Destroyer USS The Sullivans Damaged After Missile Explodes After Launch

[Onkel Neal]

Destroyer USS The Sullivans Damaged After Missile Explodes After Launch

A Navy guided missile destroyer was damaged after a missile exploded shortly after launch during an exercise off the U.S. Atlantic coast on Saturday, Navy officials have confirmed to USNI News.

“On July 18 at approximately 9 a.m. (EDT) a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) test missile exploded after suffering a malfunction as it was fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) during a planned missile exercise off the coast of Virginia,” read a statement from Naval Sea Systems Command provided to USNI News.

There were no reported injuries and though the ship suffered a small fire on its port side “from missile debris” the destroyer was able to return to Naval Station Norfolk, Va. unassisted, NAVSEA said.

[CCIP]

Bernard!!!!!

[Rockin Robbins]

That hits kind of close to home. My son-in-law is guided missile officer aboard DDG-79 Oscar Austin. He's going to have a lot of work to do in the coming weeks, I predict! Just came in from a long deployment and my daughter is looking to spending lots of time with him. Guess that's a bit out of the question for a while....

Just goes to show that being in the military is a dangerous occupation. These guys are sharp. They'll get the problem sorted out.

One thing for sure. If these were the DDs in Taffy 3 the Japanese battleships would have been on the bottom of the ocean before they ever caught sight of a single DDG. These destroyers against those battleships would be a complete mismatch in the destroyers' favor. That's how much things have changed.

[CCIP]

I should say too, I'm glad and relieved everyone is okay! Accidents happen - sounds like all the protection measures worked well and kept everyone safe this time

[Jimbuna]

Most importantly, no casualties....the rest will be standard procedure for a well trained crew.

[mapuc]

These type of missiles have to work 110 % they are the ships first defense against ASM, Bombers etc.

Markus

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by mapuc

These type of missiles have to work 110 % they are the ships first defense against ASM, Bombers etc.

Markus

Well, in the real world, nothing ever works 110% or even 100%. That's why one of the most important measures of effectiveness is not just how fail-proof something is, but even more so - how well it fails.
In the airline industry, for example, if you look at the big picture - jet engines fail all the time, but you'd have to go quite a few years back to find a large airliner brought down by blowing out its engine. They're just engineered to fail without catastrophic consequences. That's something that any major system should be engineered for.

From that perspective, it seems like everything worked pretty brilliantly here - noone hurt, no major damage, ship is operational. Well done to all involved.

[Rockin Robbins]

For safety reasons the Navy favors solid fuel rockets and the SM-5 is not exception. There hasn't been a failure in 40 years, so this is a mystery. These missiles are made by Raytheon and Raytheon will be doing most of the investigating of the causes.

Coming soon to a DDG near you, the SM-6 missile! I don't know what the improvements are. SM, by the way, stands for Standard Missile......imagination!

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

These missiles are made by Raytheon and Raytheon...

Odd unrelated note I bumped into just yesterday... The earliest reference to Raytheon that I've personally seen related to the first radar set installed on the battleship Texas / BB-35 in the region of 1942. (From Warship Pictorial - USS Texas BB-35)