JonSThis is the size of the hole, and secondary damage, done to the USS Stark. There are not many 4000ton vessels that this kind of damage would not put right out of the fight no matter how good their DC or design resilience is.
it was fire that did the most damage on stark. Also if i recall correctly it was built out of light aluminum alloy, which has more or less abandoned these days in construction of vessels due to their venerability to fragmented warheads.
Taken from naval review
The hits on Sheffield and the Stark demonstrate clearly the danger of uncontrollable fires, which can be especially bad when induced by leftover propellant from missiles fired from short range. In fact, both of these ships were done in by fires—rather than by the damage from warhead explosions (some of the hits involved dud warheads that did not explode). None of the ships mentioned here had any special features to provide sturdiness against missile hits.
JonSWhats this fascination with sending ships to the bottom?. What does it matter if the target sinks or not? The effect you are aiming for is to knock the target warship out of the fight. The Sheffield’s fate was obvious and the USS Stark was left afloat but with 58 men dead and wounded and needing $142 million in make and mends. Is that not enough?.
T-45s were sunk mainly because of fire that resulted from exocet hitting the vessel, in some instances the warhead didnt even go off but the cables and wires caught fire. They were example of how not to build vessels because of their awful of damage control to some extent the same applied to Perry’s as well which had little provisions to handle fire or damage.
Thats not the case with newer vessels FFGs like T-23s, La fayette which are designed to withstand multiple subsonic ashm hits and remain operational as we saw with USS cole with withstood and remained operational even after 500 kgs of C4 going off by its hull.
Due to that missiles like harpoon are being fitted with fragmenting warheads to cripple a ships radars systems instead. As mentioned b4 superiority of supersonic vs subsonic lies mainly in its kill potential, force from impact from brahmos or moskit is 20 times greater than what can be achieved thru harpoon, uran etc even USN is turning towards such means with its Hy-fly surface to surface missile.
JonSCarriers are hardly low RCS targets. They got a sizable superstructure and a huge deck, not to mention scores of aircraft on the deck. The size of a carrier is unavoidable.
Tankers happen to be very high value targets, so are logistical ships—ships that carry troops or weapons stocks. An entire task force can be mission “killed” if their logistical support is removed.
actually they do have low rcs if that werent the case argentenian AF would have sunk hermes or invincible in multiple ocassion the pilots claimed to have locked and fired on them only to have it lock on to T-45 or some other surface combatant. Also there are many aspects that affect rcs like sea clutter/sea state, what angel vessel is facing the radar etc, so even a patrol boat in some instance can have rcs larger than destroyer.
JonSFind high priority targets by radar? Easy. The easiest, and still probably the best system is to go after the BIGGEST target in radar. Any dumb crap AI in an old missile can do this, even the Styx. You don’t even have to go digital on this. Just home in on the biggest radar return.
not exactly in most cases the largest target is tanker or some sort of replenishment vessel. Also larger targets dont necessarily have large RCS as witnessed in falklands, DDGs or FFG typically have larger RCS than a carrier since a lot of their superstructures are pretty cluttered as opposed to carrier. So following target with largest radar signal is not best way to go, the argentinians locked fired their exocets on RN carriers numerous time only to have it lock on to a T-45 or transport vessel (atlantic conveyor).
JonSO, u referring to UK petrel rocket. Anyway little googling indicated a top of speed of mach 5 and with a speed thats constantly declining. No telling what speed sea dart intercepts it but it shouldnt really to hard to intercept it will fly pretty predictable ballistic trajectory with little manuvering, it will reminiscent to intercepting a artillery shell which few SAM systems have know to have done (Barak, Sea wolf etc) even thou they are limited in intercepting maunvering supersonic targets
immediately anyway!. An ARH does provide a sporting warning to the target ship that bad news is on the way though.
the missile was mainly intended to be used against fleet with AEW capability. So NPO assumes the enemy fleet already knows that missiles are on the way.
We’ve also noted that, using Brahmos’s low-altitude attack profile, the difference in release range between it and a subsonic weapon like Kh-35 is marginal – in fact using the figures in the article (which is what we are discussing) Brahmos has to be released 10km nearer to target than Uran!.
main difference being that if u fire 3 uran against 3 targets, there is no telling what the urans will target. There is good probability that all 3 urans will end up targeting and hiting a low priority targeting. Yakhont was supposed to be able search high value targets and lock onto seperate targets. Also there is aspect of speed, apart from making it harder to shot down or deply countermeasures to decoy it away. Subsonic ashm with 100 kg warhead can only do minor structural damage to vessel (as witnessed from previous conflicts most 4k ton vessels have withstood 2 exocets), but impact of 3 ton mach 3 target slaming into hull has KE? 30 times+ greater than what uran or harpoon can achieve. Can easily split most hulls in half.
