SM-2 and the Danish Navy: The Devil is in the Details (2005-2022)

SM-2 missiles being loaded aboard the Danish frigate Niels Juel for the first time - note the second missile cannister in the foreground

In the days of battleships, understanding the firepower of a warship was simple - all you needed to do was count up the size and number of guns it was armed with, and you had a decent idea of what it was capable of contributing to a battle. These days, things are more complicated. Especially with the development of the universal VLS that can handle a variety of different missiles. All too often, modern warships are capable of carrying missiles that they have never actually been equipped with, leading casual observers to profoundly misunderstand the ships' combat capabilities.

A recent, and particularly egregious, example of this phenomenon concerns the Danish Iver Huitfeldt-class fregatter (frigates). A quick check of the ships' Wikipedia page will reveal that they are supposedly armed with:

Armament of the Iver Huitfeldt-class (according to Wikipedia on 05/04/22)

That is a rather respectable armament for a ship of its size - if it were actually true. In reality, while the launchers were certainly present, up until May 2022, not one ship of the Iver Huitfeldt-class had ever carried a live SM-2 missile, let alone fired one. In fact, Denmark did not even possess a single SM-2 missile until this year, and the ships' combat systems were not even fully compatible with the weapon.

Arming Frigates on a Budget

Instead of the annual budget cycle familiar to Americans, Danish military procurement is broken down into five-year periods, with the Danish Government publishing a "Defense Agreement" at the beginning of each period. Procurement of the Iver Huitfeldt-class occurred as part of the 2005-2009 Defense Agreement, with the three ships being laid down in 2008-2009. Originally called patruljeskibe (patrol ships), they were intended to replace the much smaller Niels Juel-class, and keeping costs down was a major requirement of the program.

To reduce costs, the hulls were built in Estonia and Lithuania, before being transported to Denmark for final assembly. The weapons fit was also kept simple, with many weapons recycled from retiring ships or simply "fitted for but not with." The most notable example of this is the frigates' two forward-mounted OTO Melara Super Rapido 76mm guns - 1980's-era weapons taken from the decommissioning Flyvefisken-class patrol ships. The Mk 141 Harpoon canister launchers and the Mk 56 VLS for ESSM were also borrowed from retiring vessels.

Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate Niels Juel - note the full load of Mk 56 and Mk 141 launchers amidships

The only new weapons for the Iver Huitfeldt-class were the 35mm Millennium Guns and the Mk 41 VLS for SM-2. However, area air defense missiles are expensive - over $2 million apiece for even a simple SM-2 Block III. So to stay within their budget, the Danes bought the Mk 41 launchers, but not the missiles that they were meant to carry. 

The Danish SM-2 Procurement Timeline

The Danes always intended to fully arm the Iver Huitfeldt-class when money became available, but it took much longer than might have been expected. It wasn't until the 2018-2023 Defense Agreement (7 years after the ships had commissioned) that money was finally put aside to procure the desired SM-2. In most cases, we would have had little to no insight into the exact procurement numbers or timelines, but Denmark is an open Western democracy, and any weapons approved for Foreign Military Sales by the United States government are publicly listed.

Thus, on July 31, 2018, the United States Defense Security Cooperation Agency posted a notice that the State Department had approved the sale of 46 SM-2 Block IIIA All Up Rounds (live warshots), 4 SM-2 Block IIIA telemetry rounds (training missiles), and associated canisters, documentation, and technical support for the estimated cost of $152 million. It should be noted here that all DSCA announcements are only notifications that a sale has been approved for export, not announcements of actual sales - many times allied nations will get approval to buy weapons that they never actually procure, or get approved to buy a larger quantity of weapons than they eventually purchase. However, on January 15, 2020, Defense Media Network published an interview with Captain Claus Andersen, Royal Danish Navy, confirming that a total of 50 SM-2 missiles were on order.

A Standard Missile is loaded into a Mk 41 VLS cannister at Raytheon

Buying missiles is not a quick process. Weapons like SM-2 are incredibly sophisticated and many of their components have long lead times, which means that any order placed takes years to fill. In this case, we have an almost two-year gap between the sale being approved and Captain Andersen saying that the missiles were on order. We also have another piece of evidence to further flesh out the timeline. On December 21, 2021, the United States Department of Defense announced that Raytheon had been awarded a $578 million contract modification to produce SM-2 missiles for eight allied nations. Among those eight nations was Denmark, paying $98 million of the total.

Finally, on May 3, 2022, the Danish Ministry of Defense announced that SM-2 missiles (note the plural - images and video of the event also seem to indicate at least two missiles being loaded) had been loaded aboard the frigate Niels Juel for the first time. The press release also mentioned that a non-flyable test missile had previously been loaded, although no timeframe was given, and that they had updated and tested the combat system software to make sure that it was compatible with the weapon. However, there are still many steps before SM-2 is combat-ready, and the other two ships of the Iver Huitfelt-class have yet to be modified to accommodate the weapon.

Always Pay Attention to Missile Inventories

One point that I have strived to emphasize in my Missile Loadouts posts is that theoretical missile loadouts are almost never actual missile loadouts. In this case, Denmark has ordered a grand total of 46 warshots. However, fully loading three frigates, each with 32 Mk 41 VLS cells, would obviously take a total of 96 missiles. While we can make some allowances for ships in maintenance not needing missiles (I generally assume only around two-thirds of a fleet is actually armed at any one time when estimating missile loadouts), 46 missiles are nowhere near enough to fully arm the Iver Huitfeldt-class. This is especially true once you consider that the Danish Navy will likely expend at least a few weapons in testing and training.

Niels Juel conducts the Danish Navy's first SM-2 launch

A very rough estimate would be to expect each deployed member of the Iver Huitfeldt-class to carry around 16 SM-2 Block IIIA - just half of their theoretical 32-missile capacity. It is also more than likely that Denmark's stocks of ESSM and Harpoon are similarly limited, particularly since the weapons for the Iver Huitfeldt-class appear to have come from older ships and are likely reaching the ends of their service lives. Indeed, the images and video of SM-2 being loaded aboard Niels Juel showed only 6 out of the possible 12 cells loaded in the port Mk 56 VLS and at least 4 cells missing from the starboard Mk 56 VLS. The end result is that what appears to be a rather well-armed warship on paper may in fact provide far less capability in the real world.

Lest it appears that I am being too harsh on Denmark, I should point out that the armament of the Iver Huitfeldt-class is by no means a unique or even particularly noteworthy case - it is simply one of the best-documented ones. Very few navies are interested in broadcasting the fact that their ships are woefully under-armed, but half-armed ships are quite possibly more common than fully-loaded ships. Even the navies that can claim their ships deploy with a full load of missiles almost certainly have very few reloads available in the event that those missiles are ever actually fired - an important fact to keep in mind when comparing navies or thinking about potential conflicts.