The Ultimate Guide to the Anti-Ship Cruise Missile

the evening of September the 8th 1943 found a powerful task force of Italian Capital ships steaming into the Mediterranean three battleships three cruises and eight destroyers a truly formidable concentration of Naval power had left their Moorings the Italian Naval Base at La spetsia leading the formation was the flagship Roma a littorio-class battleship the 45 000 ton Roma was one of the most advanced big gun Capital ships in the world she had a formidable main Armament of 9 1943 Model 50 caliber guns which were amongst the best 15-inch guns operational anywhere Roma was protected by a 13-inch armored belt and her eight boilers which produced over 128 000 horsepower could repel The Vessel to a speed of 30 knots she was truly a state-of-the-art battleship although her year-long service in the war had thus far been limited to the unglamorous role of floating anti-aircraft battery but the night of the 8th of September was different Roma and her task force were heading out to fight a major naval battle against a powerful anglo-american Fleet their mission was to intercept the Allied invasion force that was operating to the north of the Allied beachhead at Salerno at least that's what the Italians had told their German allies but Admiral bergamini had other orders he was directed to take the remaining Italian warships at La Spezia and sailed to Malta there he would defect to the allies things had changed in Italy stung by successive defeats in North Africa and Sicily the political mood had shifted decisively against Mussolini on the 25th of July the Italian dictator had been deposed and arrested ending 21 years of fascist rule although the new prime minister Pietro badoglio professed continued fealty to and alliance with Nazi Germany privately Italy was in negotiations to end the war called the Armistice of casabele the agreement would end hostilities between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies facilitating an Italian change in sides as part of the terms of the agreement the remaining Italian Capital ships were to sail to Malta and surrender but before this subterfuge could be successfully completed the Allies let the cat out of the bag on September the 8th they announced the Italian Armistice on public radio at Algiers the dramatic fall of Mussolini had already aroused the suspicion of the Germans clearly the announcement of the Armistice did not come as a shock in Berlin expecting Italian treachery the Vermont moved with its trademark efficiency to disarm the large Italian forces that were operational across Italy the Italian military had no idea they were about to change sides and thus most Italian units put up no resistance however bergamini's task force had apparently escaped before they could be interned at La spetsia but the Germans were not about to let a warship of that capability Escape unharmed in fact they were about to unleash a weapon that would change Naval Warfare forever as Dawn broke on September the 9th the Italian task force had altered course instead of selling to Malta bergamini had decided to transfer his ships to Sardinia where King Victor Emmanuel was setting up a new pro-western government as the day progressed Lookouts detected a pair of aircraft shadowing the task force at first the Italians thought these were Allied bombers keeping track of their movements and bergamini ordered his men to hold fire after some time simply orbiting at high altitude the two aircraft dropped what appeared to be bombs however they were so high that the chance of these weapons actually posing a threat to the ships was minimal as could be expected these objects simply fell into the sea thousands of meters away from any Italian vessels perplexed by these incidents the Italians simply continued on their course at 3 33 in the afternoon another pair of aircraft arrived overhead this time spotters identified them as dornier do 217 medium bombers both appear to be carrying a single large bomb under the starboard Wing between the fuselage and engine now realizing they were under attack burgamini ordered his vessels to conduct evasive maneuvers and engage the incoming aircraft but they were so high that this fire was ineffective at an altitude of 18 000 feet the first bomber pulled into a 60 degree shallow dive dropping its single bomb as it approached the fleet as the Italian Sailors watched the bomb appeared to fly itself following the battleship Italia as it conducted a series of evasive maneuvers narrowly missing the ship the bomb struck the water just meters behind it detonating and severely damaging its rudder as the crew of Italia desperately tried to repair the damage the second bomber made its attack run this time Roma was the target the dornier again made a shallow dive from 18 000 feet keeping the bomber well above the effective reach of the anti-aircraft fire as it made its attack run the doe 217 followed the weapon in watching it as it approached its Target the crew of the Roma washed as the bomb tracked them as the ship turned violently its four stubby Wings visibly flying it towards the great ship the weapon struck the vessel on the starboard side just aft of the midships it cleaved through the armored deck passing through the boiler rooms and Hull detonating beneath the kill the impact of the weapon was truly devastating with her boiler rooms heavily damaged Roma's speed dropped to 12 knots and most of her electrical power was out she was a Sitting Duck for the second attack at 3 52 a second weapon struck this time detonating inside the forward engine room the explosion caused a magazine detonation blowing the number two turret clean off the ship and killing everyone on the bridge the crippled Roma now Ablaze began Sinking by the bow at 4 15 she was gone taking bergamini with her of Roma's 1849 strong crew 1235 officers and men were killed the mighty Battleship Roma had been sunk by an entirely new class of weapon called Fritz X the bomb was the first practical Precision guided munition the weapon was essentially a 1500 kilogram armor-piercing bomb which contained a 320 kilogram high explosive Warhead unlike typical Naval bombs Fritz X was equipped with wings allowing it to Glide to its Target it was Guided by the Kel Strasbourg radio link which allowed an operator to manually steer the weapon as it made its descent in order to provide Guidance the launch platform would follow the weapon in allowing the crew to visually adjust its flight path when employed properly Fritz X was a devastatingly effective weapon just two were required to sink the mighty Roma with a third weapon badly damaging Italia in contrast the Japanese battleship Musashi was struck by 19 Torpedoes and 17 bombs before she sank which does not include the dozens of weapons that missed although technically a Glide bomb rather than a missile the fritz X was still the father of all anti-ship cruise missiles a technology that would revolutionize Naval Warfare ever since the Battle of Plymouth in 1588 where the Spanish Armada was punished by the gunfire of the English galleons artillery had been the primary arm of Naval Combat for 400 years warships would approach the enemy and hurl iron shot or high explosive at one another in a Cascade of cannon fire although by 1945 the submarine aircraft torpedo and airdropped bomb had certainly changed Naval Warfare artillery was still the primary arm of the surface warship indeed it is often argued that it was the aircraft carrier that made the big gun capital ship obsolete but this is untrue or at least not completely true by 1943 the aircraft carrier may have displaced the super Dreadnought style fast Battleship as the primary component of great power battle lines but major surface combatants still relied on artillery to kill one another in fact as the fate of the cruiser General belgrano Illustrated large gun warships were still effective in the Falklands War 60 years after practical aircraft carriers were fielded more than the Advent of Naval Air power generally it is the anti-ship missile that has truly revolutionized Naval Warfare relegating artillery to a secondary role in point of fact the primary way contemporary air power can be used to engage warships is through the employment of anti-ship cruise missiles even submarines use them they are undeniably the defining feature of modern Naval Combat at least when surface vessels are being engaged tactics Doctrine defenses and even warship design are all founded upon effectively employing anti-ship cruise missiles and defending oneself from them it is not hard to see why these weapons have effectively displaced Naval artillery so effectively in essence an anti-ship cruise missile is simply a far superior delivery system for high explosive one could consider it a self-propelled self-guiding artillery shell it's as if one took a 16-inch armor-piercing shell and gave it Wings propulsion and a Seeker allowing it to not only fly much farther but find a Target and then guide itself to it in the age of big gun Capital ships it may take dozens if not hundreds of rounds expended to score a single hit something very difficult given the range at which the guns themselves were capable of engaging targets and the speed and maneuverability of surface vessels that when equipped with a turbojet engine and radar Seeker unless the weapon malfunctions or something is done to stop it a single anti-ship cruise missile will essentially always hit its Target more than any other major technological development in the 20th century it is the development and proliferation of the anti-ship cruise missile which has so drastically changed warship design in fact understanding this weapon is absolutely foundational in any comprehensive understanding of contemporary Naval Warfare one of these major foundational changes in the character of Naval Warfare that was generated by the adoption and proliferation of anti-ship missiles was the Newfound importance of the Battle Network when one talks about networks in contemporary Warfare typically the digital Network comes to mind a computerized Network composed of electronic sensors data links and computers that share digitized information however battle networks are far older than computers in essence a battle Network is nothing more than a dispersed arrangement of Target acquisition sensors Target localization sensors command and control elements weapons platforms and the electronic communications linking them all together a World War II artillery battery is a good example of a battle Network an infantry element would request a fire mission which would be relayed By Radio to the battery or regiment headquarters the battery then fires a small number of rounds which are surveyed by a forward Observer this fire is then corrected and a full fire mission is ordered in this Arrangement the sensors command and control and weapons platforms are all dispersed and connected by radio or telephone forming a network understanding the Battle Network and the interplay of Battle Network competitions is crucial in any wider understanding of the employment of the anti-ship cruise missile and thus how this technology has fundamentally changed the nature of Naval Combat although the technological landscape over which naval battle had been fought has changed dramatically for the 400 years between the Spanish Armada and the great Battleship jewels of World War II the fundamental tactical premise had remained the same Naval artillery unlike the anti-ship cruise missile is generally a within visual range weapon system this was as much the case at the Battle of Trafalgar as it was at the North Cape obviously in any time period simply finding ships in the vastness of the ocean is a significant Challenge and although pervasive sensors and space-based ocean surveillance systems have alleviated this problem somewhat it is still a