JonesyThe Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems By Norman Friedman p531 clearly states that the US navy target drones simulating supersonic Russians missiles which fly very low have: “one requirement is that the target makes abrupt turns, which makes trackers overshoot”.
Which is only proof of the US Navy’s knowledge that a missile tracker can be misdirected by a missile jinking. If you have ever seen a missile director operate during an engagement sequence (pretty sure theres a few clips on Youtube etc) you’ll see the antenna group visibly ‘twitching’. It was particularly noticeable in the mechanical-arm launcher days because, usually, the launcher train and elevation was slaved to the tracker so you’d see launcher and attached missile having an apparent fit for no sane reason. This process was caused by the tracker following the target. Its normal operation to cope with the “tracker overshoot” that Friedman details.
Now, of course, with electronically scanned tracker arrays and active radar PDMS systems that becomes more and more a legacy issue.
JonesyFair play apology accepted.
The subsonic is less susceptible to detection. It’s a less energetic vehicle that can fly a much more discrete profile.
Detection is key to a successful intercept – no detection no intercept. As has been repeatedly suggested on this thread late detection can also mean a limited or ineffectual defensive response. Early detection, raid assessment and threat analysis are exactly what the PWO wants to see to start to set up his offboard softkill….floating decoys, chaff clouds, jamming modes and have the inbound tracks handed off to the missile directors.
If the PWO is denied that information by a passive subsonic he can only initiate the process when his sensors detect the inbound crossing the horizon. Softkill is massively degraded by this as, instead of minutes to deploy, its only seconds… the whole process of threat reduction is that much more difficult.
Detection doesn’t guarantee destruction of the inbound(s) of course but it gives the ship every chance of acting in its own defence.
JonesyFalcon,
You’re shifting goalposts so quickly here it’s hard to keep up. We’ve gone from jinking in terminal phase at 10km to target, which is very definitely PDMS range, in your earlier post to, now, 100km from target in the area defence envelope.
Again we’ll bypass the obvious comment that if we are talking of deceptive manoeuvre at 100km it shows the value of the determination that the supersonic could effect surprise and pop up at 30km!.
You are talking now of a time on target attack. Missiles in salvo flying slightly longer course tracks for the first weapons launched…with the latter flying direct path so that all arrive at target coordinates at the same time on converging bearings. Sure but that’s not what was being discussed is it?.
We were discussing mid course exposure to defending sensors. I’d assure you that a ships warfare team is not going to fall out of air raid stations just because an inbound appears to be a few degrees off an intercept course…and we do have that point that watching it flying duplicitously off-bearing does mean that the ships warfare team have detected, tracked and engaged the supersonic a very long way away. Which has been my point all through.
JonesyFalcon,
A multi-ton antiship weapon at m1+ velocity is not going to outturn any short range point defence naval SAM. Jinking a few times is not going to throw off an ESSM, Aster or Shtil at 10km downrange.
You now seem to be proposing that a supersonic flies a deceptive course?. So a weapon who’s entire operational concept is the absolute minimization of flight time is actually going to fly a longer course to target than required?. Which one does this?.
I’ll leave the whole terrain masking thing alone as, early to mid course, if they are using full range advantage supersonic weapons are up at several tens of thousands of feet altitude. That being the flight regime where they are detectable….terrain masking doesn’t factor in any more than the SR71 allusion does.
JonesyOk you’re talking about terminal evasive manoeuvre now?. SR71s flew parallel courses offset from the target by hundreds of km’s. There is no correlation between the two things you do grasp that don’t you?.
JonesyFalcon
What has the SR71 got to do with this?. Whether or not that type was interceptable has no relationship to the problems created by deploying supersonic anti-ship missiles. The Blackbird, to the best of my knowledge, gave up directly overflying well protected targets many years before it was finally retired as inefficient. Instead it raced along a tangential course and imaged off sideways looking sensors. The antiship missile has no such luxury to select evasive courses…. generally being far more effective when flying directly at its target!.
If anything the SR71 proves the point that an air target wishing to use ludicrous speed is incapable of achieving strategic or, often, tactical surprise. This being my key point about the employment of such missiles. They don’t shorten the window for a defender to react because the defender sees them earlier. Just as, supposedly, the Soviets were able to assemble intricate traps of interceptors to engage Blackbirds so would a destroyers warfare team have chance to get air raid red condition set.
Three real warships have found themselves faced with a very short reaction time missile threat over past three decades or so. Each was hit by a subsonic missile. You don’t need big go-faster weapons to achieve the effect you detail.
JonesyCarriers are anything but inert Falcon. They contain lots of stuff that will explode or burn given the slightest provocation.
