Above you talk about hiving off some of the T45’s A50 cells to carry a SHORADS weapon?. Why?. Those cells are long enough for Aster 30 and should all be loaded as such. The T45 job is wide area defence and it needs Aster 30 to do that….close in defence of the ship is down to CIWS, decoys and, perhaps, some interesting features Sampson may bring.

what do you mean with this?

is there any detailed information on the artisan radar?
if i take a look on the other radars which were offered for the MRR (smart-s mk2, trs-3d and el/m-2238) i think it’s unlikely that artisan can handle aster. or to take it the other way round: every ship which fields aster has a mfr with an update rate of one update every second (60 rpm for single faced systems and 30 rpm for the dual faced sampson).

relating to irst:
detection range for sirius is quoted as follows:
supersonic seaskimmer: 26,5 km
subsonic seaskimmer: 12 km
(tropical summer conditions)
source: world naval weapons systems

there is also a 360° fixed system offered by thales: artemis
(i think gatekeeper is more targeting asym. threats than ashm)

btw: the sirius pdf from thales also quotes:
“SIRIUS unsurpassed sensitivity and resolution inivite for many other tasks, e.g. […] contribution to theatre ballistic missile defence” so we can assume that the detection range is a lot higher if the target is hot and flighing high.

@swerve:
i’m not sure were i read it but afaik this was the statement at the time they suspended anf. at this time the statement also was that anf is “on hold” but not cancelled. but for sure this may have changed until now and if the latest exocet block is selling well in 2015 there is no reason to take it from the market.

Correction: the US and the UK don’t. At least 3 other major Western navies had/have supersonic anti-ship missiles under development: France cancelled their ANF on cost grounds while Taiwan and Japan are in the process of fielding the HF-III and ASM-3, respectively.

from my understanding the ANF was cancelled in an very early state but the ASMPA (nuclear standoff missile) went on so they have a good start if they want to continue with the ANF. i think the official statement was, that they might go on with ANF when the exocet reachs their end of life (~2015). if france finishs the ANF, it means that there is a western supersonic ashm available on the export market. (and it was planed that the ANF is more or less compatible to the exocet launchers etc. which means similar launch weight/size.

but for sure i missed the HF-III and the ASM-3. The ASM-3 is quoted to have a dual mode seeker (Active radar and iir).

some points from my side:

imho the most important point defending against supersonic low flying ashm is to know your enemy and to adapt your fighting doctrine. if a supersonic ashm pops over the radar horizon it is to late to go through a long decision-making. you need a fully automated combat managment system which starts all the active/passive defences for you (or at least with minimal human interaction). the cms should be rule based to allow adaptions to the scenario and to ensure the useability in a high number of contact environment (friends, neutrals and foes)
of course this also requires modern sensors and weapons but they are on the market (apar, sampson, empar, … ; aster, ram, essm, ….)

stealth of course is influenced by things like airframe material, size and form (flying mach 2.x at sea level heats your airframe up a lot so you need other materials and forms than a subsonic ashm. afaik they used a lot of composite material for the nsm). but becoming “stealth” does also mean to fly extremly low (less than 3m for example) to make the detection and defensive operations even harder (sea clutter etc.). i know that there are a lot of different numbers around about the flight level of ashm but over all i thing it’s save to say that a subsonic ashm can fly some meters lower than a supersonic can.

last but not least even a very small ashm with a very low rcs doesn’t make to much sense if the ashm-seeker is knocking at the ships esm-door. imho this point is often underestimated because afaik in most cases the first signes of an incoming ashm was not a radar track but an esm contact. (with my fully automated and integrated cms the esm will at once start a cued radar and ir/eo search to get a track and to evaluate the threat, start jamming, decoying etc.)

subsonic vs. supersonic imho is also a question of the scenario. it doesn’t make much sense to attack an enemy with aew-systems in a blue water scenario with subsonic ashm. It’s highly unlikely that you can get your aircrafts close enough to start your “stealth” subsonic ashm and that these ashm travel for example further 250 km before been detected. imho in this scenario the best way is to go in fast, shooting as much supersonic ashm at max. range as possible and running away to see how the enemy deals with the missiles.
on the other hand in a littoral scenario i would prefare using multiple subsonic ashm with dual datalink on different flight paths with simultaneous impact time. (some of them can travel in a low flightpath over land etc.) i have the control of the attack all the time and i can ensure to hit the right target.

for sure some of that useful stuff could also be implemented to an supersonic ashm (iir, datalink etc.) but with more expense and less benefit. how useful is a dual datalink if there are only a few seconds between poping over the radar horizon and the impact?

btw it would be interesting to compare the export price for e.g. a brahmos and a c802. because if the weight and ship integration ratio is 4 to 1, whats about the price?

my private conclusion is that subsonic ashm stil are very useful and that supersonic ashm are also defeatable but if i have to fight a war against surface ships i would like to have both with me to choose the right tool for the right task. i don’t know why no western navy at least develops a supersonic ashm, maybe because they think there is no real chance to need it!?

@talltower: afaik they quoted mach 4 at 70.000 ft. fast high flying targets with a terminal diving phase sounds to me like bmd fits to this thread.
any idea how they want to integrate a seeker if the surface reaches 1500°C or more?

Speed maybe but not by very much CAMM is a variant of ASRAAM which is mach 3 same as Aster 15. Terminal agility i dont really know but i would guess it would be close due to the fact they both have Piff-Paff directional control.

is it proven that camm uses “pif” in the terminal phase? because from my understanding the gas generators used with aster are located close to the missiles centre of gravity and are used in the terminal phase. but all i’ve seen from camms indicates that the gas generators are at the very end of the missile and that they are used for a rapid turn over after a vertical launch. afaik the reason to use the gas generators for turning the missile is the cold launch technique. they want to fire the main motor after the missile is turned towards the target. (they call it “soft vertical launch svl”)

btw imho nsm isn’t the preferable ashm for the royal navy because it is smaller than harpoon and it’s (i)ir only. nsm is more like a successor of pinguin and as such the preferable ashm-missiles for helicopter, some aircrafts (internal load on f-35) and small ships. but for frigates/destroyers etc. i would prefare a bigger ashm with a dual mode seeker (active radar and iir, maybe completed by a passiv radar seeker/esm) like the rbs-15 mk4. if the rn would use nsm for the merlins it might be possible to prepare the ships for a mixed setup (4 or 8 harpoon/rbs-15/whatever + 8 nsm). this would increase the available number of ashm in a high intensity war and the setup is more flexible.

i can’t believe that the hangar of the valours can accommodate two lynx. i think the lynx has a footprint of nearly 11 x 3m.

are there any drawings or pictures showing this dual heli setup?