fundamental tactical challenge nevertheless once an enemy task force has been located in the missile age the method of Engagement is completely different let's use the battle of the Denmark Strait as an example of a late artillery age Battleship engagement it's late May 1942. the German warships Prince Oregon and Bismarck the later of which is the lead ship of the 50 000 ton Bismarck class Battleship have left their forward operating base at Bergen and are steaming through the North Sea their objective is to break out into the North Atlantic and raid the sea lines of communication between the United Kingdom and North America where a rich Bounty of merchant shipping and convoys can be found the Royal Navy is tasked with stopping them however once they left Norway where the resistance was able to provide London with Intelligence on their movements the German warships vanished the primary method by which all sides conducted wide area ocean surveillance was by aircraft these could in theory cover a large area but each plane could only see a relatively small piece of ocean at a time and were generally limited to visual reconnaissance which both limited their intelligence footprint and was badly impeded by Darkness or weather thus and despite the vast size of the royal Navy they certainly lacked a comprehensive and pervasive view of the whole North Atlantic or North Sea to mitigate this problem the British decided to use geographical choke points even if Bismarck and Prince Oregon could not be tracked from Norway they would have to pass through the heavily patrolled areas around the Faroe Islands just to the north of Scotland and the base of the mighty home Fleet Scarpa flow or through the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland in the most likely approach the Denmark Strait the British deployed a pair of county-class Cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk the latter of which was equipped with radar allowing it to maintain contact in the dark or adverse weather when the German warships were detected by the Cruisers the tube ships shadowed Bismarck at maximum radar range providing London with an accurate location given the limitations of aerial reconnaissance in order to keep track of the German Fleet units and allow the operational maneuver of RN heavy forces Suffolk had to keep Bismarck within radar range roughly 10 nautical miles the persistent track provided by Suffolk allowed for the battle cruiser hood and Battleship Prince of Wales to intercept the German Raiders once battle was joined the Reliance upon off-board sensors was obviated in all artillery-based Naval Combat be it the age of sale or 1942 a battle Network was not required for the employment of the warship's Primary Weapons in other words once the major Fleet units had made contact with one another each vessel did not need aid from any other platform or sensor in order to effectively Engage The Enemy the target acquisition sensors Target localization sensors command and control elements and weapons were all concentrated on the platform itself as Hood prince of Wales Bismarck and Prince Oregon approached one another they relied on visual observers for Target detection in order to gain a firing solution the primary sensor used were Optical rangefinders these devices arranged on top of the main turrets and in other locations on the vessel measured the difference in angle between two telescopes in order to triangulate the range to the Target radar could also be used in this role this range and bearing information was then fed into an analog Fire Control computer which calculated the appropriate firing angle much like an artillery battery on land observers would watch the fall of the shells and adjust fire walking the salvos onto the target when it worked radar could effectively fill both roles detecting the enemy vessel and providing highly accurate range information at that point capital ship artillery Jewels were often decided by the side that was able to land a crippling blow first on the 24th of May 1942 it was the Germans who did just that as hood and Prince of Wales approached their prey and before Hood could reach the relative safety of a short range engagement where her comparatively thick armored belt would offer much better protection she was struck by a diving 15-inch shell the impact of this round caused a fast burn in one of her secondary battery powder magazines within seconds she had blown in half and sank beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic thanks to the excellent German Gunnery and a good deal of luck Bismarck had defeated the hood although the technology had changed dramatically this process was fundamentally unchanged from the age of sale in juxtaposition to artillery battles missile combat is fought in a completely different fashion the major defining feature of the anti-ship cruise missile is its range the vast majority have a maximum engagement envelope that is well beyond the typical visual or radar Horizon the Harpoon as an example has an air loss range of roughly 120 nautical miles 5 to 10 times larger than a typical surface search radar Horizon on a major surface combatant thus for many missile engagements both involving aircraft and surface ships the launch platform cannot rely on its own on-board sensors for Target acquisition or tracking short-range engagements are still possible using a ship's own Radars but if the actual range of the anti-ship cruise missile is to be leveraged a launch platform must rely on a highly complex Battle Network this not only means combat between surface ships can now occur at far greater distances but actually engaging the enemy is now a highly complex process that requires a wider system one way to think of a battle Network is as a kill chain in order to successfully engage an enemy ship with an anti-ship cruise missile you must detect it establish a track meaning continually updated location and course information classifier ensuring it is what you think it is and then maneuver your launch platforms into position only then can you engage it one can think of the different platforms that form the Battle Network as serving specific functions within the kill chain all of which are required to successfully employ the anti-ship cruise missile to illustrate how battle networks are critical in long-range naval combat with missiles let's use the legendary example from Red Storm Rising the dance of the vampires although a fictional example Tom Clancy's portrayal of this kind of missile engagement is exceptional and a great model with which to explore these highly Technical and somewhat esoteric Concepts it's 1986 and NATO is in a full-blown conventional conflict with the Warsaw Pact as part of task force 11 the USS Nimitz battle Group is located several hundred miles to the south of Iceland escorting USS Saipan and her Marine Expeditionary Unit as it transits the North Atlantic along with her is the French carrier FOC and their Associated escorts the battle depicted in Clancy's book clearly illustrates a wider Soviet anti-access area denial complex that was very real the Soviet Union was fundamentally unable to compete with the Western powers for sea control it simply lacked the economic resources to ever hope to build the kind of Blue Water Navy that could feasibly sail out into the world's oceans and fight the usn for control of them the need to maintain such massive land forces and the economic inferiority of the Soviets precluded that as a realistic possibility instead Moscow built the Soviet navy as a seed denial force one that was optimized to destroy U.S aircraft carrier battle groups and interdict the transatlantic sea lines of communication with the goal of denying U.S forces access to the European battlefields they would seek to leverage geography in order to buy time for their armies in Europe in essence Moscow looked to asymmetrically fight U.S power projection capabilities through its large submarine and long-range attack aircraft Fleet both of which were built around the highly potent arsenal of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles in order to employ these highly dangerous weapons the Soviets had constructed a complex Battle Network that covered the whole North Atlantic the first element in this kill chain was the Soviet ocean surveillance system as Nimitz and fox steam East 270 kilometers above them a prying eye came into view the USA radar ocean reconnaissance satellite or raw sat a Marvel of Soviet military technology these satellites used a high power radar to monitor shipping the power requirements of the onboard radar were so large that nuclear energy was required and thus each of the USA satellites utilized the topaz miniaturized fission reactor they were deployed in a polar orbit meaning each satellite could provide a radar sweep of an area of ocean twice every 24 hours with the Americans unable to escape the inevitable satellite pass the presence of the Nimitz battle group was immediately revealed to Northern Fleet headquarters admamask however this satellite information was not sufficient for a missile attack alone satellites are very capable wide area surveillance systems but they have limitations the first of which is how intermittent their sensor coverage is satellites move really fast orbital velocity at low earth orbit is about eight kilometers per second thus as quickly as the satellite comes it is gone this is a particular problem when engaging ships because they move the Nimitz battle group was limited to a speed of 20 knots by the lha Saipan but even at this leisurely Pace every minute after the satellite pass the formation was now in a different place steaming in an unknown Direction as time passes between contacts the potential area where the target ship could be grows exponentially this is referred to as the area of uncertainty after one hour steaming at 20 knots this area is 1256 Square nautical miles after just two hours it is 5 000 nautical miles it's a four hour flight from the Soviet air bases on the Kohler Peninsula to the Target location revealed by the raw sat pass by which time the area of uncertainty is some 20 106 Square nautical miles an area larger than the U.S state of Maryland this is the primary reason why satellites alone are generally not sufficient to provide a firing solution for anti-ship cruise missiles they can only provide wide area surveillance detecting targets but not the sustained tracking of enemy vessels in order to keep track of the Nimitz battle group the Soviets utilized a number of Maritime Patrol aircraft the bear foxtrot first flown in 1952 the propeller-driven topole of tu-95 is one of the most successful strategic bombers in history given the NATO code name bear it is still in widespread service today with Russian Aerospace forces and is expected to remain operational until at least 2040. despite its age and very slow speed the extreme range and payload of the bear have kept the platform relevant for decades it may well see a century of continuous service the bear was developed into a dedicated Maritime Patrol variant the tu-142 bear foxtrot which was useful in both the maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare roles it was essential in maintaining contact with the Nimitz battle group as it maneuvered its extreme range over 8 000 nautical miles in total allowed 10 Bears to prowl the North Atlantic once they received information that Nimitz was operating somewhere south of Iceland they began searching for the American Carrier arranged in a thousand mile wide line although the large and slow bear was no match for Fleet defense Fighters such as the F-14 Tomcat if it could remain undetected it could not be engaged in order to keep hidden the Soviet aircraft maintained radio silence and relied exclusively on passive sensors specifically their electronic intelligence systems as the formation