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F-35s Could Shoot Down North Korean Missiles
http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35s-could-shoot-down-north-korean-missiles
http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35s-could-shoot-down-north-korean-missiles
"Imagine if seconds after North Korea’s Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile lifted off on Nov. 28, a Lockheed Martin F-35 armed with four Raytheon AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (Amraams) engaged the missile and destroyed it. This isn’t some far-fetched concept or marketing ploy. It is one way the U.S. Defense Department could conduct “kinetic” intercepts of North Korean or Iranian missiles in the future.
In early November, at an event in Washington hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) threw his support behind this concept. He said F-35s should be shooting down missiles before they can escape the atmosphere with their devastating nuclear payloads. Hunter said North Korea is only 75 mi. (120 km) wide in some places, well within the range of an AIM-120D, and Iranian missiles can be targeted from inside Kuwait....
...“It’s like an act of God,” Hunter says. “You have F-35s, you have Amraams, and you can shoot these things down as they go up.”
Tom Lawhead, who heads the Air Force Joint Strike Fighter Integration Office, says Northrop Grumman has been testing the F-35’s ability to detect and track ballistic missiles for several years. The company developed the F-35’s six-sensor, electro-optical/infrared AAQ-37 distributed aperture system and APG-81 active electronically scanned fire control radar, and it has been investing in applications for missile defense.
In October 2014, Northrop conducted an end-to-end test of this concept, using a ground-based distributed aperture system and radar-equipped testbed aircraft. The information was correlated via datalink to produce intercept-quality targeting data, accurate enough for an Amraam or Aegis guided-missile destroyer to use.