Pacific Dragon 22: USS Fitzgerald deploys SM-3

After the large-scale exercise RIMPAC22 with 28 participating nations, almost 40 ships, 30 unmanned systems, 170 aircraft and 9 army contingents, there are now other naval manoeuvres in and around Hawaii that are worth mentioning: Pacific Dragon 22 (PD22) also takes place every two years, albeit with a different focus. This year, at the beginning of August, a short-range ballistic missile was intercepted by a sea-based SM-3 Block IA Standard Missile in "live fire" for the first time by a group of American, Australian, Canadian and South Korean destroyers and the US Missile Defence Agency. The interceptor missile was launched from the USS Fitzgerald, which hit the headlines almost exactly five years ago (June 2017) when it collided with the Philippine container ship ACX Crystal around 30 miles off the Yokosuka base.

US Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility. Graphic: US INDOPACOM

Guided tour through 3rd US Fleet

The exercises were led by the US 3rd Fleet, which operates the eastern part of the Pacific from Pearl Harbor - the 7th Fleet is assigned to the western Pacific and has its flagship in Yokosuka, Japan. With other joint force elements, the whole is subordinate to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command under Admiral John C. Aquilino, also in Hawaii. The missile exercises were conducted from the Pacific Missile Range Facility "Barking Sands", which is located on Kauai, the northernmost of the three large islands.

Ballistic Missile Defence

The SM-3 as a defence weapon against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles is used at Raytheon Missiles & Defence, one of the four business units of Raytheon Technologies, in Tucson, Arizona. This interceptor missile does not use an explosive charge to destroy the ballistic missile, but works through kinetic mass impact in a "hit-to-kill" process. Raytheon describes it as the high-precision destruction of one bullet by another - the "kill vehicle".

Further development

Raytheon was recently awarded a contract worth 860 million euros to equip the US armed forces and their partners with the advanced SM-3 Block IIA version. This version has a more powerful propulsion system and an improved warhead so that it can also intercept long-range ballistic missiles. Block IIA was designed in collaboration with Japan, first tested in 2017 and tested in 2020 on the USS John Finn (DDG-113, Arleigh Burke-class Lot IIA), which is equipped with a BMD-capable Aegis system. The SM-3 can of course also be deployed from land.