The San Diego-based littoral combat ship Savannah fired a missile from an experimental containerized launcher originally designed for use on land, the Navy said in a statement.
The launch occurred off the California coast Tuesday. The missile, a Standard Missile 6, or SM-6, is designed to shoot down aircraft and other missiles, including so-called "ship killers."
The Savannah is one of the three-hulled versions of the littoral combat ship, many of which are based in San Diego. The ships were designed to be able to operate with one of three mission modules. Of those three — anti-submarine, anti-mine and surface warfare — only ships equipped with the surface warfare module have successfully deployed.
The Navy abandoned the anti-submarine module and the mine countermeasures package was only declared operational in May, according to a Navy news release.
In 2019, Independence-variant littoral combat ships began deploying with the anti-ship Naval Strike Missile.
Potentially adding containerized missile launchers, said Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesperson for Naval Surface Force Pacific in San Diego, adds needed capability to littoral combat ships.
"The exercise demonstrated the modularity and lethality of Littoral Combat Ships and the ability to successfully integrate a containerized weapons system to engage a surface target," Abrahamson said in a statement. "The exercise will inform continued testing, evaluation and integration of containerized weapons systems on afloat platforms."
While the Independence class of the ships have faced their own setbacks, it's the single-hulled Freedom class that's faced the most criticism from government watchdogs.
In 2021, a design flaw found in the ship's combining gear led the Navy to temporarily stop taking delivery of new Freedom class vessels and a speed limit was placed on those already in the fleet.
The issue was eventually remedied but the service has moved to decommission some of the vessels early, some after only a handful of years in service.
