Inaccurate radar (o’reilly?). Single array saturation is very much a reality. With APAR its very unlikely the port aft array, for example, could be brought to bear on a for’d stbd quarter attack axis. So you’ve got the capability to be directly shooting at 4 targets simultaneously and thats your lot.

only to make this clear: a single apar array can provide icwi for 4 sams in the terminal phase at the same time. additionally the same array can control other sam’s with mid course updates. imho this should be enough even for cold war scenarios.

It IS undeniably slower than the PAAMS solution though. The rotator faces alternate on threat-bearing on a cycle time measured in seconds. It is feasible, with a saturated contact environment, for both faces to ‘hit’ active contacts on one threat bearing in realtime. With no need for the illumination dwell time necessary with ESSM or SM-2 one face going off-bearing makes no difference to an Aster in flight – it just waits a short time interval before its next course update or until seeker activation point is reached.

with sampson as a back to back radarsolution and with a 120° field of view for each array there is a timegap of 33% in which no array faces towards the target. with fixed arrays, one of the arrays faces the target all the time. so the fixed array solution gets enough extra time on target for the icwi. the decision to use a rotating solution is based on cost and weight but it’s not a saturation question. of course the rotating arrays are only possible because of the active seekers. the timegap of 0.3sec in which no array faces the target is to long for illumination even if it’s icwi.

Yes all true but compare that the the PAAMS engagement cycle. Its a LOT quicker. Look at the figures – 8 missiles launched in 10 seconds – 16 missiles under simultaneous guidance. Basically those facts alone raise the virtual attrition potential of the vessel head and shoulders over everything else.

how long is the terminal phase in which sm2 or essm needs icwi? 1sec? 2? maybe 3? if the ship can launch a sam every 1.25sec (only to use the same number, as it’s quoted for paams) and if the terminal phase is 3sec, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which 4 missiles needs icwi at the same time from a single array. for apar a total of 32 simultaneous in flight missiles are quoted.

Now close that in to 15km range and the time-to-intercept counter dont look so good. I know ESSM can do crossing engagements but it uses a seperate Homing All The Way mode (not the ICWI one) tying down a fire channel for the whole engagement cycle.

do you have a source for this? imho the shortest flight time until impact is at a head on head engagement. i can’t believe that mid course guidance/icwi won’t work on crossing targets. but the question was: are aster15/essm useful on area air defence ships? if the target is flying very low there is no need of a 70km sam, even if it’s not a head on head scenario. afaik both aster15 and essm were successfully tested on crossing targets. so why not filling some vls with essm especially if i can get 4 essm for a single sm-2. of course with aster 15/aster 30 there is no “missile multiplier” if they use aster 15.

it’s hard to believe, that terrorists will attack a submerged sub. best defence of subs is staying submerged and silent. imho there is no need for this gun (with only 30 ready to fire shells).

Scorpene is the best non-nuclear sub out there

it’s interessting that some sources claim that. until now there is no scorpene with mesma. how do they compare it to u-212 or a-19 or other subs?

surely u understand that you cant just put the crosshairs spot on on a target 10k away, pull the trigger and expect the round to hit it. its the same principle with a missile. you need to plot a course that will intercept that of your targets in order to hit it

afaik for ram it is that easy. if you keep the target in the seekers “crosshair” all the time the missile will hit. and i’m not sure how a ir-seeker can calculate a course if it there are no range/speed information about the target. both can’t be given by an ir-seeker (at least i don’t know how it should work)

the best, and probably only solution is for the missile to recieve course correction data from the ship.

the best solution would be a seeker with active/passive radar mode and ir mode and an data uplink. but i can’t see that an data uplink is the only way out. there are plans to add a data link to ram but because of increasing range (where it would be necessary to engage non rf-emitting targets under bad weather).

problems with using that example is that IR AAMs are almost only used in extreme close range, where there is little reaction time for pilots to try to evade. also, the AAMs are launched from fast moving jets, which means that the relative speeds between the missile and its target are huge, this further reduces reaction time. all this means that the missile is aiming for a relatively unmanovering target at very close range with little course correction needed for the missile to hit.

