"Full caliber" SM-3

I suppose the ‘MIKV’ idea might turn out to be THE advantage of going the American kinetic kill vehicle way for ABM. I was unconvinced sofar about the ratio of technological challange vs. operational benefits of this solution compared to a warhead approach, but this seems like a very promising development.

‘MIKVed’ SAMs versus MIRVed ICBMs, interesting.

It would be interesting to see how many of those “loaf of bread” sized kill vehicles a Spartan could carry because you KNOW that 5Mt warhead had to weigh a few pounds. BTW does anybody know whatever happened to the Sprint and Spartan missiles themselves? The airframes I mean. I think Sprint components were used in HEDI but that’s just a guess. I’ve seen a couple Spartans on display at various locations but I’ve never read what they did with the rest of them.

‘MIKVed’ SAMs versus MIRVed ICBMs, interesting.

The MKV system consists of a Carrier Vehicle loaded with a complement of small intercepting kill vehicles, each about the size of a loaf of bread. The exact number of kill vehicles carried is restricted information, but can be substantially greater than 10 when MKV is launched by a Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor.

Cluster SAMs 😮

Looking for more info on this and found this bit of information on the Multiple Kill Vehicle

“The Multiple Kill Vehicles (MKV) program is the Missile Defense Agency’s transformational weapon system development program to deal with midcourse discrimination, specifically: target
selection amid uncertainty and countermeasures. The MKV payload is anticipated to be ready for initial fielding in the 2012-2014 time frame and will go through a rigorous development and test
program. The MKV system consists of a Carrier Vehicle loaded with a complement of small intercepting kill vehicles, each about the size of a loaf of bread. The exact number of kill vehicles carried
is restricted information, but can be substantially greater than 10 when MKV is launched by a Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor. Work to adapt the MKV payload to smaller, more mobile boosters
such as kinetic energy interceptors has also begun. MKV has the ability to destroy large numbers of targets using a single engaging interceptor missile. This reduces the burden on sensors and
algorithms, which no longer need to be programmed to select one, best target. This dramatically alters the statistical probability of kill in favor of the defender and provides for early, decisive
engagement of an adversary complex.”

http://www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y2006/MDA/0603882C.pdf

Whoops 😮

http://www.raytheon.com/feature/stellent/groups/public/documents/content/cms04_015415.pdf

That’s the link to the pdf file. Richt click, save as 😀