moved into the target area one detected a pair of radar emissions even though the battle group had all of its air search Radars turned off there were two e2c Hawkeye early warning control radar aircraft airborne within an hour several bears were stalking the formation remaining outside of radar detection range as radar emissions will always be detectable at a range that is larger than its maximum detection footprint by keeping their distance the Soviet aircraft were able to keep contact with the formation whilst remaining undetected themselves although none of the ships were detected directly their location and course was inferred by the position of the two Hawkeyes and the slow Eastward drift of their orbits with this information gained regular Target updates were related to Northern Fleet Central Command at the mask behind the Bears were two groups of anti-ship cruise missile armed Maritime strike aircraft the first element was composed of four regiments of tu-16 bombers codenamed badges some 80 in total the subsonic tu16 were certainly vulnerable to the deadly F-14 Tomcat and thus were armed with the long-range kh-55 missile codenamed as15 Kent as they approached from the north the slow and vulnerable badges launched their long-range Kent missiles from well beyond the e2c radar for print the large subsonic and unstealthy Kent approached at 30 000 feet and 600 knots flying straight towards the target area allowing the badges to retreat to safety they were followed by six standoff jammers with 160 cruise missiles employing a typical high altitude approach supported by six Jammers the radar screens on board the Hawkeyes were filled with what looked exactly like a Soviet Maritime strike package complete with electronic warfare support and within minutes four squadrons of Tomcats were vetted to intercept 200 nautical miles to the South three regiments of tupolev tu-22m backfires approached the formation the backfire was the premiere Soviet Maritime strike aircraft and it remains one of the most capable Naval bombers operational today essentially a generational replacement for the badger the backfire redressed most of its primary weaknesses even when armed with several missiles it was capable of maintaining a supersonic Dash allowing the bomber to rapidly reach its launch positions and Retreat a necessity given the capability of the usn's fleet defense Fighters with the Tomcats drawn away to the north the battle group was only protected by Fox 8 f8 Crusaders which stood little chance of stopping 70 backfires with the second package now detected by the Hawkeyes a bare foxtrot illuminated the formation with its us Peck 1A big bulge surface search radar this finally gave the strike aircraft truly accurate track information something required for accurate missile employment as the backfire screamed in at Mach 1.5 they reached their launch positions some 200 nautical miles to nimitz's West under each of the wing pylons hung a raduga ksr5 NATO code name as6 kingfish essentially a scaled down version of the kh-22 as4 kitchen the kingfish is a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile as they left the bombers the four-ton missile was driven to a top speed of Mach 3.5 by a two-stage solid-fueled rocket motor this rocket burned both rapidly accelerated the missile and increased its altitude to 60 000 feet in the head of the weapon was a radar Seeker that scanned a cone of sea some 10 miles wide and with an accurate fire solution provided by the bear most of the 140 missiles successfully acquired a Target with an average speed of 900 knots or Mach 1.3 the missiles covered the 200 nautical mile distance in 13 minutes when each Kingfish reached its Target coordinates it began a steep dive from 60 000 feet reaching a terminal velocity of over Mach 3. screaming through the barrage of defensive missile and gunfire about 10 missiles strike their targets slamming into the American vessels Nimitz suffers two devastating blows as the as-6 slammed into the deck its Warhead detonated a thousand kilograms of high explosives formed into a shaped charge akin to a giant rocket-propelled grenade the Warhead formed an explosive penetrator burning a hole into nimitz's bowels within seconds the mighty supercarrier was set Ablaze the lha Saipan disintegrated when a kingfish detonated her magazine sending 2 500 souls to the bottom of the North Atlantic and there was only a debris field where [ __ ] used to be obviously none of this actually happened but Tom Clancy's fictional depiction of a modern anti-ship cruise missile battle is an excellent illustration with which to understand how modern naval battle is waged it was and still is a highly plausible model as we can see the Battle Network is absolutely foundational in the employment of the anti-ship cruise missile every element in the Soviet kill chain is filled by a different platform which are separated by hundreds of nautical miles and all linked together by radio communications the raw sat served as the target acquisition sensor first detecting the presence of the Nimitz battle group Target localization and tracking was provided by the bare foxtrot Maritime Patrol aircraft which was vectored into the target area by the satellite intelligence this sustained tracking information was then supplemented by a long-range radar sweep this time provided by a different bear the launch platforms themselves the tu-22ms never even had to use their own Radars but rather relied on a firing solution generated by off-board sensors allowing the missiles to guide themselves to the Target the whole raid was commanded by both Northern Fleet command admirsk and a raid commander in a dedicated command and control aircraft This truly is a system of systems a complex web of different platforms weapons sensors and people linked together by electronic communications and dispersed over a large portion of the North Atlantic Ocean an arrangement which has only been made more fundamental by the development of Digital Data links the Battle Network truly is a foundational concept which is essential in understanding missile-based naval combat indeed when two missile armed Naval forces are engaging one another often the outcome will be determined not by the missiles themselves or the strength of the defenses but who wins the Battle Network competition if this system of systems can be effectively disrupted then the kill chain can be broken preventing the employment of even the most deadly and long-range anti-ship missiles the development of the anti-ship missile has not only fundamentally changed Naval tactics it also had a revolutionary impact on warship design during the artillery age a warship's primary defenses were passive to be sure speed was always an important means of protecting oneself in some sense a battle Cruiser's armor was her speed as the ability to move quickly and change direction rapidly made achieving and maintaining an artillery firing solution more difficult especially in the age of optical rangefinders and analog Fire Control computers there were other more active means of Defense such as delaying of a smoke screen nonetheless the primary means by which a warship protected itself from enemy guns was armor USS Iowa was protected by an armored belt that was some 12 inches thick and sloped at 19 degrees all of her vitals such as magazines and engines were housed in an armored Citadel which was designed to be immune from 16-inch armor-piercing shells fired from a range of 18 000 yards her deck was protected by three layers of spaced armor the most substantial of which was six inches in diameter these armored layers were designed to detonate plunging shells and airdropped bombs before they reached the ship's internal spaces and stop any splinters each of her main battery gun turrets had an armored face like a tank's mantlet that was nearly 20 inches thick the artillery armed warship was a tank designed to deal out devastating blows whilst absorbing enormous punishment without sinking in her final death throws Bismarck absorbed as many as 400 shells ranging from 5 to 16 inches in caliber and still she would not sink in the end despite the hellacious bombardment her own crew had to finish her off with scuttling charges which were helped by a number of torpedo hits the Japanese battleship Yamato sustained 12 1 000 pound bomb and seven torpedo impacts before finally sinking that's how well protected a World War II battleship was however the anti-ship cruise missile rendered a purely passive defensive system essentially obsolete the large Warhead and extreme accuracy of anti-ship cruise missiles mean that the only way to defend oneself is to not be hit by them the is-6 kingfish contained the same payload of high explosive as the airdrop bombs used by the U.S Navy dive bombers in World War II but it took a force of some 300 aircraft to land those 11 bombs and seven Torpedoes on Yamato equivalent to the entire air groups of three Essex class Fleet carriers single Slava class cruiser is armed with 16 p1000 Vulcan supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles NATO code name SS and 12 sandbox each one of which deploys a one ton Warhead a single volley of these weapons would have done more damage to Yamato than the Swarms of American dive and torpedo bombers which launched from some eight aircraft carriers in total simply a function of the increased Precision delivered by radar homing anti-ship cruise missiles barring a malfunction unless something was done to stop them all 16 would have probably found their target their massive one ton shapes charged Warheads blowing right through Yamato's 8.9 inches of deck armor in essence there was no amount of passive protection systems that could hope to protect a major warship from an anti-ship cruise missile armed foe clearly warship design had to rely more heavily on active defenses if they were to survive in the missile age active defense systems had always been the primary form of Defense from Air Attack specifically anti-aircraft artillery but armor was still a critical element of a warship's defenses in the 1940s neither would be sufficient to stop the anti-ship cruise missile alone nonetheless the revolution in solid-state electronics that allowed for the development of the anti-ship missile also formed the foundation for its primary defense the surface-to-air missile system just as the anti-ship cruise missile can be thought of as a self-powered self-guided armor-piercing artillery shell so can the surface-to-air missile be thought of as a guided maneuverable anti-aircraft shell even with proximity fuses and radar guidance effectively engaging a fast flying Target with anti-aircraft guns required the expenditure of hundreds or thousands of shells especially in the 1950s and 1960s a radar guided surface-to-air missile on the other hand not only had a far greater range but a much higher probability of killing its Target in a very real way defensive surface-to-wear missile systems are a modern warship's armor the sm-2 missile really is the Ticonderoga class Cruiser's armored belt yeah the passive protection these vessels possess are thin sections of Kevlar armor that are primarily designed to protect the ship's vitals from splinters and shrapnel with the continued development of Radars missiles command and control and even radar guided Guns Major surface combatants soon developed a highly capable defensive complex designed to protect these vessels from the ever more potent anti-ship cruise missile threat the modern warship utilizes a layered defensive complex that uses a combination of hard kill systems including long and short-range missile systems and point defense guns in addition to soft kill systems such as decoys perhaps the paradigmatic example of a modern warship that is optimized to defend itself and those vessels around it from the anti-ship cruise missile is the Ali Burke