A P700 isn’t going to sink a medium sized carrier any more than a subsonic will…so any missile strike is just varying degrees of mission kill. Realistically all you need do is stop air operations…a few subsonics in the hangar, flyco etc will achieve that quite adequately.
In contrast a large container ship is a lot of deadweight that isn’t very reactive. So making the most big holes possible would be the order of the day.
JonesyThe advantages of subsonic AShMs (particularly modern ones with low RCS, wave-skimming, exhaust suppression) are clear and compelling. My question, for proponents of such systems, is whether they believe there is any target or niche for which supersonic AShMs are superior. One answer that intuitively suggests itself is when engaging a time-sensitive or mobile target from a distance and with non-persistent target fix, but I’m not sure how significant the ‘search box’ problem really is.
Reduced reaction times would be one very specific advantage of supersonic in that a target would have, in theory, shorter time to counter not just the inbound missile, but, the launching platform itself. By this I mean coordination of supporting forces etc. Thing is though late detection of a passive subsonic achieves similar effect.
If you have an imaging seeker and target recog the ‘fleeting target’ thing isn’t so much a naval concern as ships don’t move all that far within missile flight times. That does change for an ARH. If the comparison is plain ARH subsonic or supersonic then the supersonic takes the lead and for the reason you note. A surface ship may only cover 7 or 8 miles in a 15 minute missile flight but if that distance moves it into a mess of noncombatant traffic…..
Edit. The only other very specific role for a large supersonic is that Blue Apple notes in his admirably concise contribution. That of engaging a very large target that is, normally, uncooperatively inert like a large merchant container hull. Why you would use a missile on such a target though eludes me.
JonesyIn any case, a supersonic missile will always have advantage that they will be much harder to intercept.
No it won’t. For the very simple reason that it’s easier to intercept a weapon you can see coming and supersonics are anything but discrete.
3- You -and some others- compare “supersonic missile vs saturation attack” which is even more laughable nonsense; Saturation is not the capability of missile, but the launching platforms ability to carry and launch the number of missiles launched towards a target; P-700 fired in 24 missile salvo from an Oscar II is a saturation attack. And admittedly, a flight of missiles that actually co-operate for optimal result rather than flying unintelligently to their targets seems much more effective to me. What I also defend is, as supersonic missiles reduce engagement time, they also reduce number of missiles required to saturate a target.
For a given launch platform the number of tactical subsonics deployable is larger than for the number of Moskit/Yakhont type weapons being promoted. The equation IS therefore larger numbers of subsonics or fewer supersonics for equivalent platform deployment. Creating the saturation effect with supersonics requires more platforms tasked or, as you so well illustrate, massive units developed for no other reason than to deploy them.
Deployability is also a factor in determining an objective ‘good’ weapon. The extreme case is the range of lightweight C-70x type weapons the Chinese churn out. They’re a nightmare to program a response against because they can be almost anywhere on any launch platform. The smallest missile boat or most basic chopper pad equipped OPV has to be considered a threat. They, those missiles, have relatively little deck footprint and, with the chopper deployment, could put an anti-ship capability on a hull that your Intel says is mostly harmless.
Compare that to your P700 wonder weapon. If you have tagged all the operational Kirovs and Oscars and know where Kuznetsov is then the chances of a surprise P700 attack are nil. It’s a powerful weapon, but, an easy one to counter because it is predictable. I would far, far sooner face a few dozen Shipwrecks on easy to monitor platforms than hundreds of C70x’s that I can’t see coming until the last minute.
JonesyI don’t see how it eliminates it.
Target rejection being the generic answer. The US had some fascinating results with TASM test shots and the P-35 shaped hole imaged earlier confirms. The imaging seeker then ensures that, should an erroneous target blunder into seeker FoV on activation, it will be rejected and, presumably, re-attack can be attempted until the missile flight time is exhausted. Either way the ability of the missile to be RoE-friendly after release is a great enabler for sorties resulting in weapon release.
JonesyYou’re wrong on many things here. And frankly there is nothing to debate here.
The fact is everybody and their mother are going or went “more ******* speed route.” Russia, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, French and Uk.(Perseus) Even US will be going that way. LRASM is basicly a stopgap. Even Japan next AShM will be supersonic one.(IIRC)
End of story.
India has ridden on the back of Russian AShM development. China and Russia have both recently developed subsonics as well as supersonics.
You know enough to know that you are mixing two different factors here Indigo. You note Perseus but miss the point that Persus deploys terminal effectors to achieve saturation. If supersonic is the absolute answer to the ship local defence envelope why is saturation a feature here?.
