SM-3 defenses in Turkey?
Oktober 15, 2009 12:13 pm Iran, missile defenseEver since the Obama administration announced its new missile defense strategy and Ankara decided to purchase PAC-3, I’ve been wondering whether a deployment of land-based SM-3 in Turkey would make sense from a technical point of view.
In May 2009, Keith L. Englander, Director of Engineering at the Missile Defense Agency, gave a presentation on ascent phase defense at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), which included a slide on the operating area of SM-3 Block IB interceptors (click on the image to enlarge).
According to the graphs, the operating distance (i.e. distance between threat launch and interceptor) of SM-3 Blk IB is between ~ 250 and 1,300 km.
Using the lower limit of 250 km in a quick and dirty measurement with Google Earth shows possible deployment locations outside the red circle. Hence SM-3 should also work against missiles which are launched further south (e.g. the Khorramabad missile site is ~ 600 km away from the eastern regions of Turkey).
I am not a technical expert and this is just an attempt to explore the technological side of recent developments. So I’m desperately waiting for inpuut from the missile technology geeks!!
Februar 10th, 2010 at 22:22
I am researching a huge missile defense mistake that this figure demonstrates. The SM-3 is too small for mid-course intercept of intermediate range missiles, i.e. if Iran were to fire a missile at Europe.
The newest SM-3 has a ceiling of around 150 miles (320km depicted on this chart), although it has a range of around 300 miles since flying upwards is limited by gravity. The apogee for a 5000km range missile is around 600 km, so how can an SM-3 hit one? I noticed the MDA fudged and writes pre-apogee intercept, but that would be around 400-500 km high above the Black Sea or Romania. The MDA people must know this.
Please send input to editor@G2mil.com