the Typhon universal system, which can fire two types of missiles – the Tomahawk land-based version and the SM-6 “land-based” version of the same naval anti-aircraft missile. Earlier, Defense Express has already talked about this type of weapon in one of its publications.
The Typhon complex is special because it uses four launchers from the Mark 41, a standard destroyer for the US Navy, and uses a system based on the Aegis Combat System to control fire.
The Typhon battery shall consist of 4 self-propelled launchers, a battery operating center (BOC) vehicle, a battery supply vehicle (BSV) and one reload trailer.
The SM-6 claims to be able to intercept all types of objects, including ballistic missiles. The range of firing at air targets can reach up to 240 km. There is also an option to fire in the surface-to-surface mode on a ballistic trajectory, in particular at maritime targets, and the range is up to 460 km. It is known that in 2016, during one of the exercises, the US Navy was able to sink a decommissioned frigate by firing SM-6 missiles, among other things.
The launch weight of this missile is 1.5 tons, including a 125 kg warhead, a high-explosive or kinetic warhead, and a combined guidance system with a combination of command-inertial guidance and radar guidance at the final stage of flight. The fuselage is 6.5 meters long and the flight speed is over Mach 3.5.
