US Navy warships picked up multiple new Iranian ballistic missile kills in the latest defense of Israel
US warships intercepted multiple Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at Israel this month, the Navy confirmed over the weekend, sharing new details from its third defense of Israel in a year and a half.
Israel launched a new military operation against Iran on June 13, prompting Tehran to retaliate with waves of missile attacks. The US Navy moved five of its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for support if needed.
The destroyers — USS Thomas Hudner, USS Arleigh Burke, USS The Sullivans, USS Oscar Austin, and USS Paul Ignatius — are equipped with high-end interceptors that are specifically designed for ballistic missile defense.
Officials had previously confirmed that the US ships were providing air defense for Israel, but it was unclear if they scored any hits. However, in a statement on Sunday, the Navy revealed the destroyers intercepted "multiple" Iranian ballistic missiles since June 14.
The Navy did not say which interceptors the destroyers used against the Iranian missiles and referred additional questions to US Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations. Business Insider reached out to CENTCOM for more information but did not receive a response.
The disclosure comes as Navy leadership raises concerns that the sea service is burning through one of its top ballistic missile interceptors, the Standard Missile-3. Just last week, Adm. James Kilby, acting chief of naval operations, told lawmakers that American warships were using the SM-3 "at an alarming rate."
Navy warships fired multiple SM-3 interceptors to defend Israel from large-scale Iranian missile attacks in April and October of last year.
The SM-3 missile is an important element of the Navy's Aegis Combat System, equipped on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers. It uses a kinetic kill vehicle to destroy short- to intermediate-range missiles during the midcourse phase of their flight.
The SM-3 is produced in multiple variants, which can cost as little as $10 million on the low end and nearly $30 million on the high end, according to the US Missile Defense Agency.
Analysts have argued that the Navy is depleting its SM-3 stockpile in the Middle East without sufficient plans to replace it, which could be an issue in a Pacific conflict, where these interceptors would likely be needed in large quantities. China, a leading concern, has a large arsenal of ballistic missiles.
And the SM-3 is not the only missile interceptor that the Navy is heavily expending in the Middle East. American warships have fired hundreds of SM-2s and SM-6s to defend against attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
US military planners have said that one of the challenges of the Red Sea conflict is being forced to use expensive interceptors to defeat cheap Houthi drones. Trying to get on the right side of that cost curve — saving the higher-end missiles for more advanced threats — is an ongoing focus in training across NATO.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
6 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Ford CEO Jim Farley Has a Clever Defense for Auto Tariffs
At a June 27 appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival moderated by author and biographer Walter Isaacson, Ford CEO Jim Farley defended that some limited, targeted import tariffs could help the Blue Oval and other Detroit automakers survive and create more industrial jobs. Still, Farley said there needs to be a balance between a "fair playing field" to promote U.S. manufacturing while keeping cars affordable, which unfortunately will require importing components from other countries like Mexico. "What I like to say is, let's create a fair playing field for the finished vehicle. For parts, let us import parts from around the world," Farley said. "Let us keep Mexico stable, and other countries. That's what we're working with the administration on." The Ford figurehead's remarks at Aspen comes four months after he criticized President Trump's tariff policies at the same time Ford announced its Q4 and FY 2024 financial results in February, where he noted that they would create "a lot of cost and a lot of chaos," as duties on Mexican and Canadian imports "would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen." However, he has slightly softened his position, noting that some protectionist measures could help promote American blue-collar industries, such as construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and skilled trades, to the next generation of skilled workforce instead of white-collar office work. He noted that the American workforce needs "to go back to the basics to trade schools" and that "we need to have a society that doesn't look down on people like that," adding that its factory in Germany participates in an apprenticeship program where students are exposed to an industrial environment "starting in junior high school." "What happens if you [the United States] have to defend yourself?" Farley told Issacson and the crowd at Aspen. "What, is Google going to make the tanks? We've talked a lot about energy independence, but we need to start talking about industrial independence. People do not realize how dependent we are as a country on making things in other countries." Farley pointed to the rare earth mineral crisis as an example. Over the last three weeks, Ford temporarily idled factories in the U.S. due to a shortage of magnets containing rare earth minerals, which are used in many different components. "We cannot get any high-powered magnets without China," Farley said. "We shut down plants for the last three weeks because we cannot get high-powered magnets. We can't make that stuff." As someone who graduated from a vocational high school, I see an inherent value in what Farley is saying. That's especially true as the topic of his conversation with the Steve Jobs and Elon Musk biographer turned to the Chinese EV market, where he mentioned that realizing the strength of the Chinese automotive industry was "the most humbling thing I have ever seen," adding that "seventy percent of all EVs in the world, electric vehicles, are made in China." However, I don't think that getting more people into the trades and into industrial environments is an end-all, be-all solution. As time evolves, technologies such as robotics and AI may have a larger role in industrial might; at least that is what Chinese companies like Xiaomi have been doing to scale up their car factories. Farley isn't wrong for wanting to try at least; however, there is more than what meets the eye on a topic where there is no straight solution. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Miami Herald
