Patriot SAM replacement

Scott Kenny said:
I stand corrected.
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Yeah but your also not really wrong as any PAC-2 GEM+ is better against cruise missiles alone trought there large warhead and both having quite new and effectiv seeker and fuzes. But because they only buy large amount of GEM-T i think they either have still a large stock of GEM-C or GEM-T does the Job more than good enough so no more GEM&C are needed.
 
sferrin said:
Hopefully they're not ditching the PAC-2 missile. They still need a long range missile and I doubt SM-6 will ever be affordable enough to buy in large numbers.
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Except that unit cost of pac-2 almost doubles that of sm-6, it’s so expensive that they developed pac-3 ‘Cost Reduction Initiative’, which costs one third of a pac-2 per unit.
 
Spinmaster said:
Except that unit cost of pac-2 almost doubles that of sm-6,
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No? The PAC-2 GEM-T are 5.1 milion euros each or some 5.55 milion dollar. SM-6 based on the price from 2021 is 4.89* milion dollar. Thats around 88% of 1 PAC- GEM-T which is way more than almost half.
Spinmaster said:
it’s so expensive that they developed pac-3 ‘Cost Reduction Initiative’, which costs one third of a pac-2 per unit.
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PAC-3 CRI is just the old plan latest PAC-3 but not something like PAC-3 MSE. But its not really cheap as far as i can tell. Now those number are based on the total sell cost with training and co. included but they still exceed PAC-2 GEM-T by a lot. Its 6.3 milion dollar for the 72 pac-3 CRI Germany bought worth today or a whopping 11.65 million dollar for the 600 which saudi bought. Thought a side from 2019 said 3.43 million for one it still 4.115 million dollar today not even close to one third of the cost.

*Edit: based on the FY from 2023 SM-6 is even more expensive with some 6.472 million dollar.
 
Spinmaster said:
Except that unit cost of pac-2 almost doubles that of sm-6, it’s so expensive that they developed pac-3 ‘Cost Reduction Initiative’, which costs one third of a pac-2 per unit.
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PAC-3 CRI is to make a lower cost PAC-3. PAC-2 and PAC-3 are not the same missile.
 
Are we seriously looking at a press announcement and trying to extrapolate the AUR cost of the PAC-2 GEM/T?

kqcke for you said:
*Edit: based on the FY from 2023 SM-6 is even more expensive with some 6.472 million dollar.
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SM-6 Block 1A FY24 (current fiscal year) AUR cost is $4.2 MM. SM-6 1B AUR cost for the first dozen or so prototypes is $8.5 MM.
 
WTH happened to tomahawks pricetag??? 5 million in 2021, 7 million in 2022 and like 17 million per missile in 2023?? Am i reading that wrong?
Block v should be mature-ish by now. Volumes contracted arent that low. And yet the cost is rising instead of falling from 2021 to 2023???
 
totoro said:
WTH happened to tomahawks pricetag??? 5 million in 2021, 7 million in 2022 and like 17 million per missile in 2023?? Am i reading that wrong?
Block v should be mature-ish by now. Volumes contracted arent that low. And yet the cost is rising instead of falling from 2021 to 2023???
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Extra capabilities? Inflation?
 
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bring_it_on said:
Are we seriously looking at a press announcement and trying to extrapolate the AUR cost of the PAC-2 GEM/T?
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Oof, what better references to go with then? To my knowledge fresh PAC-2s have never been procured by the Army, only customers are from overseas. And this is the biggest deal that have been made in recent years.
 

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sferrin said:
Show me a source that shows PAC-2 coming in at $13 million a pop.
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kqcke for you said:
Thats around 88% of 1 PAC- GEM-T which is way more than almost half.
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Just to be clear, the point I wanted to make here was that cost isn’t the reason why Army didn’t just yank the sm-6s out of vls cells and put them on land to replace their patriots
 
Spinmaster said:
Here is one from fy2004
The net cost in then year dollar was 2.4m$, and continues to sink from then on, however accurate figures from 2006 onwards are hard to be found.
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Yeah 20004. You gotta take in the Inflation to 2024. Thats gonna be a lot more

Edit: its $3.897 million so close to double that at around 83%. So those PAC-2 GEM+ are quite cheap for what they can do.
 
Spinmaster said:
Oof, what better references to go with then? To my knowledge fresh PAC-2s have never been procured by the Army, only customers are from overseas. And this is the biggest deal that have been made in recent years.
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Its okay then to say that you have no great idea on what its AUR cost is instead of just throwing random numbers out there based on press notes.

totoro said:
WTH happened to tomahawks pricetag??? 5 million in 2021, 7 million in 2022 and like 17 million per missile in 2023?? Am i reading that wrong?
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The US Navy paid $1.9 MM for each of the 55 units it purchased in FY2023. With investments being made now (as recent as this week) to increase the production 185, you should expect the cost to reduce starting FY26 or so as annual contracts increase in value and quantity.
 

