A PAC-3 MSE launch by the U.S. Army in an undated photograph. (U.S. Army)
The land-based Patriot air defense system would be used on ships for the first time under a contract signed this week, the Navy said Wednesday.
Lockheed Martin will provide Patriot Advanced Capacity (PAC)-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptors to be integrated with the Navy’s Aegis Combat System aboard ships.
The Aegis system can track dozens of incoming threats and is used by the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and other Navy ships for combating missile and drone attacks.
Demand for missile interceptors of all kinds has surged since the United States and Israel attacked Iran last summer and more widely during “Operation Epic Fury,” which began Feb. 28.
Lockheed has long pushed for a ship-based Patriot system for the Navy, saying the PAC-3s give a ship a better defense against hypersonic missiles that can maneuver toward targets, unlike ballistic missiles.
“This integration further expands the capability of Aegis to engage missile threats at multiple layers,” Chandra Marshall, a Lockheed vice president, said in a statement.
The Patriot system is used by the Army and 16 partner countries, according to Lockheed. The Navy pact is the first time the missile will be used at sea. The Navy did not say when the system would begin service on ships.
The Navy’s 2027 defense budget, released on Tuesday, requests a total of $1.7 billion for 405 PAC-3 missiles and components. Each PAC-3 costs about $4 million.
The Defense Department recently agreed to a seven-year $4.7 billion pact with Lockheed to increase PAC-3 production from 600 per year to 2,000 by 2030.
The PAC-3 uses a kinetic “hit-to-kill” system — often called “bullet-to-bullet” — in which the interceptor slams into the target at high speed. Other air defense systems explode with proximity to the incoming missile, using blast and fragmentation to bring down the target.
The Navy currently uses variants of the Standard Missile, along with the RIM-162 SeaSparrow Missile for ship defense.
China, Russia and the United States have all been developing hypersonic missiles that can travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Launched either vertically or in horizontal cruise-missile mode, hypersonic weapons are designed to alter their altitude and trajectory as they approach a target, making them difficult to intercept.
Lockheed builds many of the PAC-3 interceptors at an 85,000-square-foot facility in Camden, Ark.
According to the Defense Post, an independent industry publication based in Washington D.C., the PAC-3 is 16-feet long, 10 inches in diameter, and weighs about 820 pounds. It has a dual-pulse solid rocket motor enabling a maximum altitude of 118,000 feet, a range of 75 miles and a top speed above Mach 4 (about 3,069 mph).
