Destroyer USS The Sullivans Damaged After Missile Explodes After Launch

[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)