The answer, as you well know, is that the supersonic element is useful to reduce the cycle time in the track-to-hit phase. A subsonic, fired from extended range, can allow enough time for the target plot to change by the time the missile reaches terminal phase…with various potential RoE impacts. A supersonic reduces that possibility so it can be simpler to deploy. Of course the subsonic carrying an IIR/MMW seeker with full TR eliminates the issue as well…so speed isnt the only solution.
JonesyDo not agree on a number of those. First of all larger supersonic missiles have the inertia advantaged against point defence systems. You hit them even about a km out and the debris will spray your ship like a shotgun hitting ducks. You are forgetting that a lot of the supersonic missiles may come from behind land formations like islets or islands. Targeting information may be even passed by other means so the plane needs not be exposed or reveal itself via EM.
A single missile has no advantage against a frigate and up type ship. There is however a critical mass of missiles that will overcome a ships defences and for most ships that mass is not that many missiles.
Point 1
Observe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Vereshchagino#mediaviewer/File:MV_Vereshchagino,_missile_impact_April_2000.JPG
Big supersonic missile hit with inertia in bucketloads…no sinky little tramp steamer!.
Point 2
Why are you placing the point defence hardkill at 1000yds…why not 10km off like FLAADS will do….or 15km off like Shtil will….hell even a 76SR throwing 3AP or DART rounds will be engaging at three or four times that range. To ignore that point to say “well, if it does get close it’ll pepper the hull with shrapnel” is lunacy…the systems are there to make sure the weapons dont get that close!. As stated the answer to supersonics is aboard ships right now….RAM, SeaWolf, VL MICA, ESSM…soon FLAADS and there are guns systems I would, personally, feel confident to take into an engagement with a supersonic threat…at least now OTO has resolved the issue with the hydraulics.
Supersonics are one trick ponies…very cool to look at etc…but all they can do is shorten the engagement window for defensive systems. That is only an effective approach if (a) the other side doesnt do something to stretch that engagement window wider open again (ie early detection of a howlingly visible approach profile) or (b) make the defensive systems do far more in that original shortened engagement window (i.e blast off numbers of quick-reaction fire and forget SHORADS missiles)…or both.
Put simply if you come in with supersonics you stand a better than evens chance of having to defeat active defences…so you then get into a function of missiles to saturate. If you go in with passives you have a good chance…as demonstrated in several real-world engagements where the crews were unaware of the threat or had it masked by repeated false-alarms…of catching the ship undefended or late coming into readiness. The latter will always be the higher percentage attack.
Jonesypoint defense systems are obsolete vs high speed missiles
Nonsense. Sea Wolf is a point defence system. ESSM is a point defence system. Uragan/Shtil is a point defence system. Point defence means a weapons system designed to defend the point it is sat on….be that a ship or a vehicle or a coffee table. It is designed to engage a zero-low bearing rate (head-on) target.
You are possibly mixing terms with CIWS. Meaning, presumably, light calibre radar guided AAA. I’d not totally agree with that assessment either. I’d happily sail into a low-volume supersonic threat environment on a ship possessing three things (1) Decent ESM, (2) a good long range IRST like Sagems EOMS-NG and a current spec OTO 76SR with 3AP capability. If you step up the pay scales and add in the newer systems evolved to deal with supersonics…like RAM, FLAADS, ESSM, VL MICA you see that it doesnt take a hell of a lot to roll back the threat from lumbering supersonics quite dramatically.
Supersonics generally present themselves very early to their target by virtue of 2 things. First the need to fly high in the early phase of a long range flight…the public story was Brahmos, as an example, dropped to terminal phase at about 50km from target. Detecting something honking along at M2.daft at altitude at 55km is within the capability of several naval IR search/track sensors today. The second thing is targeting…generally you need to have a pretty good idea of what you’re shooting at with a supersonic before you fire it. It wont do too much autonomously as its seeker acquisition/eval window is limited by time of flight. That encourages POSID on target prior to launch, to prevent wasting expensive missiles if nothing else, and gives the target greater chance at counter detection.
It has been proven in the Falklands, in the Gulf and off Beirut that the way to successfully hit a warship is to deny it information that it is actually under attack until the very last minute. Andraxxus is trying to contrive a situation where the supersonic isnt detected until 30km out to provide that advantage in his piece. I dont think that is particularly realistic for the reasons noted above. An alert ship will have missiles in the air intercepting at 30km not just be waking up to the fact they have inbounds to deal with. The answer to prosecuting the attack without alerting the target is passive area search, passive track/ID and passive seeker missiles. As a PWO that scares the life out of me as I know my first alert, unless I’m going active, is when a number of small stealthy missiles cross the visual horizon and get picked up by my IRST.
For the ‘which aircraft’ question originally posed I think the F-35C, with its advanced ESM and top notch EOTS systems, coupled to LO missile carry offers some very interesting operational concepts for zero-emission high-confidence antiship profiles.
