Top 5 air launched anti shipping missiles?

I will say Kh-59M2, using IR / TV seeker, it is difficult to jamming, speed of Mach 0.88, although it is not unexpected to ESSM or CIWS, but most ashm use the power of the majority

Possibly but I’m still not sure a diamond-back wing-set would work under those conditions and even a strategic bomber would struggle to carry a single DF-25 like missile. Even a DF-21 weighs more than a MOP and is almost twice as long.

Of course the important part of what you wrote initially on this was ‘air-launched ballistic missile’. That being the part I missed of course!. Apologies!.

20 years ago was also the year of Intel 386 CPU, DOS, and 64 kB graphics,
my 50 buck wristwatch is better

Too bad. I had a Commodore Amiga 500 27 years ago but Pershing II RADAC could home in on bunkers at Mach 10 when we were all playing PAC Man on ZX Spectrums.

DF-25 has a throw-weight of 2000kgs I read somewhere?. ‘SDB bus’ could be just another warhead fit theoretically as the actual cross-range terminal phase stuff would be handled by the munition itself. Lilkely they’d be down a bit from M10 by the lower atmosphere!.

Possibly but I’m still not sure a diamond-back wing-set would work under those conditions and even a strategic bomber would struggle to carry a single DF-25 like missile. Even a DF-21 weighs more than a MOP and is almost twice as long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21

I think something like a Pershing II with a modernised version of RADAC and up-to-date propulsion system could work as a bomber deployed or ground launched AShM with 1800km range. With modernisation the weight and size could probably be reduced too, or the Pershing IB would work as a shorter ranged version (750km). I’m actually sat here questioning whether a Pershing II or the proposed would work even in its original state. The RADAC was programmed to recognise and home in on specific targets to within 30m CEP. That’s accurate enough for an aircraft carrier strike.

20 years ago was also the year of Intel 386 CPU, DOS, and 64 kB graphics,
my 50 buck wristwatch is better

Thank you for the info. So if 20 years ago it was a valid option for one missile, and it took that long before another missile of similar class entered service, it couldn’t have been because of technical hurdles but because of design choice. If IIR homing was best homing for most missons, we would have seen it proliferate on many more missiles. There are probably pros and cons to active and passive homing which is why even some of tomorrow’s high tech antiship missiles are planned with active radar seekers.

The processing power and algorithms required for IIR homing at such high velocities of relative motion would be a significant uphill task in sea skimming mode. For a maneuvering missile where the target might or might not always be in field of view it would be even more difficult to constantly co relate the seeker data with pre loaded target data.

Verbatim

If it is alterted to the attack in progress!. This is the whole point I’m making.

…and all you have done there is to detail, thoroughly, why you do not want to attack a fully alerted naval target set. Again, as you say, all the supersonic does it to shorten the response time for defensive weapons. To counter that all that is needed is for those defensive weapons to be able to react faster…which is exactly what has happened. Supersonic is no longer the advantage it was because, even twice as fast, is no longer fast enough.

Let me try and explain this a different way. You are the PWO(A) of an anti-air escort. You are going to sail through defended waters escorting a group of amphibs…you need to perform a threat reduction exercise to see what you can do to minimise risk of a missile hit on the heavies. What would you rather face:

1, A large supersonic missile threat. One that you know can only be deployed by the larger strikefighters the opposition possess. Which intelligence tells you are only based at two specific airfields. One that needs the opposition to have to develop very solid target data before they can fire…that you can look for them trying to develop. Its a missile that you know will hurt you if it hits, but, you are pretty confident that you will get warning of from your IR and ESM sensors if it comes in…allowing you to keep your MFR/VSR in standby…not broadcasting your position. Also one that you know your hardkill and softkill will be effective against.