class destroyer arguably more of a cruiser the Burke is probably the most successful modern Destroyer design it is an extremely heavily armed warship the flight 2A Ali Burke has a total of 96 vertical launch cells composed of 12 8 cell Mark 41 vertical launch complexes these vertical large cells can deploy a number of surface-to-air missile systems anti-ballistic missiles land attack cruise missiles and even the ASRock anti-submarine missile which is really a rocket delivered homing torpedo the number of each kind of weapon can be changed depending on the mission but for this example let's allocate 80 cells to surface to wet missiles the Burke has three different surface-to-air missile systems that vary in range and size the standard missile 6 or sm-6 sm-2 and evolve sea Sparrow missile or essm all of which are designed to engage anti-ship cruise missiles the sm-2 and sm6 are variants of the same missile the standard missile 2 which has been the Mainstay of American anti-ship missile defenses for decades the sm-2 is a semi-active radar homing missile meaning it requires illumination from the Burke's Fire Control Systems specifically its an spg62 illuminators the modern sm-2 block 3B has a dual mode Seeker which supplements the semi-active radar homing element with an Imaging infrared sensor similar to a sidewinder this enables the missile to counter Advanced electronic countermeasures and allows for autonomous infrared guidance the sm-2 block 3B has a maximum speed in excess of Mach 3 a range of some 90 nautical miles and a proximity fused blast fragmentation Warhead the sm-6 is essentially an extended range variant of the sm-2 which is designed to be able to engage threats over the radar Horizon it achieves this by using an active Seeker akin to an amrap leveraging a technique called Naval integrated Fire Control counter air or cooperative engagement capability the sm-6 can be guided to targets that are well over the radar Horizon by other platforms such as Airborne radar aircraft like the e2d advanced Hawkeye it has a maximum range in excess of 130 nautical miles the final missile system is the evolved sea Sparrow essentially a short to medium range surface-to-air missile the essm acts as both a point and area defense weapon it is basically a miniature sm2 and is small enough that four can be quad packed into a single VLS cell the semi-active radar homing essm has a much shorter range than the sm-2 greater than 27 nautical miles but this is still well in excess of the radar Horizon for low flying targets giving this smaller weapon a real area defense capability The Vessel could plausibly deploy some 128 missiles across its 80 available VLS cells with 16 sm-6s 48 sm-2s and 64 essms once you get past these layered missile defenses the Burke is protected by Point defense guns the Phalanx close-in weapon system or c-whiz the Phalanx is a radar-guided 20 millimeter Vulcan Gatling gun that is specifically designed to shoot down high-speed targets at close range a standalone system the Phalanx is equipped with a dedicated KU Band Fire Control radar complex which includes search and Fire Control Systems the independent search radar located in the iconic white radome constantly scans the airspace around the ship looking for threatening radar contacts if it detects an object that meets well-defined threat criteria including speed bearing and direction of travel the system orients the weapon towards the threat handing off the track to the dedicated pulse Doppler monopulse tracking radar this system is very precise with an extremely high resolution although it has a narrow field of view if the Phalanx determines that the radar contact is a threat to the ship it will engage it with the 20 millimeter Gatling gun the Vulcan Cannon Fires at a rate of 3 000 rounds per minute as the outgoing shells leave the gun the radar tracks them and walks them onto the target the weapon fires the mark 244 enhanced lethality cartridge which has a hardened tungsten penetrator relying on kinetic energy transfer to destroy incoming missiles and other threats the Phalanx truly is a standalone system meaning it can detect track classify and engage hostile Airborne threats automatically and without input from the ship's other sensors thus and Ali Burke has four layers of kinetic defenses which have to be defeated the sm-6 sm-2 the SSM and Phalanx but that's not all finally we have the soft kill techniques achieving a soft kill means defeating the incoming missile without actually destroying it chaff is a typical way of achieving a soft kill on a missile by spreading small strips of aluminum foil in an Airborne Cloud a shaft dispenser can generate a much larger radar return confusing the missile Seeker these countermeasures are deployed via the mark 36 srboc launcher the primary soft kill system however is far more sophisticated than Nuka decoy Norco utilizes hovering rocket technology to maintain a low altitude flying away from the targeted vessel within the rocket is a sophisticated electronic warfare payload rather than just basic jamming or chaff Norco generates a high fidelity electromagnetic signature of the ship to an incoming missile it looks as though there are now two ships or three if more than one decoy is launched as impressive with these hard and soft kill systems are without accurate detection and track of incoming threats they are unlikely to be effective indeed when engaging anti-ship missiles of any kind a highly capable air search and Fire Control radar is absolutely Paramount after all you can't shoot what you can't see the Ali Burke is equipped with the highly capable spy-1 DV passive electronically scanned array radar system although PESA Radars have been technologically surpassed by active arrays in terms of real-world capability the Spy 1D is still one of the most capable Naval Radars operational anywhere it is an immensely powerful system its peak power output is an eye-watering four to six megawatts as USS Lake Erie demonstrated in 2008 spy 1D can track satellites in low earth orbit and EXO atmospheric ballistic missiles unlike older systems and some newer ones like the European s 1850m spy1d does not rotate to complete a scan rather the beam is steered electronically by shifting phase elements within the radar there are four radar faces each one of which has a 90 degree field of view what this means is the Spy 1D can complete a radar scan extremely quickly this is critical if you are going to successfully engage small low-flying and fast-moving threats the system as a whole can simultaneously track over 800 targets controlling this Ensemble of missiles guns and electronic countermeasures is the first complete battle management system ever developed Aegis combat Data Systems are essentially the central nervous system of a warship or submarine they connect the vessels weapons sensors systems and people to form an integrated whole in essence Aegis fuses information from various onboard and off-board sensors and presents this to the crew as an integrated picture of the battle space it can automatically evaluate and classify detected targets surface airborne and subsurpose engaging them autonomously if required in terms of air Warfare and anti-ship missile defense the Aegis weapon system is the heart of the wider combat system the Aegis weapon system integrates the air search radar Aegis display system command and decision system and weapon control system into one dedicated digital architecture in essence one computer system controls and integrates all of these elements this allows the Burke to respond to a missile threat almost instantly as opposed to having a human being examining a radar screen and classifying radar contacts the computers automatically detect track and classify threats displaying this information to the crew and in the most extreme of circumstances autonomously engaging it with the appropriate weapon system as we can see the Ali Burke possesses a truly formidable layered defensive complex despite its age given the weapons it deploys its sensors combat system and countermeasures it Remains the gold standard in anti-ship cruise missile defense and air Warfare nonetheless European and Chinese destroyers and cruisers deploy a comparable capability and are actually more technologically advanced in some areas both the British type 45 daring class destroyer and Chinese type 52d as an example deploy a more advanced active electronically scanned array air search radar and each have a comparable layered air defense system the type 52d destroyer and type 55 class cruiser are armed with the hhq-9 long range surface-to-air missile which is a navalized s300 variant the hq10 point defense missile system and the type 730 closing weapon system as we have seen in Ukraine generally speaking Russian systems are a little more dated but Russian vessels still deploy a layered anti-ship missile defense system what all this means is a single anti-ship cruise missile actually has a very small chance of successfully hitting a modern warship especially when that ship is embedded in a wider task force such as a carrier strike Group which can provide off-board sensing and the massing of defensive fires in fact the probability of a Kill from any one missile is very low for a single shot each defensive system has its own probability of either destroying or defeating the incoming missile and as they stack up the individual missile's chances of successfully penetrating the defenses dwindle as an example the Harpoon has on average a 4.9 percent chance of penetrating the defenses of an Ali Burke that is operating without Cooperative engagement capability meaning it detects the missile at the radar Horizon if supported by its own offensive jamming and other soft kill techniques however if that same missile was engaged by the Ali Burke with Over the Horizon missile shots throughout its entire flight profile such as the sm-6 its chances are just 0.2 percent there are several methods by which the anti-ship missile can improve its probability of impacting the ship and all rely upon degrading the target vessel's defensive kill chain one of the most effective measures that can be employed by all anti-ship cruise missiles are their own soft kill techniques which include jamming given their small radar cross-section missiles are inherently difficult to engage by surface defensive systems a challenge that is only multiplied when jamming is used to support them for example the e3m80 missile otherwise known as the p270 musket NATO codename SSN 22 sunburn may only have a one percent chance of survival if it is detected at the radar Horizon however if we include soft kill techniques simulations show that probability jumped to 12.6 percent generally speaking current generation anti-ship cruise missiles do not include their own electronic warfare packages primarily because doing so requires a significant amount of space and weight which will dramatically reduce Warhead payload and or range in kinematic performance nonetheless supporting assets can certainly be used to provide a missile strike with their own soft kill support these can include the use of standoff Jammers or as seen in the Red Storm Rising example the employment of decoys future anti-ship missiles such as the tomahawk block 5A may include features like a dfrm Jammer giving the weapon an organic soft kill capability and greatly increasing its probability of a kill but these features are not currently fielded by any operational weapon time is key in the Sam versus ascm contest if the ship's defenses are given a maximum amount of time to engage the incoming threat they will be given multiple opportunities to shoot it down given the extreme accuracy of weapons such as the sm-2 and Phalanx which use features like dual mode Seekers each defensive shot has a very high chance of success if the ship is given the time to fire multiple surface-to-air