Lansmont Instruments Help Assure U.S. Navy SM-3 Missile Brings Down Satellite

Pentagon officials said a Navy SM-3 missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite Wednesday, February 20th. The SM-3, Standard Missile-3 was developed by the Raytheon Company as part of the Missile Defense Agency’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). The SM-3 test program follows the Navy’s philosophy of rigorous system engineering to support incrementally increasing capability and reduce risk. Mission Assurance is designed into the missile from the beginning. Extensive ground-testing of the missile subsystems and early ship system integration coupled with operational ship crew training have resulted in a highly successful flight test program and deployment. A key contributor to that Mission Assurance is to make sure that the SM-3s are transported safely and securely from their point of final assembly in Arkansas to their storage depot in Pearl Harbor.

Raytheon contracted with Lansmont to place SAVER™ Field Instruments on every SM-3 that’s fully assembled and deployed to their storage depot in the Pacific. SAVER™ Instruments monitor the movement of the SM-3s to assure that predetermined fragility levels are not exceeded during transport. Once the SM-3s arrive at their depot the SAVER™ Instruments are configured for long-term monitoring to maintain the health and stability of the SM-3s during storage.