Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT)
| Type: | Experimental air defense missile |
| Guidance: | Inertial/terminal guidance |
| Warhead: | Hit-to-kill with lethality enhanced fragmentation warhead |
| Propellant: | Single-stage solid engine |
| Altitude: | 10 miles (16km) |
| Range: | 30 miles (48km) |
| Speed: | Mach 5 (1,475m/s) |
| Length: | 15.7 feet (4.79m) |
| Diameter: | 10 inches (25cm) |
| Weight: | 700 pounds (317kg) |
| First firing: | June 1992 |
The Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) program began as a part of the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also commonly known as “Star Wars.” Under this program, the US military began to consider how the upper atmosphere and outer space would be used in the event of a war with the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet Union was no longer the only threat. The later Cold War saw an increase in the size, sophistication, and “democratization” of ballistic missile stockpiles. With the push of a figurative button, countries such as China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea would be able to launch volleys of ballistic missiles, targeting enemy locations hundreds to thousands of miles away.
With this in mind, the US military needed to enhance their capability of intercepting missiles in the terminal phase of their trajectory. This concept was nothing new; terminal interceptors had been in development since the Nike Programs of the early Cold War. The problem now was learning how to intercept multiple incoming ballistic missiles. This scenario was further complicated by the possibility that each missiles could carry multiple warheads, decoys, electronic countermeasures, submunitions, and other capabilities that acted as threat multipliers.
ERINT was the direct successor to the Flexible Lightweight Agile Guided Experiment (FLAGE), an anti-ballistic missile system that was designed to test and demonstrate the feasibility of using hit-to-kill technology to intercept terminal reentry vehicles at the theater level. FLAGE was a largely successful program, with its first full-scale intercept occurring at White Sands Missile Range in 1987.
With the breakout of the First Gulf War in 1990, it quickly became apparent how important ballistic missile defense was going to be in a peer or near-peer conflict. Although the recently deployed Patriot Advanced Capability 2 (PAC-2) included upgrades to the MIM-104 Patriot system to enhance its lethality against ballistic missiles, its performance against Iraqi “Scuds” proved to be, in one way or another, questionable at best, despite the assertions made by US military officials at the time.
However, military priorities had already shifted in ERINT’s favor. After the First Gulf War, ERINT began to rack up a record of intercepts against targets simulating ballistic missiles. Its series of success led to the Army choosing ERINT as the interceptor for the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) upgrade in May 1994.
Work began on integrating ERINT into the Patriot system. Due to its smaller size, four ERINT missiles could be mounted in the same space as one PAC-2 missile, increasing each launching station’s maximum inventory load from four missiles to sixteen. Additionally, upgraded launching stations could carry combinations of ERINT and PAC-2 missiles.
The PAC-3 upgrades began fielding in 2001 and the ERINT-based PAC-3 missiles are still in full-scale production.
