Again though we can create a list of objective ‘good’ antiship missiles…and provide justification for the definition. Any concept of rank though is entirely spurious…as it will depend on tactical environment and, as Bring It notes above, ISTAR collection and dissemination capability of the employing service/state as to which will be the best option.
I will declare a bias against high supersonic weapons straight out. For antiship supersonics were developed as an attempt to defeat the defensive fires problem. Minimise the window within which the inbound is exposed to defensive systems and you maximise the chances to hit target…or so the theory goes.
Problem is that, largely, the theory is flawed. Minimising time of exposure to defensive systems sounds good on paper…and you’ll see specs everywhere of how a subsonic will take 2 minutes or more to traverse a distance that will take a supersonic 50 seconds. To be a fair comparison though that relies on the fact that the subsonic and supersonic weapon will be detected by the target at the same time and this just does not have to be the case.
Generally, to get supersonic performance at range, the faster missile is larger and requires a larger carrying aircraft. To get the range to keep the larger, more detectable, launch platform back from the targets defensive area missile envelope the larger missile is obliged to fly a high-lo profile. BrahMos, for example, does not sea skim at m2 for its entire 300km flight profile. What that means is that the missile is detectable earlier in its attack profile as, being at altitude with an impressively large IR sig/plume, is a good way to show up on several sensors commonly found on naval escorts these days. Thats even before it broadcasts its presence with the active radar seeker.
The irony with that type of supersonic weapon is that, as big expensive weapons requiring big expensive launch platforms, the primary target set you would wish to use them against, principle anti-air ships, are well equipped to deal with them and becoming increasingly more so. With faster reacting area- and, now, local-area naval SAMs backed by larger calibre ‘smart-fused’ inner-layer gun systems hardkill is well optimsed for the threat….stretching back out that limited engagement window by track-forming and engaging quicker and from farther out. Essentially then, by the weapons nature, it alerts the target to its attack early and its one real trick, its speed, is no longer a guarantee of success. Its possible to resort to a saturation attack, of course, but that becomes difficult to mount because of the higher weapons cost and necessary commitment of resources to deploy.
The other way, apart from supersonic, to minimise exposure to the defensive weapons envelope, and to my thinking the smarter one, is to delay detection of the attack until the last possible moment i.e until its crossing the targets radar/vis horizon!. This of course requires the missile to achieve tactical surprise so any active seeker is right out. It also means low altitude passive approach and descent to absolute wavetop to press back that horizon as close as possible to the target. A 300m/s weapon detected at 12km is on the target in 40 seconds. If thats your first indication you are under attack, and you have a saturation attack of 4 weapons inbound anyone will struggle. Especially if you catch the target in defence watches!. Surprise and smarts beats speed being the soundbyte!.
That being the case, where I asked to specify weapons to equip a naval service, in order to protect an EEZ/SLOCs/coast against a regional superpower level opponent I’d select (no shock to those that know me of old!) the NSM/JSM and back it up with the C-705 in IIR/man-in-the-loop configuration. If I was told that I’d need to make bigger holes in stuff perhaps I’d look at the Kh-59M2 and ask for a lot of heavy strikefighters to saturation deploy them.
If you want a list then….mine would likely be:
NSM/JSM
C-705 IIR (KD?)
Kh-59M2
thank you for your detailed reply.
so supersonic missiles are larger, need to be flown by larger planes, and thus have other unique type of vulnerabilities compared to subsonic yes?
is there a smaller, shorter range supersonic missile?
if large planes are more vulnerable to being detected, what about a long range ground launched anti ship missile that is launched from the coast?
also how do stealth airplanes carrying anti shipping missiles (i guess just the f-35 for now) factor in this eleement of surprise you talked about?
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