The Stratospheric Missile Intercept Launch System (SMILS) takes advantage of two unique capabilities. The StratCom Stratospheric Airship and Metal Storm electronic ballistics technology. The StratCom stratospheric airship provides the necessary wide-area early-detection, tracking and discrimination capability, with geo located 24 hour persistence in a local area., while Metal Storm technology provides lightweight compact cost-effective cruise missile defense vehicles, suited to be carried in useful numbers in a compact weapons bay in the airship. The Metal Storm ballistics system also provides the small defense vehicles with a new and effective means of delivering a disproportionately large kinetic mass onto a target. Vehicle configurations are detailed, one having potential advantage in an out-of-atmosphere airship self defense role, the other having a similar potential advantage when operating as an in-atmosphere airship self defense system, or as a cruise missile defense.
