RIM-161 Standard Missile 3

And there's two specific systems that the Navy relies on to do these interceptions for ships.

That's the SM-3 and the SM-6.

And if you reference Mark Kantzian's, the charts that he has at CSIS, you'll see that probably the highest rate of depletion of all those 14 key systems is the SM-6 and the SM-3.

And Bobby said basically that...

There's a report that our destroyers, it was such an intensive threat to our destroyer.

much closer than they normally would be.

And he said also, he said he had heard through the grapevine, basically, that the Pentagon or the Navy had ordered the ships to basically put their defenses on auto so that they would just throw as much of what they had at the incoming stuff the Iranians were throwing at the ships because that's how worried the Navy is that one of these ships are going to get clipped.

The problem, as Bobby explained to us, the problem is that the Navy doesn't have a lot of these SM-3 and SM-6s anymore.

Yeah

... a lot of its protection of Israel is based in the Mediterranean, where they're using these destroyers that are able to fire these SM-3 interceptors.

We know we're running very low on those SM-3 interceptors.

Those things cost, like, 12 to $15 million a pop, and we only make, like, a couple dozen maybe a year.

Um, and so it's just, it, I just feel like it's game over.

We know that the logistic lines are stretched, you know, to go to Diego Garcia, and we know even supplying Diego Garcia is d- is difficult.

It doesn't have everything that they need." And just so people understand, you know, for things like these SM-3 interceptors, you know, to protect, uh, the, the k- the, the, the vessels out there, they can't be loaded at sea.

You have to go into a, uh, into a dock, and they have to, there's specialized equipment that drops these in, and it takes a couple of days.

It's not a simple process.

There are three types.

the SM-2, which is Standard Missile 2, Standard Missile 3, and Standard Missile 6.

The long and short of the story is that the missile that was fired, anti-ship ballistic missile with a depressed trajectory, it basically means that it did not leave the atmosphere.

It stayed within the stratosphere on the higher reaches of the atmosphere.

As long as you're able to put pressure on these ships, fire a couple of long-range drones, long-range ballistic missiles towards them.

We talked about the very low productive capacity of the US to produce the SM-3 interceptors.

We talked about the long logistic lines.

You just lob a couple of these, and then in one day, all of a sudden, uh-oh, everybody's got to make a 2,000-mile journey to San Diego Garcia to restock and refill.

And then all of a sudden, before long, there's not going to be anything to restock at Diego Garcia.

Right.

And I'll say, yeah, and you're out of SM-3s, and then you're going to have to wait another year or two years for something to really have us to rearm those ships.

Yeah, you know, it does put pressure on them.