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totoro said:
WTH happened to tomahawks pricetag??? 5 million in 2021, 7 million in 2022 and like 17 million per missile in 2023?? Am i reading that wrong?
Block v should be mature-ish by now. Volumes contracted arent that low. And yet the cost is rising instead of falling from 2021 to 2023???
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Number one on the list is 35 anti-ship Naval Strike Missiles for $57.8 million, followed by 48 Tactical Tomahawk long-range anti-ship and strike missiles for $96 million, according to the list reviewed by USNI News.
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sferrin said:
Hopefully they're not ditching the PAC-2 missile. They still need a long range missile and I doubt SM-6 will ever be affordable enough to buy in large numbers.
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Interesting point, cause it doesn’t seem you had much idea of it in the original post either.
And I thought the topic here was about patriot Sam replacement.
 
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Some highlights of Col. William Parker Feb 21 briefing of Defense News on state of IBCS

Its working to integrate the command-and-control technology with a number of other systems, including THAAD.
The cross-functional team is scheduled to experiment with that integration at Project Convergence, which kicks off Feb. 23 and will run through mid-March
U.S. Army plans to test this month whether its key command-and-control system can operate its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System
Part of the Army’s effort to connect a web of sensors and shooters on the battlefield, it spent more than a decade developing IBCS to work with radars like the Sentinel A4, Patriot, Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor and the Indirect Fires Protection Capability.
IBCS experienced years of delays related to its increasing mission sets and technical problems in an initial 2016 limited-user test. The Army spent years ironing out software issues through follow-on user tests. The service held an initial operational test and evaluation in 2022 and declared it fully operationally capable in the spring of 2023.
The Army will hold a full operational test and evaluation for IBCS in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024 and plans to field the capability to the first unit around the middle of fiscal 2025
The key effort is centered around joint integration of sensors and shooters, and the Army will push data through IBCS over to THAAD’s command and control in order to see how much bandwidth it can handle, Parker said.

www.defensenews.com

US Army to test missile defense command system with THAAD weapon

The Army originally developed the Integrated Battle Command System as the brains of a future air and missile defense system.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
 
www.defensenews.com

Poland signs $2.5 billion deal for US air-defense software hub

Vendor Northrop Grumman has secured its first customer outside of the U.S. Army.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com

WARSAW, Poland — The Polish Ministry of National Defence has signed a $2.5 billion deal with the U.S. government to acquire the Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, to synchronize the nation’s air- and missile-defense weapons under development.
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It's occurred to me that something like a mobile SM-6 launchers for air-defence is required to manage the glide bomb threat as it extends, since ideally you need to be taking out the firing aircraft. Is such a thing in the works? I know their are mobile launchers but unclear as to whether they are just for surface strike or not.
 
Forest Green said:
It's occurred to me that something like a mobile SM-6 launchers for air-defence is required to manage the glide bomb threat as it extends, since ideally you need to be taking out the firing aircraft. Is such a thing in the works? I know their are mobile launchers but unclear as to whether they are just for surface strike or not.
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Everything I have seen says the Army is using SM6s for surface strike only at this point in time.

Passing thought: I'm curious to see just how far the 21" diameter SM6Blk1b can reach, when the 13.5" diameter version can reach 250+ miles/400+km. The 21" diameter SM3Blk2 goes from ~900km up to ~1200km range, so I'd guess the SM6Blk1b will reach at least 650km. The SM3Blk2 also goes from 3kps to 4.5kps, that's Mach 8.8 to Mach 13.2(!) at burnout. Assuming that the SM6 rockets are the same, tuned for speed not range, that puts the terminal speed of an SM6 still under thrust at somewhere around 1.8-2kps/Mach 5 ish. Not quite fast enough to pack its own weight in TNT in terms of kinetic energy, but absolutely horrifying to any ships that might be hit. https://www.okieboat.com/Talos firing operations.html shows the result of the 3300lb Talos missile impacting a DE, the unarmed missile basically split the boat in half.​

The question is whether the Army radars can directly talk to the SM6. While there have been tests using both Patriot and Aegis, it was the Patriot radars telling Aegis where the targets were and Aegis launching missiles to intercept. But if the Navy has been able to move Aegis to a pure software system, the Army can just add a black box that runs Aegis to talk to the SM6s for air defense as well as surface strikes.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Everything I have seen says the Army is using SM6s for surface strike only at this point in time.