hard to believe that pilots can’t react within a few seconds (if they are not already maneuvring because of other reasons). but even if, it shows that head on engagement with ir-seeker is possible (you sayed “head-on hits for IR AAMs have mostly only occured in controled trials against drones” and yes i have seen the “mostly”)

also, tactics and suprise would have also clouded the outcome. the argintine pilots were not armed for AA combat and were also instructed to aviod fighting the british harriers.

of course the argentine pilots were not well trained. but besides the a-4, the harrier did also some confirmed kills on the mirage III and the dagger (armed for aa-combat).

you were the one who meantioned SAMs in the first place, i never thought they were a very good approaximation. BVRAAMs are the best case study for head on engagments, i think you will agree. but the hit rate for them have not been very impressive.

no i won’t because bvr is not the scenario for ram but afaik also bvr head-on shots results into high hit rates in the last years. (in the gulf war most head-on engagements were single shot-kill scenes even wit the aim-7)

i didnt know the US had supersonic drones. thats why they had to go buy russian stuff.

they have the vandals (based on talos) which are able to fly supersonic at low altitude but afaik they are planning a new drone. (which russian stuff?)

well thats just the same in principle as a fly-over on land. you only do that as a hoop jumping excerise for the top brass to try and impress. by the time the gun is placed on ships to shoot down stuff, all the important things should have been sorted long ago. its more a presentation then an actual R&D requirement.

if you only want to test the gun as a standalone system you can do it on land, same to missiles. but even this is not the same than doing it at sea especially if the system should be used to shot down targets flighing very low over sea. so if the systems work well on your shore based testcenter you have to go to sea. of course nobody would go to sea-tests with a system that has not been tested before.
and if you build up a new ship type you have to be sure your c3i and your aa-weapons work well together. this can be best done at sea with the ships. (for example look at the de zevens and f-124 both equipped with the new apar and essm/sm-2. they have shot of a lot of missiles from these ships to be sure that the systems work well together.)

With four guidance channels there is no reason why it could not be modified to handle multiple targets. One missile being guided by CM, MM, TI and LLLTV channels.

maybe because of the clos control. the system must also track the own sams to guide them to the target. is there a clos system which can engage two different targets at once? a lot of them can control two missiles to one target but none can (afaik) guide them to different targets. maybe a general limit for this type of guidance systems which can be hardly removed? i don’t know.

So the Japanese don’t agree with you?

why? maybe i should have added “replaced by a deck penetrating system”.

Of course it does… it has two 30mm gatling guns and 32 missiles. How could you possibly make that a nonpenetrating mount?

there is no kasthan without deck penetration. maybe a smaller system without reloading can be designed as a bolt on system but afaik the below deck space is not only for reloading facility, parts of the turret drives are also below deck. so the turret has to be placed on a socket.

What complication? Who said it hasn’t been tested?

using two automated ciws at targets which are near together for example. they can use their aaw-systems in an easy way if they assign every kasthan a engagement area of 45° and every klinok an angle of 90°. so you are sure that never two identical systems engage targets in the same sector. but this type of arrangement won’t lead to an optimal usage of the weapons. if they want to use the systems optimal they must allow engagements for all weapons which can at least reach the target. for example they can use max. 4 kashtan for engaging a single or multiple targets coming from the same direction but in this case the kashtan maybe gets trouble with discriminating the own bullets and missiles from the bullets or missiles which were fired from the other kashtan. this may lead to unwanted effects. so they have to test their systems in a lot of complex test scenarios.

The credits are confirmed aircraft kills.

without additional information nothing more than “more than 270 confirmed kills against both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft types” for stinger or all the confirmed kills for sidewinder (in air combat of course). how many of them were achieved in head on situations and against maneuvering targets? some of them of course. how many of the shilka kills were achieved against maneuvering targets? some of them of course 😉

Because they don’t I dare say where better to look for other solutions than to Russia?

maybe to all the other navies which have put more combat ships into service than russia in the past 10 years? i can’t see the point why the russian way of weapon arrangement should be the best way compared to western navies. (especially if the comparison is done over the whole ship)

You can evade them by not flying within their engagement envelope, but otherwise you are in trouble. Also talking about Antiship missiles with manouver capability… this is rather different from the idea of actively evading the shells. A burst of 200 rounds from a Shilkas four cannon creates a hail of projectiles that few aircraft could survive.

but their engagement envelope will be a lot reduced by maneuvring because of the position prediction.

