Norsk rakett vokter luftrommet over Washington, D.C. - The War Zone

Raketten heter Norwegian Advanced....... Skal den selge utenlands må den hete noe nøytralt. (Red.)

Photo: Kongsberg

Check video here: https://tinyurl.com/y3dkxm2c

The U.S. military conducted the lowest ever intercept of a mock cruise missile using the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, during a test earlier this month. Operationally, NASAMS helps protect the airspace around Washington, D.C. and the larger surrounding National Capital Region. This test follows a number of other cruise missile defense experiments in the past year or so, including a recent demonstration of the ability of a self-propelled 155mm howitzer to bring down such a weapon using a hyper velocity projectile.

The test took place on Sept. 3, 2020 and involved a NASAMS situated on Santa Rosa Island, located off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, engaging a very low-flying unmanned BQM-167 Skeeter target drone simulating an incoming cruise missile. The U.S. Air Force's 780th Test Squadron, based at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and responsible for various conventional weapon testing, led the test as part of a program called Vermilion Stallion. 

his airspace is among the most heavily restricted and monitored in the world and any potential threats are taken very seriously. In November 2019, a possible intrusion triggered a lockdown at the White House and the Capitol, though that thankfully turned out to be a false alarm, as you can read about in more detail in this previous War Zone story.

This test also comes at a time when there has been a renewed focus on the potential threats posed by cruise missiles, both to American forces on the battlefield and U.S. territory, across the U.S. military. This was codified in the most recent Missile Defense Review that the Pentagon released last year. The previous review, which came out in 2010, was focused entirely on ballistic missile defense.

Protecting the National Capital Region against cruise missiles, including those fired from submarines or other ships, potentially operating clandestinely offshore, has long been a concern for the U.S. government. This was the primary driver behind the U.S. military's abortive Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, an aerostat-mounted radar system. This multi-billion-dollar program began in 1996 and finally came to end more than two decades later after numerous cost increases and delays.

This new attention to the matter of cruise missile defense has translated into a number of different initiatives, including work developing and acquiring various means of detecting and intercepting such weapons. During a multi-day Air Force-led experiment earlier this month, a U.S. Army XM1299 self-propelled 155mm howitzer shot down another BQM-167 simulating a cruise missile with a Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), an unprecedented feat.