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30.08.2002 19:10:51
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США разрабатывают новую систему ПВО
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Date Posted: August 23, 2002
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - AUGUST 28, 2002
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US Navy in move to fill air-defence missile gap
MICHAEL SIRAK JDW Staff Reporter
Huntsville, Alabama
The US Navy (USN) is including funding in its Fiscal Year 2004 budget to develop a new air-defence missile optimised to destroy aircraft, cruise missiles and unmanned air vehicles at greatly enhanced distances based on cues from dispersed sensors, according to senior service officials.
Vice Adm Phillip Balisle, commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command, said the service wants the new 'Extended-Range Active Missile' to fill the gap left by the cancelled Standard Missile-2 ( SM-2) Blk IVA interceptor programme. The Office of the Secretary of Defense terminated the programme late last year, leaving the navy without a long-range anti-air warfare (AAW) interceptor to defend ships at sea and in littoral areas as well as a missile to defeat short-range ballistic missiles (Jane's Defence Weekly 12 December 2001).
Adm Balisle said the new missile will have a range approaching 200nm. It will have an active seeker enabling it to receive in-flight targeting updates from distributed sea-based, airborne and potentially land-based sensors, netted via the service's nascent Co-operative Engagement Capability, which creates a more accurate air picture by fusing radar data from multiple assets.
The service has yet to settle on a design, Adm Balisle said. It may evolve from the existing Standard Missile family or be entirely new (JDW 3 April). The missile's notional acquisition schedule will be "complementary" to the continuing radar upgrade on the USN's fleet of E-2C Hawkeye airborne surveillance and command-and-control aircraft. The modifications, which the navy expects to field around 2010, will give the Hawkeye over-the-horizon and overland detection and tracking capabilities.
Unlike the dual-mission SM-2 Blk IVA, the new missile will be configured solely for AAW. However, the navy wants the design to allow for the easy evolution to a separate ballistic missile defence (BMD) variant for intercepts in the lower atmosphere. A decision to pursue this option lies with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which oversees all US Department of Defense BMD developmental efforts, although USN officials say they clearly favour pursuing this capability. The BMD version may use hit-to-kill technology as opposed to carrying a blast-fragmentation warhead for AAW.
The USN is also mulling how to integrate the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) exo-atmospheric BMD interceptor into its fleet of Aegis cruisers. Encouraged by the success of initial flight-tests that destroyed targets in January and June this year, Vice Adm Michael Mullen, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, said the service is considering creating two 'missile defence surface actions groups' around 2007. Each would consist of two SM-3-equipped Aegis baseline 1 cruisers. One group would deploy off the US Pacific Coast and the other would protect the US East Coast.
The next SM-3 test is scheduled in November. It will feature a more stressing engagement scenario.
The service is also evaluating whether to assign a dedicated test ship for its BMD trials that would be a permanent fixture in the MDA's nascent missile defence testbed in the Pacific Ocean area and relieve the burden on the operational assets used to date in SM-3 testing.
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© 2002 Jane's Information Group
С уважением, Venik