Air Weapons: Navy Tries Out F-18s Carrying SAMs
Ezoic
July 8, 2024: The U.S. Navy is turning its ship mounted SM-6 (Standard Missile-6) air defense weapon into a multi-purpose missile carried by its F-18E carrier based aircraft. Each one is 6.6 meters long and half a meter in diameter. The missile weighs 1.5 tons with a warhead containing 64 kg of explosives. The SM-6s carried by F-18s had one of their two booster rockets removed. The removed rocket weighed several hundred kg and was used to get the SM-6 into the air and on its way to the target when launched from a ship. Here a flight deck catapult fires the whole F-18 and its modified SM-6 into the air.
SM-6s have been used to intercept ballistic missiles as well as aircraft, but can also be used against ships, land targets and low-earth-orbit satellites. Max range is 240 kilometers and max speed on launch is 4,200 kilometers an hour, or about one kilometer a second. Carried by F-18s, the SM-6 retains all its surface ship capabilities and can be used against aerial, surface or low orbit space satellite targets. Using SM-6 as an air-launched weapon, it replaces the Harpoon anti-ship missile and the AIM-120 AMRAAM long range anti-aircraft missile.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/202407080611.aspx
