AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD)

Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) is the sea-based element of the US Missile Defense Agency’s layered architecture, adding ballistic-missile tracking and intercept to the Aegis Combat System aboard Ticonderoga (CG) and Arleigh Burke (DDG) hulls. It engages short- to intermediate-range missiles with the Standard Missile family: the exo-atmospheric SM-3 (hit-to-kill kinetic warhead) and the endo-atmospheric SM-6, both fired from the Mk 41 VLS. Aegis BMD also fields Aegis Ashore ground sites in Romania (2016) and Poland.