missiles at the threat and then employ its close-in weapon systems and decoys the probability of one of these systems defeating the missile rapidly approaches 100 percent the key to successfully employing the anti-ship cruise missile is to put pressure on the kill chain as a whole basically it takes time for the ship's defensive complex to detect the incoming threat classify it decide to act and then employ its weapons even then using its weapon systems takes some time yes sm2 and Aegis are amazingly fast but this whole process takes a number of seconds and then the missile has to fly itself to the Target there are three primary ways the anti-ship missile can effectively put pressure on the ship's defensive kill chain differing approaches that have come to define the eastern and western anti-ship cruise missile design philosophies the first is to use the radar Horizon a massively powerful radar like the Spy one DV may be able to detect a missile at a range of 200 nautical miles but that range is dependent upon Target altitude no Naval Air surge radar can see through the Earth's surface and low frequency Over the Horizon systems are not really applicable to warships thus if you use a low altitude flight profile you can effectively limit the radar range to the radar Horizon for a missile flying at an altitude of 10 meters or 30 feet and an antenna at a height of 20 meters the radar Horizon is reduced to just 17 nautical miles at a high subsonic speed of 600 knots it will take the missile just over 100 seconds to Traverse that distance the radar May well detect the missile at 10 times that range if it was flying at high altitude depending upon its power output and resolution the second primary method of defeating defensive systems is speed obviously if your missile flies faster it spends less time within the defensive missile and gun engagement envelope this is why supersonic missiles are more dangerous not that they are necessarily harder to shoot down but because they give you less opportunities to engage them the third is radar cross-section management in essence if you can make your missile look smaller to a radar by reducing its frontal RCS you can reduce the detection range this is because of something called the radar equation which tells us that radar detection range is essentially a function of power output antenna gain sensitivity and the reflectivity of the object if you reduce the RCs of the missile you effectively make the radar less powerful this reduces detection range and therefore the time the defensive complex has to react but even when all of those advantages are leveraged by the missile the probability of a kill is still quite low if we take one of the most dangerous currently operational anti-ship cruise missiles the pj-10 brahmos Supersonic ascm and give it every Advantage we can such as adding soft kill support and preventing the target warship from engaging the weapon with Over the Horizon missile shots modern simulations still only give it a 35 chance of making it through an Ali Burke's defenses this means a less formidable weapon such as the Swedish rbs-15 will have more like a five percent chance under those same conditions this realization that any one missile has a low chance of actually hitting a Target leads to several significant tactical implications the first is the simple fact that anti-ship missiles need to be fired in volleys mass is required to have any chance of scoring an effective hit on an enemy warship with an effective layered defensive system at least one that is active operational and working properly obviously any missile will have a higher probability of a kill if it is facing a less sophisticated or capable defensive complex based on probability alone if one missile shot has a five percent chance of hitting its Target then 10 missiles will give you about a 40 chance but there comes a point where the chance of scoring a hit will reach 100 not because of how the probabilities have stacked but because we have reached the point of saturation the air Warfare capability of all warships has finite limitations it can only manage and engage a certain number of targets simultaneously if that number is exceeded it simply won't be able to shoot down the incoming missiles and just like a sponge that has absorbed a maximum amount of water the warship's capability has reached its limit it simply cannot handle any additional fire thus even with the oldest most obsolete anti-shoot cruise missiles you will be able to penetrate a warship's defenses if you simply overwhelm them the number required to achieve saturation is related to the probability of ascm survival a low fast and stealthy missile will require less to effectively saturate a defensive complex this is one of the primary reasons why older ascms are still tactically viable although this seems to be a relatively simple way to engage a hostile Naval formation Just Launch an enormous volume of fire in the real world this is actually quite difficult to achieve a carrier strike group for example with multiple Aegis destroyers and cruisers Airborne early warning and control aircraft and Fighters all linked together to form a battle Network through Cooperative engagement capability may require hundreds of missiles to reach a point of saturation when you consider the fact that the carrier will be hunting hostile launch platforms relying primarily on older short-range anti-ship cruise missiles to engage highly defended Naval formations presents many significant challenges lack many areas of modern military technology Western anti-ship missile development had its origins in the Second World War the cruise missile itself had been pioneered by the Germans the V1 was the first operational cruise missile although it lacked the guidance and precision to be utilized in a maritime context the United States had a number of wartime cruise missile development programs the most important of which was the jb2 essentially a straight up copy of the V1 the jb2 had a limited success but it would provide the US military with extensive experience in cruise missile design and development this led to a swath of post-war cruise missiles for both Naval and air applications including the 3 000 mile range Northrop snark the supersonic North American Navajo and the Martin matador as ambitious and capable as many of these systems were by early 1950 standards none had significant applications in an anti-shipping role simply guiding a missile to half a nautical mile of its Target was a technological challenge let alone the autonomous Target acquisition and terminal guidance required for an anti-ship missile this was also the Heyday of the nuclear weapon and thus the use of these missiles as nuclear Delivery Systems was absolutely Paramount throughout the 1950s and early 1960s old-fashioned Carrier air power was still the primary means by which the U.S Navy surface forces aimed to sink ships the 1970s witnessed a revolution in cruise missile technology utterly transforming the large inaccurate and unreliable weapons of the 1960s propulsion Electronics guidance fuels and materials improved dramatically perhaps the greatest Improvement was in the area of computers and electronics the size weight and power requirements of inertial navigation systems shrank decreasing weight from about 130 kilograms in 1960 to just 13 a decade later the total cruise missile guidance package including computer radar altimeter and inertial systems now measured one and one-third cubic feet and weighed about 50 kilos these advances had made the modern anti-ship cruise missile a realistic possibility nonetheless and despite the extensive Soviet development of the anti-ship cruise missile the U.S Navy was lukewarm towards the weapon it was and still is an organization and Community dominated by Naval aviators and many viewed the naval attack aircraft as Supreme there was no real need they argued to invest in cruise missiles built around Maritime strike with such a potent carrier Force it took the sinking of the Israeli Destroyer eliat originally built as HMS zealous by three soviet-made p15 tremit missiles NATO code name ssn2 sticks to stimulate anti-ship cruise missile development in the United States despite the lethargy in the U.S military McDonald Douglas had already initiated a dedicated anti-ship cruise missile development program in 1965 and by 1967 they were well placed to meet the Navy's requirements the usn originally wanted a 40 nautical mile range missile to carry a 250 pound conventional Warhead that could use existing Naval missile Talos Tata and Terrier magazines hoists and launchers to meet these demands the Harpoon program was initiated in 1970 . Harpoon is perhaps the foundational Western anti-ship cruise missile indeed in terms of longevity it is arguably the most successful ascm ever developed some 50 years after the initiation of the Harpoon program it Still Remains the most prolific Western anti-ship missile in November 1970 the defense systems acquisition review Council approved the development of two versions of the missile the air launched agm-84a and rgm 84a1 ship launched and by January 1972 the Navy had added submarines to the two other launch platforms the Harpoon is a turbojet-powered cruise missile Which flies at higher subsonic speeds throughout its attack profile like virtually all Western anti-ship cruise missiles the Harpoon uses altitude to complicate defensive missile interception it is a sea skimming missile meaning it utilizes a very low altitude to evade shipboard defenses this has many advantages although perhaps the most important is it allows the missile to be both small and relatively lightweight Harpoon is almost a 1 000 pound-class weapon the air-launched agm-841c weighs just 531 kilograms or 1172 pounds which greatly increases the weapon's tactical flexibility by allowing the employment of a diverse number of launch platforms the missile is 151 inches or 3.9 meters long and in its original version the Harpoon had a range in excess of 60 nautical miles in the nose of the weapon is the guidance and Seeker section it contains a dedicated computer three axis attitude reference assembly similar to an inertial navigation system radar altimeter and j-band radar Seeker the Harpoon can follow preset waypoints before beginning a radar search and is capable of conducting complex terminal Maneuvers automatically the Seeker itself has a number of search modes that are designed to operate in heavy electronic warfare environments the weapon can receive targeting data from a wide variety of sources which can be transmitted to the missile guidance section automatically or manually prior to Launch behind the secret section is the Warhead the Harpoon to live is a 500 pound blast fragmentation unitary high explosive Warhead this includes a delayed fuse which allows the weapon to penetrate a ship's Hull before detonating the back half of the missile is the sustainer and control section the Harpoon is a jet powered cruise missile under its belly is a cast aluminum ducted air intake which feeds a Teledyne CAE j402 turbo jet engine which is fueled by jp10 in a sealed tank the missile uses four small Wings to provide lift and employs four control surfaces at its rear to maneuver the j402 engine requires a minimum AirSpeed and altitude to function and thus the surface-launched variants use a rocket booster to achieve this the small booster section contains a solid propellant that provides over 12 000 pounds of thrust for an average burn duration of 2.9 seconds after which time the section is jettisoned from surface platforms the missile is typically launched in a ballistic trajectory the only major difference between the air and surface launch variant so the weapon is the booster after the Harpoon is launched either by using the booster section or dropped from an aircraft at altitude the turbojet