2, A small subsonic passive missile threat. One that you know your ship will survive hits from, unless there is a big fire, and one you know your hardkill will be able to cope with, provided its a modest streaming attack. One that the opposition can launch from any fastjet in its inventory and from some of its chopper force. One you know you are going to get no warning of on its approach and, from organic systems, one you are going to have to radiate to pick up…and then chances are you arent going to pick up until it crosses your horizon. Its also a weapon that the softkill in your decoy tubes isnt going to do much for.

Maybe its counter-intuitive to most, but, that latter scenario scares the hell out of me a lot more than the former. If I couldnt get reliable permanent, high quality, airborne radar cover for the second scenario I’d say dont try it and choose a route away from the threat. The first one I’d consider giving it a go…if the risk was warranted.

Swap out the manoevering RV for a bus stage holding 12-14 SDB-II clones and fire 2 or 3 at a carrier. 30-40 250lb warheads with 30-40nm cross-range glide for evasion/zone saturation seekers targetted on elevators, island/sensor masts, fueling pits, ordnance hoists, catapult tracks. Good luck defending that one!.

If you want to attack an unalerted task force, first and foremost you could not mount a saturation attacck, for the same very reason that intelligence gathering will alert about preparatory work, at least.

And there will be at least periodically some kind of EM emission to check the actual task force’s position, either from within the attacking detachment or some other supporting aircraft or ship. Task Force will hardly be unaware an attack is either coming or likely, and will mantain everything else than LRR, from ESM to IR seekers and even bait vessels with their sensors suites, active and on alert status.

And the bus concept, while interesting and sound, could only be related to a land based installation, making such a weapon a strictly access deny weapon, requiring large supporting infrastructure. Definitly not suitable for anything else than defend some bastion.

Kh-31 is the closest to the concept I’m supporting, and still it’s not to be used as a reference.

Still it packs in a small airframe Mach 2 speed, impressive agility and proven sea skimming ability.

In its ARM variant, could be even be accredited with a passive ASh capability.

The real constraint was the lacking of critical thermal imaging and imaging processing capabilities, at least russian bureau are still striving to reach such performances in really small packages.

What would be essential by my point of view, and requiring almost a clean sheet design, would be a LO airframe and an effective thermal signature reduction.

By the way, if you could not spot the thermal signature of the incoming strike aircraft there is little chance you can spot the missile’s one until it has significantly closed distances. There nothing forbidding an efficient engine giving a far little thermal image to a weapon weighting around one ton, compared to the thermal signature released by engine(s) powering an aircraft weighting tenfold or more.

I cannot see anything making a supersonic, seaskimming weapon really less discrete than classical subsonic and seaskimming weapons. Maybe designing the engine and related thermal signature suppression would cost significantly more than subsonic engines, still would cost 1/1000 of their targets and far far less than the assets the weapons are defending defeating the enemy task force.

Thank you for the info. So if 20 years ago it was a valid option for one missile, and it took that long before another missile of similar class entered service, it couldn’t have been because of technical hurdles but because of design choice. If IIR homing was best homing for most missons, we would have seen it proliferate on many more missiles. There are probably pros and cons to active and passive homing which is why even some of tomorrow’s high tech antiship missiles are planned with active radar seekers.

That may be so, but it also may be a matter of money/investors/political support etc. Which is precisely why i specified “hypothetical” missiles. Only missile (that i know of) is NSM which has literally been in active service for a single year. …

Japan – Type 93 (ASM-2) anti-ship missile. In service 20 years ago, with IIR homing.

That may be so, but it also may be a matter of money/investors/political support etc. Which is precisely why i specified “hypothetical” missiles. Only missile (that i know of) is NSM which has literally been in active service for a single year. Someone has to be first and lead the way, just as with active radar guided anti ship missiles 50 years ago. They didn’t pop out everywhere at once, but at the end of ww2, were even used a bit, then for a decade no one bothered before Soviet union went on to create their active radar guided weapons, even though the West had arguably better technology to pull it off. But they chose not to, didn’t see the point then. Yet later they changed their minds again. All that doesn’t mean there won’t be other (subsonic and supersonic) missiles with passive seekers in the near future. Fundamentally there’s virtually nothing preventing a supersonic missile to successfully use IIR guidance. (will there perhaps be some efficiency loss due to air friction and higher temperatures? Maybe some. But as we saw with IRST systems and ever advancing IIR guided AAMs, all that is solvable) Time will tell.