Passing thought: I'm curious to see just how far the 21" diameter SM6Blk1b can reach, when the 13.5" diameter version can reach 250+ miles/400+km. The 21" diameter SM3Blk2 goes from ~900km up to ~1200km range, so I'd guess the SM6Blk1b will reach at least 650km. The SM3Blk2 also goes from 3kps to 4.5kps, that's Mach 8.8 to Mach 13.2(!) at burnout. Assuming that the SM6 rockets are the same, tuned for speed not range, that puts the terminal speed of an SM6 still under thrust at somewhere around 1.8-2kps/Mach 5 ish. Not quite fast enough to pack its own weight in TNT in terms of kinetic energy, but absolutely horrifying to any ships that might be hit. https://www.okieboat.com/Talos firing operations.html shows the result of the 3300lb Talos missile impacting a DE, the unarmed missile basically split the boat in half.​

The question is whether the Army radars can directly talk to the SM6. While there have been tests using both Patriot and Aegis, it was the Patriot radars telling Aegis where the targets were and Aegis launching missiles to intercept. But if the Navy has been able to move Aegis to a pure software system, the Army can just add a black box that runs Aegis to talk to the SM6s for air defense as well as surface strikes.
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The SM-3 travels in space where's there's a vaccum but it can do about 2,400-2,500km up there. The more limited range you quoted is for a successful intercept in various ICBM boost-phase intercept scenarios.

breakingdefense.com

Why Russia Keeps Moving The Football On European Missile Defense: Politics - Breaking Defense

America wants to use policy — talks on missile defense cooperation — to make Russia feel better about the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). But the Russians, who say they think EPAA threatens their ICBMs and thus creates all sorts of arms control problems. say technology — not policy —...
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com

1711034296508.png
Trajectory of a hypothetical Iranian ICBM heading for New York superimposed on fly-out contours of the Block IIA missile in Poland. Time t=0 corresponds to the interceptor launch, 300 s into the flight of the ICBM.

1711034314858.png
Trajectory of an SS-19 launched from a silo in Tatishchevo heading for Norfolk Va. superimposed on fly-out contours of a Block IIA missile based in Poland (in green) and in the North Sea (in red).

You can see here that even the 13.5inch Block 1B managed managed 900-1,200km maximum range in space, vs a 400km range for an aerial intercept with a 13.5inch SM-6. So if we assume 1/3rd space range for atmospheric intercepts, then ~800km should be the maximum range for a theoretical mobile SM-6 Block 1B SAM launcher, which would massively c0ck-block glide bomb launching aircraft.
 
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Forest Green said:
The SM-3 travels in space where's there's a vaccum but it can do about 2,400-2,500km up there. The more limited range you quoted is for a successful intercept in various ICBM boost-phase intercept scenarios.

(...)

You can see here that even the 13.5inch Block 1B managed managed 900-1,200km maximum range in space, vs a 400km range for an aerial intercept with a 13.5inch SM-6. So if we assume 1/3rd space range for atmospheric intercepts, then ~800km should be the maximum range for a theoretical mobile SM-6 Block 1B SAM launcher, which would massively c0ck-block glide bomb launching aircraft.
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I think for surface strikes, we're looking at powered flight range more than theoretical max range. Just to maintain speed in the lower atmosphere.

Does anyone here know how long the SM6 rocket motors burn, total?




Forest Green said:
View attachment 722987
Trajectory of an SS-19 heading for Norfolk Va. superimposed on fly-out contours of a Block IIA missile based in Poland (in green) and in the North Sea (in red).
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That doesn't look like a Block IIA can make the intercept at all if it's in the North Sea.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I think for surface strikes, we're looking at powered flight range more than theoretical max range. Just to maintain speed in the lower atmosphere.

Does anyone here know how long the SM6 rocket motors burn, total?
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310 miles (500km) seems to be the range for an SM-6 surface to surface.
Scott Kenny said:
That doesn't look like a Block IIA can make the intercept at all if it's in the North Sea.
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The graphics actually show that there's a 200s intercept window (solid red part of line) from the North Sea, but none from Poland. The numbers give the time to range in seconds - blue for SM-3, red for SS-19 line for North Sea SM-3 location and green for SS-19 from Poland SM-3 location. The green line is dotted from start to finish indicating no boost-phase intercept window. The SS-19 times have to be higher than the SM-3 times to range for an intercept opportunity.
 
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NMaude said:
The Mk-72 from what I know (Courtesy of @sferrin ) has a 6s burn time and the Mk-104 DTRM is ~30s.
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Thank you!

So only about 70km of powered flight range... unfortunate. But if it follows the Talos flight profile (lofted to upwards of 100,000ft and then entering a near-vertical dive onto the target), it may not lose too much speed.
 
if 6 seconds for the booster is true, and if missile's max velocity with the booster is anywhere between Mach 3.5 and 5 - then after those 6 seconds the missile should be roughly at 6000 meters of altitude. If the missile goes up completely vertically. So, with some horizontal movement, perhaps closer to 5000 meters? And then the booster is jettisoned right in the 7th second - that seems logical.
Question is - does the main rocket motor ignite right afterwards? And once ignited, is its thrust constant or does it have some sort of boot-sustain configuration as well?
I always wondered, if the missile would not accelerate right away after booster separation, using its main motor, how quickly would it really shed speed? Would it reach like 10 km in altitude while still going over mach 2?
 
totoro said:
if 6 seconds for the booster is true, and if missile's max velocity with the booster is anywhere between Mach 3.5 and 5 - then after those 6 seconds the missile should be roughly at 6000 meters of altitude.
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What are you referring to? The Patriot doesn't have a launch-booster.
 

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