"Sinking Enemy Warships: the U.S. Navy’s Fiery New Weapon" Topic

"The United States Navy's fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers are getting a massive boost in lethality. For years, many believed that America's mighty surface combatants were on track to be outgunned by their Russian and Chinese counterparts—however, a newly unveiled modification to the Raytheon Standard SM-6 changes of all of that.

"I'm announcing today new capability for the SM-6. We're modifying the SM-6, so that in addition to missile defense, it can also target enemy ships at sea at very long ranges," U.S. defense secretary Ashton Carter said at Naval Base San Diego in California on February.

"This is a new anti-ship mode. It makes the SM-6 basically a twofer. Can shoot down airborne threats," Carter said. "And now you can attack and destroy a ship at long range with the very same missile."…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

The Standard missile had a secondary SSM role for years….but I guess this gives longer range to it, although the warhead is likely still small.

The warhead on this Roman candle is just not big enough. You may as well just use a Griffin like the LCS has. Unless they intend to put a larger warhead on it or will use it in swarms it will just not get the job done.

Probably useful for knocking out small combatants, like the Iranians have, but certainly not for taking on larger warships, though they too might suffer from a critical hit, like to their radar, and other electronics, which could result in a mission kill.

What they really need are some large, long-ranged SSMs, that can fly at supersonic speeds to really take on first class navies.