Also, there is little to no difference in flight profile of hypothetical subsonic, passive seeker antiship missile and hypothetical supersonic, passive seeker missile.

Except that the subsonic missile described above isnt hypothetical….its operational. Against this no-one, so far, has managed to build a supersonic i.e M2, sea skimming, passive seeker missile.

There is little to no difference in flight profile and launch conditions between a hypothetical aircraft carrying subsonic, active seeker antiship missiles and same aircraft carrying supersonic, active seeker missiles. The aircraft itself may have slightly less range, mission wise, due to somewhat heavier/bigger missiles (which, again, don’t need to be a few times bigger. case in point (russian kh31ad and japanese asm3, not really that much bigger than your average harpoon) But we’re still talking single digit differences in range of the aircraft, less so for larger planes in class of su30 or the like.

Also, there is little to no difference in flight profile of hypothetical subsonic, passive seeker antiship missile and hypothetical supersonic, passive seeker missile. The latter MAY perhaps require slightly earlier pop up manouver before terminal phase to decently scan the area and select targets (due to less time to do it, compared to a slower missile). Again, while it may expose itself a few seconds longer in that phase, it will compensate during terminal phase where it will take perhaps 60 seconds less to cross the gap to the target.

As for attacking a larger, spread out task force, of course that is hugely more complex subject. One can either hope to try and coordinate a massive assault from many platforms at the same time, or start picking out most forward assets first with smaller attacks. But that is equally applicable for both subsonic and supersonic missile attacks. if successful, that may cause the enemy’s task force to move away, thus denying more attack opportunities, but at the same time, that also means the sea denial mission has successfuly been performed.

12-14 SBDs would weigh 3,000-3,500lb alone making it not very air-launchable. Not sure how SDBs perform at Mach 10+ either. I was thing more like SLIRBM.

DF-25 has a throw-weight of 2000kgs I read somewhere?. ‘SDB bus’ could be just another warhead fit theoretically as the actual cross-range terminal phase stuff would be handled by the munition itself. Lilkely they’d be down a bit from M10 by the lower atmosphere!.

Wasnt one of the HISTRIKE or FASTHAWK or whatever the program was that looked at launching a vehicle carrying bombs at supersonic/hypersonic speeds..?

Swap out the manoevering RV for a bus stage holding 12-14 SDB-II clones and fire 2 or 3 at a carrier. 30-40 250lb warheads with 30-40nm cross-range glide for evasion/zone saturation seekers targetted on elevators, island/sensor masts, fueling pits, ordnance hoists, catapult tracks. Good luck defending that one!.

12-14 SBDs would weigh 3,000-3,500lb alone making it not very air-launchable. Not sure how SDBs perform at Mach 10+ either. I was thing more like SLIRBM.

Ok, that means the basic assumption if you’re gonna attack or not with your proposed weapons vs this full fledged task force
is if they got a radar going or not.
It follows then that if they keep a radar on, ship or airborne, they wont be attacked

No…it just means the number of weapons employed in the strike has to be higher either way. With the supersonic its difficult to conceive of the attacking force maintaining tactical surprise as the weapons are in no way discrete. With the subsonic, with a passive seeker, there is at least a possibility of achieving that. With tactical surprise the chances of attack succeeding go way up.

If it is alterted to the attack in progress!. This is the whole point I’m making.

Ok, that means the basic assumption if you’re gonna attack or not with your proposed weapons vs this full fledged task force
is if they got a radar going or not.
It follows then that if they keep a radar on, ship or airborne, they wont be attacked

Verbatim

Because there is not such a thing as a saturation attack suitable against a full fledged task force.