GRISON doesn’t use illuminators. It is radio command guided using information of the targets position from CM or MM wave radar or TI or EO LLLTV. Flight corrections are transmitted via a radio link to the missile. The missile is incredibly cheap.

different technique with same problem. the system can only guide missiles to one target.

First of all Kongo and Arleigh Burke are pretty much the same thing. Second, where the Kongo and Arleigh Burke have their Phalanx you could put Kashtan anyway. And third why mention Kongo twice? If I keep google’ing these names you have given will I find they are AEGIS’skis?

but the jmsdf could change the ciws arrangement (which they have not, but they changed the supersturcture for spy1 set up so they must be satisfied with the arrangement). and it’s not clear that the phalanx could be replaced. kasthan weights a lot more and needs below deck space, whereas a change to ram could be done without problems. typing kongo twice was a misstake while going through some navies ships from memory. but i can count some more ships of course 😉

Not be easy? It is part of the design. One command module controls up to 6 combat modules. The command module gets it data from the ships sensors or its own sensors like the Positiv system and passes target information directly to each command module. Each combat module has MMW and CMW radar and EO in the form of TI and LLLTV systems that it will use to engage its target and track its own shells.

designed for but never tested is a high risk. ever complicated such a system is so much greater the risk is.

Just from memory the Seawolf system failed to shoot down the two exocets that hit it because at the time they were talking to London via satellite and the radar system for the Seawolf was interferring with the signal so it was shut down for the transmission. Other problems included radar returns and problems when ships with the Seawolf operated near shore.

no seawolf equippded ship was hit by a exocet in falkland war and afaik there was also no in engagement range as the sheffield was hit (a type 42 destroyer with sea dart).
btw from a lessons learned lecture from the usn:

“Although the system was aboard only two vessels in the
Falklands area during the war, the missile scored an impres-
sive five kills with only eight launches.7 It is also note-
worthy to point out that while many British vessels were
attacked by the Argentine aircraft, no Sea Wolf armed ship
was seriously damaged.”

A turn flying at 1000m/s is a relatively high g turn. Ships that operate together rarely operate within 20m of each other… they could be a kilometre or more apart.

for changing the target from one ship to another which are 1km from each other the ashm needs only to change the flightpath for 5.7° at 10km. this can be done by a low g turn.

no, you are missing the point. with a gun, the basic charateristic of the round is well known and consistant (ie you can know exactly where the round is going to go with every shot, within a certain range of course). this means that if the turret is tracking a missile in a turn and the first burst misses, the computer would be able to work out how much it missed by almost instantly. then the computer can give an update to the targeting computer to target XX degrees ahead of the missile and you start getting hits. this process should take nano-sceonds with remotely modern computers. its the most basic rule ranged shooting, so it would not be all difficult to programme if its not a function already.

i’m sorry but even at simple flight maneuvers like a pop up you can only correct your aming on the base of the current flight vector of the ashm. if this vector changes continously a gun is in trouble until flight-physic limits the changing of the vector to the spread diameter of the gun in relation to the engagment range. of course if the ashm only does low g-moves over a longer time without changing the vector the hit area can be predicted and a gun will hit.

the only downside is that the system would not do too well if the AShM makes sudden ‘jink’ movements. but due to the size and control method used by all AShMs, it is extremely unlikely that an AShM would be able to start jinking like an AAM, so the risks are low. besides, if the AShM starts to jink wildly, it’ll also greatly affect the sea-ram so there is little different between the two.

in fact sources quoted “evasive manoeuvres of 10-15g” for sunburn (decreasing speed of course) and “3d manoeuvres” up to 8g for rbs-15 in terminal phase. and the different between a gun and a sam is that the sam can change it’s flight vector in flight to. a maneuvring ashm would be harder to hit than a ashm flighing straight forward but a sam has a lot better chance to do it.

as for using towed drones, well it makes perfect sense. with a towed drone, you could theoretically get the thing to go supersonic. the tow plane could also do ‘evasive’ manovers to create more difficulty for the gun. which would be better then any autonomus drone the US currently has available.

