The Diplomat:
South Korea is considering fitting its Sejong the Great-class guided missile destroyers with the Raytheon Standard Missile-3 ballistic missile defense system. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports that the United States and South Korea will begin discussing the transfer soon.
The SM-3 is part of a broader effort by South Korea to ward off ballistic missile threats from North Korea. Pyongyang is testing a variety of road-mobile ballistic missiles and one submarine-launched ballistic missile. South Korea’s existing Aegis destroyers feature the SM-2 surface-to-air missile, which, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, is capable of intercepting some “short-range ballistic missiles in the terminal phase.”
Murmurs surrounding the possible adoption of the SM-3 by the Republic of Korea Navy have been circulating for some time now. Yonhap reported in May that Seoul was “moving to install new vertical missile launch systems” on its Aegis-equipped destroyers.
The SM-3 would supplement parallel missile defense efforts in South Korea. For instance, the United States is also reportedly looking to upgrade South Korea’s Patriot Advanced Capability-2 missile defense systems to the more advanced PAC-3 platforms. South Korea would become the third U.S. ally after Japan and Taiwan to field the PAC-3 system.
“Right now we’re focused on upgrading the Patriot system that we have here in Korea,” Eric Fanning, the U.S. secretary of the army, told Yonhap. “I have seen the potential for the upgrades,” Fanning reportedly added, strongly suggesting that a PAC-3 upgrade was forthcoming.
Earlier this summer, for the first time, a U.S. PAC-3 system was temporarily transferred from Kadena Air base in Okinawa, Japan, to Busan, South Korea.
