Remember what CONQUEROR and just the hint of additional SSN’s in theatre did to the Argentine surface fleet!. IIRC no more than 3 SSN’s were ever active at one time in that theatre of operations and they wound up the opposing surface force as an effective threat.

Only problem with that is how often will the RN be in a position to deploy 3 SSNs to one theatre? We had a lot more SSNs back in 82 and SSKs to plug the gaps for those that went to the south Atlantic.

Harpoon, and its like, are different propositions in that they have an independent hunting capability. Can better missiles be bought….yes. NSM would be, as per the initial point, such a weapon as would the new variant RBS15 that Radar mentions. The problem is though that these are only now offering the potential for confident employment of OTH indepedent-seeking missile fire…..catch 22 situation. The RN has little faith in antiship missiles compared to HWT’s and are therefore resistant to acquiring the kinds of missiles that may (and I stress may) provide that faith.

Until such a time as that happens the submarine community are happily telling everyone that killing ships is their bag and quoting the tired old analogy that this is achieved, most effectively, by letting water into the bottom of a target ship and not air into the top!. A view that still carries great weight in the mob I believe.

My original point in bringing this little discussion up was that there appear to be a crop of anti ship missiles available now that have secondary roles against land targets in litterols which make them a little more valuable. If we accept that C1 might have a land attack missile and in all probability C2 won’t then a later block Harpoon, RBS15 or NSM could provide a more versatile weapon.

You’re right, the warhead is 10X smaller than a TLAM or Storm Shadow. I suppose it could be employed against small boats or as part of an enhanced NGS package. Not really useful enough to warrant giving over precious VLS cells, perhaps an NLOS-LS type system we can whack on a flight deck to support ops when needed.

To be honest I think its one reason why we should made as big an effort as possible to maximise the amount of VLS that C1 and C2 get fitted out with, they probably won’t need massive amounts of Sams after all but a decent load out of Fire Shadow could have its uses.

Side question, are there any similar weapons to Fireshadow out there? I haven’t heard anything, seems like something the Americans would have a version of somewhere.

There’s the Israeli Harop system, don’t really know much about it though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Harop

I don’t really think Fire Shadow could work as a substitute Cruise Missile, its not really the role it was designed for its too slow and the warhead is not large enough, I definitely think it could have a role to play on the Frigates, particularly the C2 although I’d like to see it on the C1 as well.

And if you applied that logic to all defence projects, wouldn’t almost every project carried out be wasteful. Most defence projects replicate another going on somewhere in the world. Who knows, maybe ours will be better than those on offer and gain the export orders. Not bothering means we definitely won’t get the orders and may not get a missile that does the job we want it to.

True enough but I just think it makes more sense to stay out of this one, Team Complex Weapons appear to be quite busy enough as it is.

Anyone else think maybe the RN should have a think about a new Anti ship Missile? There’s a few alternatives to Harpoon out available now like RBS15 and NSM that sound quite interesting.

These three paragraphs… unbelieveable.. Absolutely stunning.. 😮

So he basically said:

“I went to Russia and slapped them in the face, looking directly in their eyes! This is a contract! You signed it! We signed it! We are yor best mates! Act accordingly! That’s it! No more vodka for you!”

“But hey MoD boys suddenly REALIZED that, Russkies did all that heavy job. put a lot of cables, changed steels, engines all that stuff.. They worked very hard, earned some more money.”

(for the MiG-fans all over the net) “This ship will have sweet MiG-29K’s, we’ll use her for 30 years. Lets pay some more, it wont hurt huh?”

It seems to me that if Sureesh Mehta had talked a little more, he would have the chance to even rationalize paying a couple of billions of dollars more in return of getting Vikramaditya 100 or some years later!

(excuse the exagerration.. couldn’t help it)

Sounds more like making the best of a bad job/face saving really. Nobody expects honesty in a press release about a botched Military procurement programme. The guy isn’t going to come out and say the Russians have cocked up the original quote and now we have to pay more as a result.

Nice little story about lightweight multi-role missile (LMM):

Fury and CAMCOPTER S-100 UAS/UAVs Armed with Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM)

By David Crane

defrev at gmail dot com

Speaking of sub-Hellfire-yield laser-guided missiles, Thales UK Air Systems Division (ASD) has introduced a new low-cost, lightweight multi-role missile called, appropirately enough, the Lightweight Multirole Missile (a.k.a. Lightweight Multi-role Missile)–or LMM for short–as a follow-on to the Starstreak Self-Propelled High-Velocity Missile (SP HVM) a.k.a. Starstreak Multi-role Missile (surface-to-air/surface-to-surface missile) and Starburst surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, leveraging technology from both platforms. The LMM can be deployed from/employed by both manned and unmanned fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter/rotorcraft systems.

According to Thales UK ASD officials, the LMM laser-guided multirole missile will be able to…

defeat a “sensible target set”, including any/all enemy air land and sea vehicles likely to be encountered by Coalition Forces in the asymmetric battlespace, including urban warfare environments. The list of subnational-conflict-type targets that come under the destroyable list via the new missile includes, but is not necessarily limited to the following: Technicals(civilian weaponized trucks), explosives-laiden vans, any/all other civilian light vehicles, slow-moving manned propeller aircraft and rotorcraft, small UAS/UAVs (including unmanned helicopters/rotorcraft), rigid inflatable boats (RIBs), bunkers, houses, jet skis, and even tracked armored vehicles.

It would appear that the LMM precision-guided missile will be going head-to-head against the various parallel-development laser-guided 70mm/2.75″ Hydra rockets being developed by several U.S. companies and the Spike shoulder-launched, fire-and-forget precision-guided missile. Both the laser-guided Hydras and LMM are designed specifically for those occasions when you need a precision-guided missile, but a AGM-114K Hellfire II (or Longbow Hellfire Hellfire III) or Javelin is just too much punch.

The Lightweight Multirole Missile weighs 28 lbs (13 kg), carries a 6.8-lb (3-kg) blast/fragmentation warhead, and is powered by a two-stage solid propellant motor made by Roxel Propulsion Systems (RPS). The LMM has an effective engagement range of up to 4.3 nautical miles (nm), or 8 kilometers (km), and may incorporate semi-active laser guidance to hone in on the target. Aviation Week reports that “target acquisition, designation and tracking are provided by onboard systems, while target confirmation and final launch authority are given by the ground station operator.”

Two potential LMM aerial launching platforms are already being tested, the BAE Systems Fury armed/weaponized UAS/UAV and the Schiebel CAMCOPTER S-100 autonomous unmanned rotorcraft a.k.a. unmanned mini-helicopter. Both aircraft have been outfitted with pairs of LMMs. As of this writing, DefenseReview is only aware of a static live-fire test being conducted. If an aerial launch of the LMM has been peformed, we’re unaware of it.

Fury is basically the armed reconnaissance/close-air-support version of BAE’s Herti UAS/UAV, and the Camcopter S-100 autonomous umanned helicopter/rotorcraft is a slick-looking VTOL platform that, according to the Schiebel website, “can be programmed to fly an autonomous mission profile via a simple point-and-click graphical user interface, or can be directed manually. In both modes, the aerial vehicle is automatically stabilized via redundant Inertial Navigation Systems (INS). Navigation is accomplished using redundant Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers.”

The LMM can also be deployed from manned helicopters/rotorcraft like the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the Bell AH-1Z Cobra attack helicopter and the AgustaWestland Future Lynx maritime surveillance and attack helicopter.