If it is alterted to the attack in progress!. This is the whole point I’m making.

Even a couple of dozen incoming weapons could be dealed of, starting with multiple engagements up to 50 km away from the outer layer of the task force defence by AAW DDG or CG, following with multple engaments under 20 Km away both from AAW ships and other surface combatants, following with at least multiple engagements by either CIWS on likely targets or even nearby AAW ships. On top of that, chaffs, flares, ECM…

…and all you have done there is to detail, thoroughly, why you do not want to attack a fully alerted naval target set. Again, as you say, all the supersonic does it to shorten the response time for defensive weapons. To counter that all that is needed is for those defensive weapons to be able to react faster…which is exactly what has happened. Supersonic is no longer the advantage it was because, even twice as fast, is no longer fast enough.

Let me try and explain this a different way. You are the PWO(A) of an anti-air escort. You are going to sail through defended waters escorting a group of amphibs…you need to perform a threat reduction exercise to see what you can do to minimise risk of a missile hit on the heavies. What would you rather face:

1, A large supersonic missile threat. One that you know can only be deployed by the larger strikefighters the opposition possess. Which intelligence tells you are only based at two specific airfields. One that needs the opposition to have to develop very solid target data before they can fire…that you can look for them trying to develop. Its a missile that you know will hurt you if it hits, but, you are pretty confident that you will get warning of from your IR and ESM sensors if it comes in…allowing you to keep your MFR/VSR in standby…not broadcasting your position. Also one that you know your hardkill and softkill will be effective against.

2, A small subsonic passive missile threat. One that you know your ship will survive hits from, unless there is a big fire, and one you know your hardkill will be able to cope with, provided its a modest streaming attack. One that the opposition can launch from any fastjet in its inventory and from some of its chopper force. One you know you are going to get no warning of on its approach and, from organic systems, one you are going to have to radiate to pick up…and then chances are you arent going to pick up until it crosses your horizon. Its also a weapon that the softkill in your decoy tubes isnt going to do much for.

Maybe its counter-intuitive to most, but, that latter scenario scares the hell out of me a lot more than the former. If I couldnt get reliable permanent, high quality, airborne radar cover for the second scenario I’d say dont try it and choose a route away from the threat. The first one I’d consider giving it a go…if the risk was warranted.

Air-launched ballistic missile with terminal guidance and manoeuvring RV? Terminal guidance sensors shielded until after re-entry then shield is ejected.

Swap out the manoevering RV for a bus stage holding 12-14 SDB-II clones and fire 2 or 3 at a carrier. 30-40 250lb warheads with 30-40nm cross-range glide for evasion/zone saturation seekers targetted on elevators, island/sensor masts, fueling pits, ordnance hoists, catapult tracks. Good luck defending that one!.

Air-launched ballistic missile with terminal guidance and manoeuvring RV? Terminal guidance sensors shielded until after re-entry then shield is ejected.

Because there is not such a thing as a saturation attack suitable against a full fledged task force.

A fully fledged task force is going to be spreak over severl hundreds of km².

The outlying ship arent going to be well covered by the inner defense, a flight of 4 exocets programmed with waypoints to converge on a single ship from different directions is a tough challenge to face.

Once the outer layer is disabled, then it’s time for attacking the carrier (or more likely, it’s time for the SSN/SSK to do their job, the ASW patrols having been destroyed).

IMO, an interesting development for ASuM would be the development of the IR seeker of the AASM for ship recognition. Striking from 50km, it would be out of range of most air defense systems (ASTER10, ESSM, VL MICA…) and a couple of planes could lob 12 missiles at the same time.

Even if the target manages to shoot all of them down (and forget about cannon CIWS, AASM falls at 90°), they’d still have expended most of their missiles and several millions $ worth of ammunition against a “low cost” strike.