6 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Minnesota agriculture institute joins lawsuit against USDA to save grant funding
WASHINGTON - A Minnesota agriculture group says the Trump administration's canceling of so-called DEI grants in farm country broke the law and imperiled a food network initiative's future, in a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis joined other farm sector non-profits who said last week in a lawsuit that the U.S. Department of Agriculture slashed grants for DEI - diversity, equity and inclusion - haphazardly and without individual review, violating federal law. The grants are intended to promote DEI efforts, from a San Francisco Bay Area initiative to boost LGBTQ and multiracial farmers to a New York soil health program. In Minnesota the IATP's grant for $111,695 to finance the MinnieAg Network, including tools for bridging farmers with food and ag industry officials, was terminated just six months from the finish line. That forced the organization to spend $30,000 from its own pocket to finish the grant's goals. "The abrupt and unexpected cancelation of our grant comes at a critical juncture just before we were planning to finalize our 'Farm and Food Systems 101′ resources to make this information available to all," said Erin McKee VanSlooten, Community Food Systems program director at IATP. VanSlooten said the cuts amount to "negating" 18 months of work, and she worries about the program's future. Upon taking office in January, President Trump signed a flurry of executive orders aiming to root out government funding for equity, sustainability and diversity programs under the charges that such programs were discriminatory or wasteful. According to the ag groups' lawsuit, when USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins posted to X that she'd cancelled a grant in the Bay Area to "educate queer, trans and BIPOC urban farmers and consumers about food justice," she said her agency would refocus around "American farming, ranching and forestry." The lawsuit alleges staff at USDA did not properly review programs and the agency could not revoke funding previously granted. The plaintiffs cover a wide swath of agriculture groups working to build pathways for non-traditional farmers to enter the industry, improve soil health and build climate and food resilience. One nonprofit's grant work aimed to build more trees in cities to provide buffers from the heat. Another sought to teach producers about no-till farming. The lawsuit names USDA, Rollins and other Trump administration officials, including the acting director of the Department of Government Efficiency. In a statement, a USDA spokesperson said they would not comment on pending litigation. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Iran hardens stance against IAEA and its chief in wake of US-Israel attacks
Iran has taken an unequivocal stance against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the country's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summarily dismissing its chief Rafael Grossi's request to visit nuclear facilities bombed by Israel and the United States during a 12-day conflict earlier this month. 'Grossi's insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent,' said Araghchi on X on Monday. 'Iran reserves the right to take any steps in defence of its interests, its people and its sovereignty.' In tandem, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Tehran had halted cooperation with the IAEA due to what he called Grossi's 'destructive' behaviour towards Iran, his office said. 'The action taken by parliament members … is a natural response to the unjustified, unconstructive, and destructive conduct of the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,' Pezeshkian told Macron in a phone call, according to a presidency statement. Al Jazeera's Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian leadership is making it clear that the IAEA is an 'international body with defined responsibilities and these responsibilities are not political but technical'. But, he added, Tehran views the nuclear agency as an international body 'under immense [political] pressure from Israel and the United States'. Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, citing Israel's June 13 attack on Iran and later strikes by the US on nuclear facilities. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24. Since the start of the conflict, Iranian officials have sharply criticised the IAEA not only for failing to condemn the Israeli and US strikes, but also for passing a resolution on June 12 accusing Tehran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, the day before Israel attacked. In the meantime, France, Germany and Britain have decried 'threats' made against Grossi. 'France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemn threats against the director general of the IAEA Rafael Grossi and reiterate our full support to the agency,' Foreign Ministers Jean-Noel Barrot, Johann Wadephul and David Lammy said in a joint statement. 'We call on Iranian authorities to refrain from any steps to cease cooperation with the IAEA,' they added. 'We urge Iran to immediately resume full cooperation in line with its legally binding obligations, and to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety and security of IAEA personnel.' While none specified which threats they were referring to, Iran's ultra-conservative Kayhan newspaper recently claimed documents showed Grossi was an Israeli spy and should be executed. Iran has insisted no threats were posed against Grossi or the agency's inspectors. On Monday during his weekly press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the Iranian parliament's decision to halt cooperation with the IAEA reflected the 'concern and anger of the Iranian public opinion'. He further criticised US and European powers for maintaining what he described as a 'political approach' towards Iran's nuclear programme. At least 935 people were killed during the recent conflict with Israel, Iran's judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said, citing the latest forensic data. The deceased included 132 women and 38 children, Jahangir added. Meanwhile, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the country is involved in efforts to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue and a guarantee against a return to escalation by all parties. Pezeshkian issued an official apology to the Qatari people in a phone call to Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani after the targeting of Al Udeid Air Base, the biggest US military base in the Middle East, he added.
