Operation Praying Mantis:
"Action continued to escalate. Joshan, an Iranian Combattante II Kaman-class fast attack craft, challenged USS Wainwright and Surface Action Group Charlie. The commanding officer of Wainwright directed a final warning (of a series of warnings) stating that Joshan was to "stop your engines, abandon ship, I intend to sink you". Joshan responded by firing a Harpoon missile at them.[6] The missile was successfully lured away by chaff.[7] Simpson responded to the challenge by firing four Standard missiles, while Wainwright followed with one Standard missile.[8] All missiles hit and destroyed the Iranian ship's superstructure but did not immediately sink it, so Bagley fired a Harpoon of its own; the missile did not find the target. SAG Charlie closed on Joshan, with Simpson, then Bagley and Wainwright firing guns to sink the crippled Iranian ship.[6]"
Now these are surface actions, not land attacks. But it does go to show the lengths to which even the USN has to fight with what it has....and the Harpoon back then was apparently less than stellar compared it's modern equivalent.
It does appears that the new software updates to the SM-6 Missile permit it to strike surface targets beyond the range of the harpoon, and with great accuracy:
From the National Interest Magazine:
"The U.S. Navy and Raytheon recently demonstrated that the company’s Standard SM-6 missile could destroy an enemy warship for the first time. During the test, USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53)—an Arleigh Burke-class—destroyer sank the decommissioned Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Reuben James (FFG 57) with a SM-6 missile.
“This test event demonstrated Raytheon's decades of continued technological development and partnership with the U.S. Navy,” said Dr. Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon’s missile systems division, in a statement released on [4] March 7. “The ability to leverage the Standard Missile Family and the legacy AWS [Aegis Weapon System] in newly fielded systems brings additional warfighting capability to the U.S. Fleet.”
Until last month—when U. S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter disclosed the closely [5] held secret that the SM-6 is capable of engaging surface targets—most analysts believed that the U.S. Navy lacked any meaningful capability to attack enemy warships. With the revelation that the SM-6 does have anti-surface capability, it is now known that the U.S. Navy does have a long-range supersonic anti-ship missile at its disposal. This capability would be essential should any serious conflict arise with the Chinese or Russian navies, for example.
According to Raytheon, the recent test was a demonstration of the Navy’s “distributed lethality” concept where firepower is dispersed amongst a multitude of warships. It also showcased the SM-6’s expanded mission capabilities—which include anti-air warfare, sea-based terminal missile defense and anti-surface warfare.
The SM-6—which incorporates an active radar seeker and networking—was designed to engage targets beyond a ship’s radar horizon. Using the Naval Integrated Fire Control (NIFC) battle network, an Aegis warship could engage over-the-horizon targets—including aircraft and missiles—by using targeting data from a Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye.
The physical radar horizon for a S-band radar such as the Aegis SPY-1D is about 250 nautical miles for a target flying at about 30,000 feet. For target flying at lower altitudes, the radar detection range would be shorter—which is where the E-2D comes in. While the range for the SM-6 is classified, the weapon’s range could potentially be greater than 250 nautical miles.
Because the E-2D has the capability to track air and surface targets, the SM-6 would effectively allow U.S. warships to engage enemy surface combatants over-the-horizon with a Mach 3.5+ missile. While the SM-6’s warhead was designed to kill aircraft—and as such is relatively tiny—the fact that it also has ballistic missile defense capability suggests it has a hit-to-kill capability.
Given that modern warships are not the armored battlewagons from the battleship era, it is relatively easy to achieve a “mission kill” on a current-generation surface combatant. That means even with its small warhead, the SM-6 should be more than effective against, for example, a Russian Kirov-class battlecruiser or the Chinese Type 52D destroyer due to the warhead's speed. The kinetic energy from a very fast missile can do enormous damage by itself—as the recent test [4] against USS Reuben James (FFG 57) amply demonstrated.
Thus far, Raytheon has delivered more than 250 SM-6 missiles, which became operational in 2013. Production will continue for the foreseeable future as the Navy begins to replace its older Standard missiles with the new weapon.
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for the National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar."
Ok, so that's the SM6 missile. Maybe that should be our next missile for the CSC, if there ever is a CSC. I am sure it will not be a big leap before the software on the SM6 is further modified for a land attack capability. Too bad for the ESSM though...