This is John Batchelor, conversation with Professor Jim Holmes of the U.S. Navy War College

about a new weapon system on board the U.S. carriers carried by the FAA 18 superhorned. It's called the AIM 174B. It is the air to air, air to ground

missile equivalent of a very successful missile that's been in the fleet for some

time, the SM6.

So there's now a component for the air wing extending its strike range out considerably.

Jim gives the details here.

This is a big plus for the potential conflict

with the People's Republic of China's overwhelming numbers of their Navy in the East Asia waters.

Jim Holmes, U.S. Naval War College on the AIM AIM-174B.

More of this later in the week.

Sure, it's an air-launched variant

of a very successful missile that's been carried in the silos

on board surface ships for quite some time the SM6 it's been to me the SM6 has

been one of the stars of the early competition with China and Russia and so forth

simply because we were deeply outranged for a very very long period of time.

After the Cold War we just stopped up, we stopped upgrading our missile inventory.

We went back to

the two depending on very old short-range missiles like the shipboard

harpoon and to the extent that the the Chinese Navy as it built up it was

fielding missiles that outranges by you know several

multiples three or three or four times which means they get a lot of pot shots at us

while we try to try to close the range to to launch back in In 2015, 2016, the SM6 was actually repurposed for a

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