engine starts automatically using data from the inertial navigation system at radar altimeter the missile flies at the optimum height for the prevailing sea State keeping it low enough to remain under the radar Horizon the Seeker is activated at a predetermined Waypoint after Target acquisition the weapon descends to see skimming altitude often as low as 2 meters using the radar altimeter to precisely measure its altitude finally in the last moments before impact the weapon can conduct a series of terminal Maneuvers such as a low altitude pop-up this flight profile is generally speaking common to most sea skimming anti-ship cruise missiles there are two primary reasons why Harpoon has been such a successful weapon over and above its lethality leading to a service life of some 50 years the first is its modularity because of how small and light the weapon is it can be used on a large number of different platforms from Cruisers and destroyers to strategic bombers Fighters and submarines the missile comes in a standardized container that is designed to be mounted Outdoors which allows for easy integration on minor vessels such as Corvettes and other warships that do not have a dedicated missile launcher such as the mark 13. these are typically mounted in complexes of two to four called The Mark 41 guided missile launching system which can be easily mounted directly on the deck of most warships at its introduction the weapon had a dedicated computer system the Harpoon shipboard command and launch control system which allows the user to pre-select navigation waypoints and Target search areas because of how modular the system is it can be easily used by land-based batteries the Harpoon coastal defense system simply uses Grade B canisters and the Harpoon shipboard command and launch control system which are both mounted in a truck finally the Harpoon is small and light enough to be fired from a standard 21-inch torpedo tube when used by a submarine the weapon is installed in a buoyant container that is ejected from the submarine's torpedo tube typically at Periscope depth which then breaches the surface once out of the water the capsule's four sections separate and the solid rocket booster ignites from which point the weapon acts exactly as though it had been launched by a surface ship this flexibility and modularity is generally speaking a Hallmark of American Naval systems it has allowed the humble Harpoon to feel such a vast number of different tasks roles that would typically require completely different missiles in the Soviet navy the second major feature of the Harpoon which has led to such a long service life is its periodic upgrades much like the standard missile 2 which was first introduced in the late 1970s the Harpoon has a long weapon development life cycle adding new capabilities through a block upgrade program the block 1D featured a larger fuel tank and improved software including a re-attack capability if the missile was spoofed by a chaff or decoys in its ultimate iteration block 2 the Harpoon is a much improved weapon the radar Seeker now includes significant improvements to allow for better performance in heavy clutter environments such as the littorals one of the key improvements was the integration of a GPS receiver and inertial navigation system from the jdam satellite guided bomb this allows the weapon to strike land targets and ships in Port a dedicated land attack variant the slam was also developed with over 7000 weapons produced and currently fielded by some 32 nations in total the Harpoon is undeniably one of the most successful and influential anti-ship cruise missiles ever developed it exemplifies the first generation of Western anti-ship cruise missiles and although it is finally being replaced by first-tier military Powers we should expect the humble Harpoon to remain a viable and dangerous weapon for decades to come there is however one other foundational Western sea skimming missile the legendary exorcet the weapons of falkland's war of Fame the French exorcet is the other major Western first generation sea skimming anti-ship cruise missile there are of course others such as the Swedish rbs-15 and British Sea Eagle but the exorcet and Harpoon are by far the most successful and influential first developed in August 1968 by aerospasial and reaching operational status in 1975 with the French navy as the mm-38 the exorcet follows the same fundamental design philosophy as the other Western first generation asms it is a medium weight weapon with a mass of 780 kilograms or 1720 pounds a length of 6 meters and a 165 kilogram Warhead which can be canister launched by surface ships and Shore batteries submarine and aircraft launch variants are also operational just like the Harpoon exit set is highly modular with essentially the same missile filling a myriad of rolls the weapon is provided with a dedicated command and control complex that can be easily installed on a warship the Vega fire Direction control system developed by Thompson CSF is used to detect identify and track the target vessel as well as to guide the missile during the initial flight designed for small and medium displacement ships it consists of a c-band Triton detection and Target designation radar with a range of 45 kilometers depending upon antenna height and a Pollux Fire Control radar in the nose of the mm-38x asset there is a dedicated guidance and Seeker section with an inertial navigation system radar altimeter and x-band Active Radar pulsed homing head the assembly weighs some 30 kilograms the seeker can detect a frigate sized ship with an RCS of about 100 square meters and a range of up to 24 kilometers much like the Harpoon the exorcet can follow predetermined waypoints with multiple weapons attacking an enemy Target from various angles simultaneously behind the Seeker section is the blast fragmentation Warhead this can be programmed to penetrate the target detonate on impact or air burst the Warhead relies heavily on fragmentation to inflict damage offsetting its relatively small high explosive payload it contains a large number of pre-formed tungsten fragments the major difference between the exorcet and Harpoon is propulsion the mm-38 and all other extra set variants apart from some of the mm-40 block 3 systems use a solid fueled rocket motor rather than a turbo jet this makes the weapon much more simple mechanically and potentially more reliable but it does reduce the effective range when launched from a surface ship submarine or coastal defense battery the exit set utilizes two separate solid rocket sections the first is a small booster section that is designed to accelerate the missile quickly and move it to a safe distance from the ship this is referred to as the starting engine which has a two second bird time before it is discarded the main propulsion section or marching engine has a much longer burn time for the mm-38 this is about 110 seconds which gives the weapon an effective range of 42 kilometers or 22 nautical miles this actually makes the weapon a within visual range missile there's two major warships should be able to detect one another at that range the air launched am-39 redressed this lack of range by leveraging a rocket motor with a much longer burn time some 220 seconds this gives the weapon a maximum range of 70 kilometers or 37 nautical miles this improved engine was also used in the upgraded mm-40 variant which has the same range the mm-40 is the most widely deployed xsf the mm-40 block 3 or at least some variants of the block 3 use a turbojet with four air intakes instead of a solid rocket vastly increasing the missile's range to 180 kilometers or 100 nautical miles the block 3 was introduced in 2004 very much the equal of the Harpoon block 2 the new exha set includes a GPS receiver and updated Seeker giving it both better performance in the literals and a limited land attack capability despite the use of a solid rocket motor the exer set is a subsonic weapon it reaches a maximum velocity of 0.9 Mark during its main rocket burn after which it coasts towards its Target it uses four small Wings to maintain lift the exercise party pace is how low it flies after an initial ballistic launch by the starter motor the missile conducts its main rocket burn at an altitude of 10 to 15 meters as the Seeker searches for the target at a range of some 25 kilometers the target vessel comes into the Seekers footprint triggering a stage set of altitude reductions first to seven meters and then to two to three if the C state is calm enough the exorcet will prosecute a terminal attack at just one meter above the surface of the water that is three feet obviously larger waves will require a higher altitude but at that altitude an air surge radar sitting 20 meters above the surface will detect the missile at just 12 nautical miles the target would have 80 Seconds to react the exor set was devastatingly effective in the Falklands indeed along with the sea Harrier it was one of the iconic weapons of the war in fact this single missile alone almost decided the outcome of the conflict the Royal Navy of the 1980s deployed some of the most modern naval air defense capability in the world the type 42 Sheffield class guided missile destroyer specifically fielded the sea Dart missile system and type 996 three-dimensional air search radar this weapon and sensor combination was highly capable in 1982 it had been specifically designed to counter the prolific Soviet supersonic anti-ship cruise missile threat But Not only was exet's state of the art at the time British Air Defense systems had been designed to engage the High Altitude Soviet missiles they were likely to face in the open Waters of the North Atlantic Convoy routes the small sea skimming exit set proved to be a uniquely difficult challenge on the 4th of May Her Majesty shifts Sheffield in Glasgow where operating as radar pickets about 100 kilometers to the south of Port Stanley the two ships were detected by an Argentine Lockheed sp2h Neptune Maritime Patrol aircraft which shadowed them throughout the morning at 9 45 a pair of Super 8 and Dodge strike Fighters departed Rio Grande Tierra del Fuego each was armed with an am-39 exorcet missile the two fighters approached at low altitude staying beneath the radar Horizon only popping up to conduct quick radar scans before retreating to the safety of the wavetops at 11 o'clock they detected Sheffield in Glasco entered the target coordinates and launched the missiles despite the radar scans Sheffield never detected the attendance which egressed at low altitude this was because her main air surge radar was offline due to a Communications burst Glasco did and informed Sheffield but the air Warfare officer decided not to act as he believed their position was beyond super attendant range and thus assumed they were other aircraft Sheffield was not at General quarters when the attack was made the two missiles were detected on radar however as no launch aircraft had been detected the radar contact could not be classified incoming missile shots were finally confirmed visually and the Sea Dart Fire Control System was activated but just five seconds later the exorcet impacted Sheffield the Missile hit a midships about two meters above the water line the second hit the water 500 meters from a port beam luckily for the sailors aboard Sheffield the Warhead failed to detonate nonetheless the still burning rocket motor combined with the kinetic energy of the missile impact and damage it inflicted started an uncontrollable fire Sheffield eventually sank whilst undertone Heavy Seas 20 of her crew went down with the ship on the 25th of May the HMS Invincible battle group was operating to the north of the Falklands when it was attacked by another two ship flight of super attendance utilizing the same low altitude tactics the pair of Argentine Fighters detected the group and launched