Jonesyhow about nuclear tipped option for stealth missiles like LRASM , JSM again strategic target (they obviously better than supersonic missiles because they can get closer to target.
You could but why would you?. Soviet antiship missile development went a unique way because of a precise set of conditions that existed solely for their threat environment and then-extant capabilities. They didnt just wake up one day and think ‘hey, lets build giant great big antiship missiles that’ll look cool to the kids in 50yrs’.
They had a target set which they divined from watching the allies naval actions in the Med, Pacific and around the north cape and they developed a sea-denial strategy off the Kriegsmarines atlantic u-boat campaign. This latter point being important as it was this choice that directed them away from the development of the ‘sea control’ type carrier force that every other major naval player went for. That choice removing the more normal ‘first stage’ of long-range antiship warfare….the carrierborne strike aircraft.
So, with no carrier-based strikers to provide standoff, they were faced with a heavily defended target set that needed to be engaged from a range at which counter-detection and counter-attack were diminished and it was needing to carry a warhead able to inflict maximum damage per missile strike owing to the likelihood that many would not either be launched or would be intercepted en-route.
This made the choice of warhead an obvious one. Yield was set high (circa 800kt if memory serves) tailored to cause damage to ships in the wider group assembly as much as possible…which dictated a warhead size and weight. The size and weight of the warhead, plus the range required to carry the weight and the engine technology/electronics of the day dictated the weapon size. The weapon size then went on to dictate the size, design and weapon deployment options of submarines and surface vessels across the Soviet Navy for three decades!.
So. Given that the US/NATO and, realistically, even the Russians and Chinese now are carrier capable, with other options for attacking ships at range, why would you want to have to routinely embark/deploy nuclear warheads?. The smaller physical space in the smaller, modern, missiles would limit a nuclear yield inline with some fairly immutable laws of physics such that engaging an opposing dispersed battlegroup wouldnt be very practical with one missile anyway. Then there is the point that nukes are not things that are chucked about like boxes of 50cal link I’m happy to say!. They need special handling and maintenance procedures, specially trained crews, special operational protocols, limits on deployment locations etc. For hitting a single ship and taking it out of a fight, at least, a modest conventional warhead is more than sufficient.
Its like saying ‘why dont we build a steam powered airship’….we probably could….but there are far better ways of achieving the same ends…so why bother?.
the point here is that torpedo even the light weight one cannot be shot down by air defense missiles or cannon , thus anti ship missiles with torpedo warhead will face much less resistance when they attack a ship
This is a similar point to that above in many respects. The important part of a missile, ultimately, is the effect it generates on target. The effect of the torpedo payload you are suggesting here….if the weapon works flawlessly and strikes target might be a damaged screw/shaft/engine. ASW lightweight torpedoes have small warheads as they need to be….well….lightweight and can rely on crushing water pressure to do much of their damage for them once they have ‘cracked the nut’ so to speak. Developing a new missile that will fly out to target, guide to a drop zone, determine a safe drop range within its payloads reach to target and dispense/seperate a torpedo terminal effector would be dramatically expensive for the effects on target it would provide.
The Russian Metel type weapons had a good take on on this by making a dual-role weapon that could drop its LWT on a submarine detected by a 3rd party or it could strike a surface target. It being noteworthy that rather than try and make the torpedo attack the surface target independantly the Russian designers opted to keep the LWT onboard, in a surface attack, and add its mass and warhead to the impact effect as an all-up-round. This is likely as they knew its effect would be greater that way.
JonesyRight.. the kenetic impact dmg from a Brahmos is close to 30 times higher vs the NSM
Which is likely true, but, is a meaningless statement if that kinetic energy isnt transferred to the target. See iron bombs passing through escort superstructures in the South Atlantic at much lower impact velocities….or that fabulous image of the Russian tramp steamer that accidentally took a shore-fired P-35 through its wheelhouse. Also it needs pointing out that the actual warhead of the Yakhont/Brahmos weapon is relatively conventional sized so, if the impact energy is vented uselessly, the warhead detonation will be little different to more mission-kill oriented lighter weapons.
I’m not disputing that the very heavyweight missiles Madrat alludes to are capable of great destructive force. My point is that they are a small subset of this kind of weapon….that they have specific mission goals intended for their use (and special-warhead options support that specific use) and the fact that a P-700 or P-500 could reduce a 3000ton frigate into its component pieces doesnt necessarily mean that antiship missiles, as a general rule, will “cut ships in half”. All a missile is, in the main and at its most basic, is a motor and guidance section on a medium capacity bomb…even a 500lb bomb hitting a decent-sized, closed-up, warship will not blow it to pieces…rather…it will make a hole and start some fires.
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