JonSJon,
They used the Sea Petrel rocket with signal augmenters to simulate the Soviet heavy aeroballistic weapons. Could I swear to the fact that those rockets attained precisely Mach2.8 – no I couldnt. We were told that they exceeded M2 though.
I think in this case that the differential between intercepting a Petrel rocket on a depressed ballistic arc at M2 and a Brahmos flying straight and level at 2.8 is relatively minor one. Fact remains, Jon, that a straight and level flight profile at 40,000 even at 2100 plus mph is not an unattainable target by any stetch of the imagination. Not even to a 30 year old system like GWS30.
just looked up petrel its turbojet missile with a top speed of 600 km/h 😀
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-41.html
JonSYour information is incorrect Jon. Sea Dart intercepted supersonic sounding rocket targets off the Aberporth range back in the 70’s at altitudes greater than 40k ft on aeroballistic trajectories. Kinematically Sea Dart is capable of intercepts way above 40,000.
thats difference between super sonic > 1.0 mach and 2.8 mach. RN didnt have any drones that are capable of that speed or not even USN for that matter so they had to use modified talos and also had to purchase russian kh-31/ma-31 for ESSM trials.
when is the much hyped NSM going to enter service ?
around 2005.
JonSWho said the Brahmos is manoevering?. Does the weapon have sufficient AI to detect that its under attack and initiate evasive manoevers if so thats very impressive?. Its also something I’ve not heard anyone else claim for the weapon!. Sea Dart has intercepted non-maneouvering 40k ft targets at ranges in the 40km region.
no sea dart hasnt intercepted a mach 2.5 to 2.8 target at that altitude only SAM systems that are capable of doing that are SM-3, S-200/300 and may be aster-45. The russian shipwreck and yakhont have ability to detect incoming radiation and throw countermeasures (NPO doent go into it how most likely by manuvering its mentioned in yakhont/brahmos video).
SeaWolf, Barak or RAM will all have the capability to mount successful intercepts
Barak definely cant intercept its limited to targets less than mach 1.5, problem the same with seawolf and RAM as well. The only systems thats surely capable of intercepting is essm.
JonSThe missile’s seeker is not an extremely high power emitter and the missile body also enjoys low RCS. The active radar seeker activates only during the terminal sea-skimming stage and you have about 0.85 minutes to react. Insufficient reaction time proved to be fatal for the Sheffeild, even against the AM-39.
Actually if its like yakhont it supposedly turns on its active/passive radar around 70 km flying hi before it initiates its dive. Its done in order to see what enemy vessels are in the enemy fleet and assign themselves 1 missile per 1 vessel unlike other ashm, also if it happens to find high value target like AC it will automatically lock on to it. This strategy is unique to NPO, its also used in shipwreck and is the one rational behind it flying hi (apart from the increased range).
A weapon, at 40,000ft, 40kms from target is inside the lethal envelope of even a GWS30 Sea Dart missile!.
Problem is most SAM system cant intercept a manuvering target at around 50,000 ft moving at mach 2.8 50 kms away. SM-2 or sea dart are not fast enough, ESSM has a shot but doesnt have the range.
JonSI honestly can’t find any thing that appears to serve as illuminators on this ship. The SAMs are active radar guided perhaps.
its TvM, terminal guidance might be thru phasive, active or ir.
JonS1) fighters and subs have a better chance of being able to get close enough to use the new ‘Aegis-killers/carrier-killers’ in a real fight as opposed to surface ships.
Airborne AsuW is pretty risky against opponent with a carrier with decent AEW and some assests to protect. Mainly because even if the carrier borne fighters are inferior to fighters being sent to sink it the latter has far greater advantage. Simply because manuvering with 1 or 2 ashm is quite hard no matter platform thats carrying it making u easy picking for AAM and also they dont have advantage of coordination with surface vessels.
JonSit will intresting to see if anyone actually orders it, i doubt IN will go after it for its surface fleet since basic variant of brahmos already has limited attack capability and there plans for pure land attack version.
JonSIf you look amidships, just forward of the SSM quads, there looks like 3 of the 6-pot Mk48 Mod 3 VLS modules that the smaller STANFLEX vessels are fitted for. With the new DP-48 dualpack cannisters being developed for the Danish Navy each one of these Mod3 modules can carry 12 ESSM
thought so but i couldnt clearly spot any FCR for it.
JonSYes Pantsir’s max altitude is of 10 km, i have some gif charts on its speed and engagement capability compared with VT-1 forgot where i got those from, most likely from the maufacturer’s brochure.
JonSanyword on what SAM system isto be fitted on these?
Sign In
