By Jean-Michel Guhl
22 October 2015, Paris — During its yearly Multinational Ballistic Missile Defense Conference on 6 October 2015, the US Missile Defense Agency bestowed the Technology Pioneer Award on the French and Italian teams behind the SAMP/T extended air defence system. This prize comes in recognition of the successful firing on 6 March 2013 of an Aster 30 Block 1 missile against a target representing a “Scud”-type tactical ballistic missile, in liaison with the NATO command chain.
The aim of the firing was to demonstrate that the ballistic missile defence capability of the SAMP/T, and its interoperability with NATO through the use of Link 16, allow it to be integrated into joint forces and inter-allied operations.
The firing was carried out at the DGA’s missile testing centre in Biscarrosse, jointly with the Italian Army 4th Artillery Regiment from Mantua and the French Air Warfare Centre (CEAM) at Mont-de-Marsan. It mobilized considerable resources from several DGA and NATO centres, as well as a US “Aegis” frigate.
The main strengths of the SAMP/T are its 360° area defence and its ability to simultaneously engage all types of short-range ballistic and conventional air targets by the click of a computer mouse. Developed and manufactured by Thales and MBDA through the Eurosam consortium, as a Franco-Italian cooperation, the SAMP/T system is in service in both countries — fielded by the Land Forces in Italy, and by the Air Force in France — and is a key part of their contribution to NATO’s ballistic missile defence programme.
In view of the extremely lethal “Scud” attack carried very recently by Yemeni forces on Khamis Mushait AB in Saudi Arabia — an aerial attack which besides killing about 100 Saudi aviators destroyed allegedly no less than 17 RSAF F-15 Eagle fighters and 9 AH-64 Apache helicopters — it would be interesting to see how many of these “Scud” missiles would have been downed by a SAMP/T air defense network firing Aster 30 interceptors?
