FPI / July 26, 2024

Geostrategy-Direct

The U.S. Navy has put one of the longest-ranged air-to-air missiles in history into service.

A photo released by Navy public affairs officers showed an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet participating in RIMPAC 24 carrying an SM-6 — to be designated AIM-174 — air-launched missile.

The AIM-174 could give America’s carrier-based fighter jets the means to engage enemy aircraft from literally hundreds of miles away.

The newly-deployed weapon, a modified variant of the SM-6 high-speed anti-ship missile, also offers the ability to engage enemy warships and even to intercept inbound threats like ballistic or cruise missiles.

James Syring, former director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said he expects the AIM-174 will be “the workhorse” for the Navy’s “cruise missile defense and ballistic missile defense for a very, very long time.”

“The SM-6 air launched configuration (ALC) was developed as part of the SM-6 family of missiles and is operationally deployed in the Navy today,” a Navy spokesman said earlier this month.

The missile has a range of up to 300 hundred miles at a speed of Mach 3.5 — nearly 2,700 miles per hour. That range is far beyond existing air-to-air missiles that can hit targets tens of miles away.

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  Navy sees new AIM-174 missile as game changer in Pacific, WorldTribune.com