{"id":13093,"date":"2024-03-08T18:03:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T18:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13093"},"modified":"2024-03-08T18:03:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T18:03:12","slug":"the-us-navy-has-a-missile-problem-in-the-red-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13093","title":{"rendered":"The US Navy has a missile problem in the Red Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The US Navy has a missile problem. A shortage of its best SM-6 missiles \u2013 multipurpose weapons that can sink ships, hit targets on land and intercept aircraft and other missiles \u2013 could doom its fleet. Missiles are being expended at a high rate in the current Red Sea fighting against the Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen<\/a>. What good are the Navy\u2019s 85 destroyers and cruisers if they can\u2019t shoot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little industrial ingenuity could end the crisis, however. Defense firm Lockheed Martin is proposing to arm Navy ships with a missile that normally launches from land: the US Army\u2019s Patriot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Patriot is a deadly accurate munition, as Ukrainian and Russians forces have learned. The hard way, in the Russians\u2019 case. But its main advantage over the Navy\u2019s best SM-6 missile is that Lockheed makes a lot <\/em>of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On paper, the US fleet is a giant floating missile magazine. Each of 72 destroyers sails with as many as 96 vertical missile cells. A cruiser \u2013 the Navy has 13 of them<\/a> \u2013 has 122 cells. Each cell can fire various weapons such as an SM-2 surface-to-air missile or a Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. But the best weapon that fits in the so-called \u201cvertical launch system\u201d is the SM-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 22-foot, 3,300-pound SM-6 is the Navy\u2019s only omni-role missile. Thanks to its sensitive built-in radar, it works equally well against targets on the sea, on land and in the air out to a range of 150 miles or farther. It\u2019s even able to offer a defense against incoming hypersonic weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the SM-6 is complex. For a decade now, the Navy has been paying Raytheon to build 125 of the missiles per year at a cost of slightly more than $4 million per missile; the fleet has around 600 in stock. The production rate should increase slightly in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even taking into account the fleet\u2019s large arsenal of less-capable SM-2s, there\u2019s a real danger it could get overwhelmed by enemy missiles, drones and warplanes during, say, a war with China over Taiwan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/us-navy-missile-problem-red-134529869.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The US Navy has a missile problem. A shortage of its best SM-6 missiles \u2013 multipurpose weapons that can sink ships, hit targets on land and intercept aircraft and other missiles \u2013 could doom its fleet. Missiles are being expended at a high rate in the current Red Sea fighting against the Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen. What good are the Navy\u2019s 85 destroyers and cruisers if they can\u2019t shoot?
\nA little industrial ingenuity could end the crisis, however. Defense firm Lockheed Martin is proposing to arm Navy ships with a missile that normally launches from land: the US Army\u2019s Patriot.<\/p>\n

The Patriot is a deadly accurate munition, as Ukrainian and Russians forces have learned. The hard way, in the Russians\u2019 case. But its main advantage over the Navy\u2019s best SM-6 missile is that Lockheed makes a lot of them.<\/p>\n

On paper, the US fleet is a giant floating missile magazine. Each of 72 destroyers sails with as many as 96 vertical missile cells. A cruiser \u2013 the Navy has 13 of them \u2013 has 122 cells. Each cell can fire various weapons such as an SM-2 surface-to-air missile or a Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. But the best weapon that fits in the so-called \u201cvertical launch system\u201d is the SM-6.<\/p>\n

The 22-foot, 3,300-pound SM-6 is the Navy\u2019s only omni-role missile. Thanks to its sensitive built-in radar, it works equally well against targets on the sea, on land and in the air out to a range of 150 miles or farther. It\u2019s even able to offer a defense against incoming hypersonic weapons.<\/p>\n

But the SM-6 is complex. For a decade now, the Navy has been paying Raytheon to build 125 of the missiles per year at a cost of slightly more than $4 million per missile; the fleet has around 600 in stock. The production rate should increase slightly in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Even taking into account the fleet\u2019s large arsenal of less-capable SM-2s, there\u2019s a real danger it could get overwhelmed by enemy missiles, drones and warplanes during, say, a war with China over Taiwan.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/us-navy-missile-problem-red-134529869.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,1152,156,338,1056,1999,1226,108,115,226,619,158,1055,1151],"class_list":["post-13093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-houthi","tag-iran","tag-missiles","tag-navy","tag-red-sea","tag-shipping","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorists","tag-trade","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-weapons","tag-yemen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13094,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13093\/revisions\/13094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}