Business Insider:
The Navy is asking Congress for funding to equip its most technologically advanced surface ships, the Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers, with new weapons designed to turn them into long-range ship killers, according to budget documents spotted by Defense News.
One of the new weapons is Raytheon’s SM-6 missile, which serves three purposes: anti-air, anti-surface, and ballistic-missile defense. Unlike its older brother the SM-3, the SM-6 has a proximity charge that explodes near its target, meaning it does not have to make physical contact with whatever it is intercepting.
In a test of the missile’s anti-ship capability in March 2016, an SM-6 from an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer took out the decommissioned Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Reuben James.
