Guys.. or girls..? Cease fire?
We get the point, you can use SMs as an anti-ship, though if
there are missiles incoming and an enemy warship in range, the
question becomes "which one do you shoot?" (Pss: Answer? Both of
them. You have more than one launch cell. :P )
Darth, that is a scary missile. Another one I have my eye on is
the potential Brahmos Mk 2. Mach 5+ with possible terminal evasion.
Launch it from a plane at Mach 2 and I've absolutely NO idea what
it's closing speed is going to be. It's going to be a bitch to stop
though.
Quote my old post,
RIM-66 has only been fired anti-ship by a Perry class FFG in the
80s, meaning to say when the US retired the Separate Target
Illumination Radar together with the Mk13 launcher the capability
went too.
There's still hope that other Perry class operators will do this
someday.
Unclear if Aegis ships can do this with SM-2.
In simple terms, the Perry class is a pre-Aegis ship with
separate weapon direction radars like STIR. The system was removed
from US ships to save costs when Aegis became more common. Only
non-US Perry classes still have it.