By Geoff Fein
Earlier this month, the Navy awarded Raytheon [RTN] a $93.8 million contract for low-rate initial production (LRIP) of the company’s Standard Missile- 6 (SM-6) Block I that will deliver a number of new capabilities to the fleet.
SM-6 Block I takes advantage of the airframe developed on the SM-2 Block 4, which provides a long range capability and merges that with some of the other Navy technologies Raytheon has been able to develop on its Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) program, Louis Moncada, SM-6 program director, told Defense Daily in an interview this week.
“Essentially, what that allows us to do is not only use that airframe, but also have semi-active capability like the Block 4 missile but add an active missile capability as well,” he said.
Raytheon has been conducting test firings at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., to demonstrate the capability of the SM-6 Block I, Moncada added. “What the shots have been all about is demonstrating both the use of active and semi-active capability to provide this long range performance.”
Equipped with an active seeker, the SM-6 Block I will be able to fly over the horizon without the need for an illumination source on a ship to provide energy on a target to track it, he noted.
“In our case, with the active seeker we bring the transmitter with us,” Moncada said. “That allows us to fly out over the horizon and essentially finish off the engagement with our own transmitter and under our own capability.”
The SM-6 Block I is a substantial jump in technology over previous iterations, he added. And the fact that the SM-6 Block I is a 13.6-inch missile, compared to the 7-inch AMRAAM, it can carry a bigger antenna and Raytheon can make other modifications that provide the missile even more performance than what the company has achieved in an AMRAAM, Moncada said.
Another feature the SM-6 Block I brings over previous SM variants is the ability to reprogram the software, he added.
“This missile can be reprogrammed essentially on the ship, when we bring that capability forward,” Moncada said. “We have the ability to make software changes and reprogram the missile at the ship site or some intermediate site if that’s required by the Navy.”
The ability to reprogram the missile’s software on the ship is a significant change, Dan Lambert, SM-6 business development, told Defense Daily during the same interview.
“That’s a radical change from the current practice where they have to take the canister off the ship and then pull the missile out of the canister to make any changes to the performance characteristics of the missile,” Lambert said.
The capability to reprogram the SM-6 Block I on the ship is something the Navy will be introducing into the fleet in the future, Moncada added. “That’s a planned capability they will add to essentially catch up and take advantage of what they can do in the missile.”
The SM-6 Block I also introduces the ability for the missile to self test its own health status, referred to as Missile Built In Test (MBIT), he said.
“You can command the missile to test itself, and to a high degree of confidence, it will inject signals into the front end of the system and evaluate the results at the back end of the system and send back to the tester that the missile is good or needs to go back for servicing,” Moncada said.
“That’s a big enhancement because now you are able to…walk up to the missile ask it to test itself and it will give its status,” he added. “We think that will be a big logistics savings for the Navy as opposed to what they currently have to do now, which is every four to five years they rotate the missiles out, go through the process Dan (Lambert) talked about, to have the missiles recertified.”
Moncada said Raytheon is hoping to offer the Navy a process for doing either shipboard testing or something much less costly than sending the missiles back to Raytheon’s Tucson, Ariz., facility or to some Navy service site.
“These are innovations we built into the missile that we look forward to working with the Navy on, so that as they make changes to the combat system in the future they can start to take more advantage of these kind of innovations on the ship,” Moncada said. “But even short of that, we ought to be able to substantially reduce their logistical cost and footprint.”
Whether a sailor will be able to reprogram the SM-6 Block I’s software and eventually run the missile’s self test, is being worked out. “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Moncada said.
“Eventually we hope that’s where the Navy can get to, but for now we will start off with something that’s much more rudimentary where we will have some capability to bring a tester on board,” he added. “I don’t know if it will be Navy or contract labor. Those are the kind of things that need to be worked out as the missile is introduced into the fleet.”
The ultimate objective, Moncada said, is to get it to where SM-6 Block I’s software reprogramming and health monitoring can be done automatically in the cell.
“But that will take some time because you will have to get the launching systems and everybody else up to speed because it’s an interface change essentially,” he said.
With the contract for 19 SM-6 Block I all up rounds (AURs), 20 SM-6 Block 1 AUR instrumentation kits, and SM-6 Block I spares and containers under its belt, Raytheon is looking ahead to conducting at least one more test with SM-6 Block I.
Moncada expects the Navy will then run roughly five development shots and 12 operational shots, in increments of two to three, off of Navy ships, sometime in the second half of 2010. “While that is going on, we are preparing and starting LRIP production.”
LRIP will be immediately followed up with delivery of the first SM-6 Block I production missile in early 2011, he added.