also, with a towed drone, you have a very high probablity of recovering the drone after the test firings to assess the effects of the gun (you would only loose one if the tow wire was shot off, which is not all that likely). the drone would not have suffered aditional damage due to crashing into the sea, and you dont have to spend ages fishing them back up again. makes the tests easier to conduct, more cost effective and realiable.

i don’t know about a supersonic towed drone and it’s hard to belive that a drone at the end of a 8-12km long line can do high-g evasive manovers (it’s also hard to belive that the altitude is as low as from real ashm, it’s not even clear if they use them in head on flight paths). i think it won’t be very realistic to set up a test where the target is recovered. if they uses real ram’s with warheads (which i suppose if they speak about “production rounds”) there won’t be much to recover. (imho) there is no more realistic scenario than using ashm or ashm like drones heading to the defender. there is only one problem (besides costs) with this scenario, the defender is in danger if the ashm is hit to close to the defenders position (afaik there were some casualties showing the problem of guns destroying targets at a safe distance). so they must use a rarely remote controlled ship for the tests or they set up the defender on a coast or they doesn’t aim at the ship which would be more or less a flightby scenario.

got any sources that says that phalanx’s optimum engagment range is below 500m?

of course 😉
janes on this:
“[…] with a maximum probable kill at 460m”

no matter how ‘randomly’ you programme a missile to move, it still have to follow the laws of physics and is restricted by areodynamics. the sea-ram might have better flight charateristics, but it still has limits as to how fast it can turn. a turrent also has limitations in the speed it can turn, but the speeds that mount of the phalanx can manage is more the enough to beat any missile’s turn rate.

you missed this point but your argument leads to another interessting point.
the phalanx mounting is a very agile mounting (training 126°/s, elevation 92°/s) but if you do not know if the ashm will do a turn left or right you can only follow the missile with the turret. because of the bullets flight time it will be nearly impossible to hit the missile until the flight time is short enough, so that the ashm (which is indeed limited by physics) can’t escape the predicted hit area.
but the new interessting aspekt i mean is, how fast kashtan can move? i’ve searched a little but didn’t found information about that. most other manufactors publishs this information (maybe kasthan is realy slow?). it is clear that it is more difficult to accelarate a turret as the weight increases (simple physics) and the other issue is, the turret has to stop right in the right place to start firing (which is a control problem). you can drive to the stop point slower stopping right in place or you use a higher speed but risking a overshot.

maybe somebody could help out with acceleration and max speed values for kashtan or something similare?

also, iirc, seawolf was radar guided. so apart from the fact that both are missiles and have the word ‘sea’ in their names, what relevency does seawolf’s performance have on that of sea-ram?

i’ll not comment the seawolf example any further 😉
(but garryb runs into the same trap with shilka)

so sea-ram has ‘a good chance’ to hit a missile at its upper engagement range, but phalanx is only effective below 500m?

the effective range for phalanx should be more than 500m, depending on the target but the optimal range is below 500m.
in both cases it depends on the target. if the ashm turns wild on 10km it would be more difficult for ram, if it flighs straight forward at 10km ram has a good chance. but as you sayed most ashm starts with this at the very last km (maneuvering, doing a pop up, sinking nearly to sea level)

they also had a 4 out of 5 hit rate for pheonix; amrram, sparrow and even seawolf all did pretty well in trails. phalanx has also been tested against ‘realistic’ threats. however, the reality is that weapons systems never ever outperform their test scores in real life useage. as such, the .95 hit rate should be taken with a pinch of salt as usual.

of course but it seems that there are a lot more informations availible about the ram tests. most manufacturer only publishs a number like 0.x hit rate or something like that. they do not say how many tests they made, in which scenarios and against what targets. of course i do not know the facts about all of the ram tests but the facts i know making it more easy to rely.

i have look around but there is little info on the projected number of targets the phalanx can be expected to engage, as it is being treated as classified information for obvious reasons. if you can find some realiable figures i would be very grateful.

no, i’m sorry. but i’ve picked up this from a raytheon press release:
“The 1B systems successfully detected, tracked and destroyed Towed Drone Units (TDUs), scoring two kills and more than 30 hits, verified by the recovered TDUs.”
this rises two quesitions: more than 30 hits on the 2 “killed” drones or different drones which where not killed (but why?)? why do they use towed drones (costs of course)? this seems not to be very realistic to me.