Raytheon and the U.S. Navy successfully flight tested the first SM-2 surface-to-air missile from the company’s restarted production line.
The SM-2 Block IIIB missile launched, flew and provided accurate telemetry data to the range, and engaged an airborne Navy target. SM-2 allows navies to defend against anti-ship missiles and aircraft.
“The SM-2 is in high demand because of its advanced capabilities and history of more than 2,700 successful flight tests from U.S. Navy and international ships,” said Dr. Mitch Stevison, Raytheon Strategic and Naval Systems vice president.
“Navies worldwide have relied on this missile and it will continue to provide fleet protection for decades to come.”
Raytheon say it has delivered over 11,000 SM-2 missiles to customers worldwide. In 2020, the company will begin to provide Australia, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands with more than 280 missiles from its latest production batch.
According to the Raytheon website, these are the main SM-2 Block IIIA and IIIB missile features
- Advanced semi-active radar seeker technologies in both continuous wave and interrupted continuous wave guidance modes
- Tail controls and solid rocket motor propulsion to engage the world’s advanced high-speed maneuvering threats at tactically significant ranges
- IIIB enhances the IIIA’s existing superior capabilities by adding autonomous infrared acquisition
- High-technology active radar target detection device and directional warhead to ensure successful destruction of the target
A missile using a semi-active radar seeker, requires X-band radar system.
Depends on how you designate the bands. In RN service 909 on T42 used J band.
Not strictly true, it depends on the radar’s frequency versus the RCS of the target and the size of the antenna you can fit in the missile’s nose. For example a relatively long wavelength radar such as the S1850M which is an S band (D band NATO) operating around 1 to 2 GHz, has a wavelength about 30 to 15cm. At a quarter wavelength the antenna required to detect it would be 7.5 to 3.75cm long which is enough to fit in a missile nose cone. An aircraft such as the Russian Tu95 Bear has a ginormous radar cross section… Read more »
Pinkie!
I am glad you didn’t go into K band being used to reduce multi path effects or proportional navigation constant K for longer range systems…that stuff made my head hurt…(Not as much as comms theory or EW systems though.)
Sending wiggly radio waves along fan trunking is just wrong! Thats why Í stuck with things that go woosh and bang…until they made me a systems engineer and I had to remember it all again.
🙂
Did you get the phenomena of waveguide theory where it appeared the radio wave “seemed” to go faster than the speed of light? This happened when the signal was split in two, travelling different paths then re-joined with only a phase difference. To this day still struggle how an EM wave travelling through the same material on two different length paths can merge again at the same time? The lecturer at the time said just accept it! Proper mystical shit…