two am39 exoset missiles the incoming weapons were detected by the escorting frigates which had been the primary targets both conducted defensive Maneuvers and launched chaff in response this achieved a soft kill on both exor sets with one hitting the water behind the escorts the second however continued on searching for a Target it soon detected the 15 000 ton container ship Atlantic conveyor which was transporting fuel ammunition bulk stores and helicopters for the task force the missile slammed into the ship's port side its Warhead detonating upon impact fire quickly engulfed Atlantic conveyor as their Precious Cargo of helicopters and other material soon caught Ablaze following the fate of Sheffield the burned out Hulk eventually sank whilst under tow on the 12th of June the Destroyer HMS Glamorgan was steaming off the coast of East Falkland Island where she was providing Naval fire support to the Royal Marines as the battle of the Two Sisters raged as she steamed at 29th some 18 nautical miles offshore and improvised Argentine Shore battery tractor desperate for more exorcet missiles the argentines had removed an mm-38 canister from the Destroyer ARA segue cobbling together a makeshift coastal defense battery which was flown to the Falklands three missiles were fired at Glamorgan the first did not leave the canister the second successfully launched but did not require the target the third however did detecting the incoming missile glamorgan's Captain initiated a rapid defensive maneuver turning away from the weapon and presenting the smallest possible silhouette to save the destroyer from near certain destruction the exorcet bounced along the deck eventually detonating in the aircraft hangar this killed 14 crew members and destroyed the helicopter but did not impose critical damage within a week Glamorgan was repaired she re-entered Portsmouth on the 10th of July the Falklands campaign had not only shown the exorcet to be an extremely dangerous weapon but it demonstrated the value of sea skimming missiles generally validating the Western approach to anti-ship cruise missile design and employment despite their relatively slow speed the use of low altitude tactics had imposed critical pressure on the Royal Navy's ooda Loop as can be seen with the experience of Sheffield with such a small amount of time between detection and impact any confusion or hesitation within the command and control apparatus would inevitably lead to disaster despite the potency of a defensive weapons and radar which should have allowed her to detect the incoming missiles and shoot down the exorcets the threat materialized so rapidly that her command and control system more generally failed her it just happened that at that critical moment her main air search radar was offline the air Warfare officer happened to be having a coffee in the ward room and when he was recalled to the Ops room assumed that the aircraft detected by Glasgow were not super attendance because he read a faulty intelligence report the Destroyer never even went to action stations a very similar chain of events probably befell the mosqueva which was sunk by Ukrainian r360 Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles equivalent to a harpoon in April 2022 indeed the Royal Navy struggled to mitigate the threat posed by the exocet and had the argentines had a greater stockpile the amphibious operation May well have been untenable well before the Harpoon or exocet programs were even conceived the Soviets were charging ahead with anti-ship cruise missile development despite its immense land strength Soviet Union was absolutely an inferior Naval power especially when compared to the Colossus that was the United States Navy the usn emerged from the second world war with the most formidable power projection capabilities the world had ever seen it had 24 20 000 ton Essex class Fleet carriers 14 of which were converted to allow the heavy fastjet operations with angled flight decks these were supplemented by a line of carrier designs that were continually growing in size and capability the first was the three ship Midway class which displaced more than 40 000 tons although a World War II design the Midway was larger than the currently operational French CVN Charles de Gaulle but as the early 1950s ended the US was poised to launch a whole new kind of aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and Forest oil classes were the first true supercarriers displacing some 80 000 tons at full load each was four times as large as a World War II Essex their Air Group was composed of 90 heavy fast Jets and helicopters protected by their supporting escorts these vessels were awesome concentrations of Naval Firepower allowing the United States to project power all over the globe given the simple economic and Industrial realities confronting the Soviets there were simply no way they were ever going to be able to develop construct and then deploy a commensurate amount of symmetric Blue Water capability as is so often the case in military history inferior Naval Powers will look to disruptive technology in order to redress aggregate Naval inferiority in the early 20th century many small enabled Powers looked to the torpedo and torpedo boat to counter the great Dreadnought battle lines of the major Naval powers Germany in both world wars used the submarine to apply asymmetric pressure on British areas of weakness through Commerce raiding and sea line of communication interdiction in the 21st century China is doing the same thing through the development of anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonics the Soviets looked to the anti-ship cruise missile to counter the immense power of the U.S Navy specifically its carrier forces indeed Soviet ASM development has its roots as far back as the 1940s it was September the 8th 1947 when the Soviet Council of ministers issued a requirement that the Soviet military should be armed with pilotless anti-ship warplanes with a range of 100 kilometers this was quite a technological challenge given the time period and a special design Bureau was created specifically to work on guided missiles remarkably by 1951 tupolev design Bureau had developed a carrier aircraft and the sb1 design Bureau had a prototype missile allowing substantial tests to be conducted the weapon resembled a small pilotless mig-15 it was powered by a klimov Rd 500k turbojet engine which propelled the three-ton missile to a top speed of 600 knots it was given the designation ks1 common the weapon used a combination of inertial navigation and semi-active radar homing for terminal guidance in essence a series of gyroscopes would keep the weapon flying on a predetermined path then as it approached the target vessel it would be guided by a radar beam that was aimed by the launch aircraft after some initial failures a number of simulated attacks Against the World War II Cruiser read Caucasus in the seat of azov achieved eight hits out of 12 shots fired even without high explosive Warheads the kinetic energy of these large missiles moving at high subsonic velocity allowed the comet to cleave right through the Cruise's armor leaving large round holes in both sides one shot punched through the heavily armored turret pleased with the results the weapon was approved for service in 1953 as ingenious as the first generation of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles were they had limited tactical utility when engaging lone surface ships they certainly were a significant upgrade as the launch aircraft would be able to stand off beyond the range of most anti-aircraft artillery and guide the missile onto its Target the high kinetic energy and large payload also made these weapons particularly effective if they were able to score a hit but with the requirement that the launching aircraft typically the large and vulnerable tu4 or tu-16 heavy bomber guide the bomb onto its target attacking usn carrier forces wasn't really a practical proposition these bombers were unable to stand off far enough to protect them from the American Naval Fighters that would surely swarm them as soon as they approached and provided terminal guidance still given the time period the comet was a very successful weapon it was much better than using unguided gravity bombs the missile was used by Indonesia and Egypt in addition to the Soviet Union the success of the Comet quickly led to the development of much more capable systems that addressed its primary weaknesses the need to manually guide the missile through semi-active radar homing was simply not a good technological solution this problem was solved with the p15 missile NATO code name SSN 2 sticks the p15 is an absolutely foundational Eastern Block anti-ship cruise missile despite becoming operational in 1960 its variants are still in active service today with some 21 users especially the modernized p15m trim it the p15 is a large weapon which is purely designed for surface launch either by warship or land-based battery it is over six meters long and weighs in at a hefty two and a half tons the missile is cylindrical with short Delta wings and control surfaces on the tail unlike the comet the p15 uses a much more reliable liquid-fueled rocket engine it has a large and capable 1 000 pound shape charge Warhead the biggest advantage of the sticks is the use of an active radar homing Seeker the Seeker head is primitive and simple but inexpensive it utilizes a conical scanning radar this allows the launch platform to simply fire and forget many can then employ defensive maneuver in its original Incarnation the weapon had a range of 40 kilometers or 21 nautical miles although the modernized p15m trim it achieved double those numbers housed in a large Hangar as opposed to a canister the big missile was launched from a set of guide rails it was propelled to cruise altitude by a solid rocket booster section the p15 used a low altitude attack profile but his early versions used a barometric altimeter this was limited to 100 meters the upgraded TriMet which uses a radar altimeter can fly much lower down to an altitude of 25 meters although 2.5 has been claimed infrared Seeker heads were also developed for the weapon the p15 was designed to be a cheap and reliable missile that could be mass produced and utilized on smaller vessels such as frigates and Corvettes it was designed to give a Corvette the offensive punch of a cruiser at least over one Salvo despite its large signature and reasonably primitive electronics and thus poor resistance to electronic countermeasures the sticks remains a viable weapon some 60 years after introduction this is because of the metrics of anti-ship missile engagements as noted previously specifically the concept of saturation although the probability of a kill may be low if you fire enough of these lumbering beasts even the mighty Ali Burke can be overwhelmed and against less well-equipped foes which lack Advanced anti-ship cruise missile defenses the p15 is still a deadly threat it was licensed to both China and North Korea in people's Liberation Army service the p15 NATO code name c SSC 2 silkworm for the land-based hy1 gave rise to a whole family of land ship and air launched weapons that are collectively known as the silkworm Series in the West these include the sy1 hy1 and hy2 thousands of which have been manufactured on the 21st of October 1967 the Israeli Destroyer eliat was hit by two p-15 missiles launched by Egyptian missile boats at Port Said She sank with the loss of 57 men despite this early success the Primitive Electronics of the p15 family proved to be a key weakness during the Yom Kippur War in one example in the battles of batakia and Baltimore tens of p15s were launched at Israeli vessels none of which hid their targets all were soft killed by chaff and electronic countermeasures as an air-launched weapon the comet had proved to