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Demonstrating again that anti-missile missiles work best under carefully controlled circumstances, a test of such a weapon fired from Hawaii has missed its target.
The US$30 million test was fired from the Kauai Aegis Ashore site in Hawaii. It was supposed to see a SM-3 Block IIA anti-missile missile intercept a target representing an incoming missile that was launched from an aircraft.
The US Pacific Command, contacted by CNN, confirmed that a test took place but not the outcome, saying only that the test took place on Wednesday morning.
The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA is a joint US-Japan development built to provide a defence against medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Defense News noted that without further information from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) it's impossible to know whether the problem was in the interceptor, the targeting radar, or the Raytheon-developed Aegis weapons system used by the US Navy was at fault.
Additional Coverage at DefenseNews and USNI News.
The Raytheon SM-3 Block IIA Interceptor.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday February 02 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)
Most of your points are valid, but I think a couple of problems are not as bad as you think:
"A missile itself isn't going to be able to catch up another fast-moving missile"
That's absolutely true, which is why that's not generally the goal. The goal is to meet the other missile, while travelling basically in the opposite direction. Which is entirely possible, but it gives you an extraordinarily short interception window. And the high relative speed means that you have almost no time to correct your trajectory, if anything goes wrong.
...protecting thousands of square km of ocean (not least what happens if it makes land and you then have to deal with all kinds of other obstacles between you and it) constantly against unpredictable attacks
You may not know if or when a missile is incoming, but you normally are defending a defined patch of dirt (or water). If the other missile wants to do you harm, it must enter your range. If it doesn't enter your range, you can safely ignore it. This simplifies the problem of defense considerably.
Note that this wasn't trying to knock down a cruise missile, but rather a ballistic missile. There was no surprise involved - they knew the shot was coming, and from where. As such, it's pretty embarrassing that they missed. AFAIK, in the only successful test of this system, the target actually sent out continuous active telemetry: "here I am, I'm travelling X m/s, in direction Y, at altitude Z, please shoot me".
Who wants to bet it's a yummy "cost plus" contract, too - so no loss to Raytheon even when they screw the pooch. Aaaaannnddd - yes: $66,441,462 sole-source, cost-plus-fixed-fee, cost-plus-incentive-fee modification for Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) integration, test, and Aegis Ashore support under the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA contract... The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $2,073,834,069" [defense.gov] Yummy stuff, if you can get it: a few million here, a few million there, all cost-plus, and pretty soon you've raking in a couple of $billion. It's almost better if it never works, because you can always propose another contract to fix it.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 02 2018, @10:50PM
As you say, Ledow made some good points - but your view of the situation is closer to the bull's eye. If we can't shoot down our own missiles, what chance to we have of killing a hostile missile? Given the parameters of the test, a navy destroyer could have been positioned to intercept with guns.
This test would also have been a good test for the new rail guns. :^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @12:36AM
Of course it's a cost-plus contract. It's not a question of money-grubbing, it's the nature of this being R&D type work.
This is a huge unknown project, to the point that people in chat are even questioning if it is technically possible. If they were to make this a fixed-cost contract, nobody would even try to do it. No company would be willing to risk failure on such a huge known, so the government willing to accept the risk of failure (read: pay the ongoing and increasing costs of failure) because they want the system enough. If you want to complain, complain about the decision makers wanting to get the device in the first place, not the means by which they are trying to procure it.
As for it being a sole-source contract, I cannot defend that. I can name at least three contracting companies who would be able to perform this, so I don't know why this would be sole-source except for corruption.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:21AM
You don't have a clue what you are talking about.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.