Navy Developing Software To Give Standard Missile-6 Additional Mission Capabilities - USNI News: The Navy’s surface ship weapons office is developing software to bring additional mission sets to the Standard Missile-6 surface-to-air missile, which may be ready for fielding in the next year or two.
Capt. Michael Ladner, program manager of the surface ship weapons office in the Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS 3.0), told USNI News that there are several new missions that could be added to SM-6 – beyond its advertised capability of air defense against manned and unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles – through software-only upgrades.
“Our focus in IWS 3.0, in surface ship weapons, has been, how do we go find opportunities to take advantage of existing capability in the missiles above and beyond what they were initially required to go do, to see if we could provide an affordable capability faster to the fleet by taking advantage again of the capabilities already in the missiles [and adding] those new mission sets,” he said in an Oct. 26 interview.
“Of course the new missions are classified, but we are taking advantage above what was originally intended for these missiles to go do.”