be a successful design for the time but with ever-growing U.S Naval Aviation and more sophisticated missile defenses it was clear that employing the weapon against U.S carriers was not a realistic possibility by the late 1950s the American flat tops would soon be filled with third generation Fleet defense Fighters the F4 Phantom was a true generational leap over the aircraft it replaced fighter was theoretically capable of Mach 2 and had a very significant internal fuel volume but more importantly it was equipped with a highly capable Fire Control radar the x-band an apg-72 which had an instrumented range of 200 nautical miles and the Beyond visual range am7 Sparrow missile the later versions of which could engage targets at 38 nautical miles when supported by Airborne radar aircraft the F4 would be able to reliably intercept Soviet bombers several hundred nautical miles from the carrier well beyond the reach of the currently fielded Comet missiles which had to be terminally guided in order to make this generational Improvement the Soviets decided to feel the new generation of Maritime strike systems themselves Fielding new missiles and aircraft the next generation of Soviet air launched anti-ship missile would be as ambitious a leap as the F4 Phantom had been in Fleet defense the new weapon would have a massive range an active radar seeker and critically would be supersonic this would allow the weapon to be launched from such a long range that Fleet defense Fighters would struggle to intercept the launch platforms and in order to increase the survivability from service to air missile defenses it would have a top speed in excess of Mark IV called the kh-22 NATO designation as4 kitchen the missile being designed by raduga was for all intents and purposes a super weapon but in order to achieve such eye-watering performance size and weight constraints had to be essentially abandoned the new weapon was absolutely massive it is some 11.5 meters or 30 feet long and weighs nearly 6 tons it delivers a one ton shape charge Warhead to provide lift it uses a similar aerodynamic layout to the Styx missile with a pair of small Delta wings and three control surfaces at the rear the kh-22 uses a pair of liquid-fueled rockets to accelerate the weapon and gain altitude it can be used in both a high and medium altitude flight profile when using the high profile the missile climbs to an altitude of 90 000 feet and cruises at high speed once it approaches the predetermined Target area it conducts a steep dive reaching a peak velocity of Mach 4.6 in low altitude mode the weapon only climbs to 40 000 feet and then makes a shallow 30 degree dive at Mach 3.5 maintaining a lower Peak velocity but greater speed throughout its flight profile as the kitchen Dives its Active Radar Seeker scans the sea below for Target ships despite its large signature and high altitude flight profile the sheer speed of the kitchen severely complicates Naval Air defenses even if the incoming missile volley was detected at 100 nautical miles the carrier strike group would only have 160 seconds to shoot them down the tu-16 badger was and still is a useful and dependable jet bomber it is still in widespread service with the plaaf as the H6 but it's slow speed specifically made it vulnerable to Fighters such as the F4 although certainly not altogether obsolete more capable Maritime strike platforms were clearly required Additionally the new kh-22 missile was so large that the badger could not employ it effectively to redress this defect the Soviets developed the supersonic tu-22 Blinder the Blinder was on paper a much better missile bomber than the badger with a supersonic speed and three tons of Greater payload enough to actually employ the kh-22 but the Blinder was a failure of a bomber it suffered from poor serviceability bad flying characteristics a high accident rate and skin heating at supersonic speeds even as it was being introduced it became clear to both those in the tupolev design Bureau and the military that are replacement supersonic Maritime strike aircraft was required immediately this unnerved the political class who were unsure of the requirement to spend more on developing a new aircraft when the tu-22 was only just entering service much like the fa-18ef Super Hornet to allay these fears the new platform was designated as merely an upgrade to the tu-22 thus the new bottle was called the tu-22m as opposed to the tu-26 it is better known in the west by its NATO code name backfire the backfire is arguably the most capable dedicated Maritime strike aircraft ever developed it is still the Mainstay of Russia's strategic bomb a fleet the combination of long-range large payload and high supersonic Dash make the backfire an exceptional missile carrier its ability to race to missile launch positions fire its weapons and retreat at supersonic speed make it a very difficult aircraft to stop depending on the Range the tu-22m can deploy three kh-22 missiles compared to the blinders one this not only means the tu-22m is more survivable but more lethal as we saw in Tom Clancy's iconic battle scene a three regiment attack of 72 backfires can volley fire 216 kh-22s certainly enough to pose a saturation threat to even the most heavily defended task forces to make a minor correction to the dance of the vampires battle scene the raduga ksr5 as-6 kingfish missile was not really intended for use on the tu-22m it was a scaled down smaller and lighter kh-22 that used a solid rocket motor allowing the tu-16 badger to employ a missile with inferior but comparable capability however this is probably not known to Clancy at the time who may well have supposed that it was a more modern and more capable weapon the combination of the tu-22m and as4 posts such a significant threat to us carrier forces that it drove the development of the legendary F-14 Tomcat and its iconic primary weapon the am 54 Phoenix in fact as is typical throughout military history when you have an offense defense contest a generational leap on one side stimulates a comparable response from the other throughout the 1970s and early 1980s the usn deployed a series of new capabilities that were specifically designed to counter the Soviet supersonic anti-ship cruise missile threat Guided by the e2c Hawkeye individual f-14s could now engage up to six targets simultaneously at a range of 100 nautical miles a capability that scaled dramatically when multiple squadrons were deployed this engagement was called the outer Air Battle and it was a fight the usn had never been more well prepared to wage infield defense had been revolutionized by their Aegis equipped warships especially the Ticonderoga class Cruisers and Ali Burke Destroyers indeed by the late 1970s even American frigates were equipped with long-range surface-to-air missiles the Soviets needed more capable weapons to penetrate these improved defenses especially for their major surface combatants and submarines the Soviets had utilized two of the primary means of penetrating Naval Air defenses speed and low altitude but what if a missile could combine the virtues of both how much hotter would a missile be to intercept if it was able to hide beneath the radar Horizon like an exorcet but still achieve supersonic velocity like a kitchen if such a weapon could fly twice as fast as a sea skimmer enemy reaction time would be cut in half but this is easier said than done especially if you want to launch such a weapon from a surface platform when facing a carrier you have to stand off if your approach to 100 nautical miles or less your chances of surviving are Slim thus you can't just use a large liquid or solid fueled rocket plus your Precision guided munition with its delicate Electronics has to be protected from the immense surface heating imposed by low altitude supersonic flight therefore the new weapon had to have a very long range autonomous targeting and the ability to fly at supersonic speed and very low altitude simultaneously despite these daunting technical challenges work on the new weapon began in 1969 at the NPO design Bureau however it was some 10 years later that full-scale testing of the weapon was able to be conducted and by 1983 the new system was declared operational the p700 granite's missile NATO designation SS n19 shipwreck is an immensely impressive weapon it has a range of around 600 kilometers or 320 nautical miles obviously this is far beyond the sensor footprint of any theoretical launch platform which means the weapon is wholly dependent upon the Soviet ocean surveillance system and its accompanying Battle Network for targeting data the Shipwreck has a maximum speed of Mach 2.5 at high altitude but can sustain Mach 1.5 at the wavetop level it is claimed that the weapon has an advanced autonomous targeting capability when volley-fired a number of missiles share information via dedicated data link forming a network autonomously one weapon flies at higher altitude increasing its radar footprint or at least conducts periodic pop-up Maneuvers transmitting targeting data to the other weapons which remain low if the spotter weapon is destroyed another will take its place the network as a whole can be programmed to swarm a single high value Target such as a carrier or Target individual vessels with a terminal attack profile of 2.5 meters altitude and a speed of 1000 knots defensive missiles would have just 40 seconds to engage the incoming shipwrecks placing enormous pressure on their ooda Loop finally with such a high terminal speed 20 millimeter close in weapon systems such as the thumbnax will struggle to successfully stop the missile they may be able to accurately shoot it but with such immense kinetic energy even a successful intercept will not prevent the missile debris from impacting the ship the Warhead contains some 750 kilograms of high explosive a 500 kiloton nuclear payload is also available Soviet surface action groups and individual submarines would conduct Mast stand-off shipwreck strikes relying upon the wider Battle Network and centralized Commander control to provide targeting data firing coordinated volleys at carrier battle groups that have been located and fixed by The Wider ocean surveillance system it truly was a fearsome capability this all sounds amazing like some perfect Soviet wunderwaffe and certainly the third generation of SuperSonic sea skimming missiles are extremely capable weapons but there are some downsides in order to meet the range altitude and speed requirements the Shipwreck has to use an air breathing engine the p700 uses a turbojet although given the weapons Frontline status reliable open source information on its design and thrusts are hard to come by the air intake resembles the front of a mig-21 with the incoming airflow ducted around the radar Seeker itself in order to fly that fast for that far the Shipwreck needs a large engine and large internal fuel volume additionally in order to ensure a kill on U.S capital ships it needs a heavy Warhead these design requirements together conspire to make the p700 a truly massive missile including a solid rocket booster which is required to accelerate the weapon to operating speed it stands some 10 meters tall at launched the whole assembly weighs over seven tons to put that into perspective the Shipwreck is longer than the ugm-27 Polaris submarine launch ballistic missile it weighs nearly half as much this severely complicates delivery restricting the platforms that can employ the weapon to Soviet Capital ships this is one of the primary reasons why the Soviets developed such large surface combatants like the Cure of class cruiser which is classified as a battle cruiser in the West the kirov is a modern day Battleship it displaces nearly 30 000 tons at full load equivalent to an Iron Duke class dreadnought the largest major surface combatants in Western navies such as the ticonderoga-class cruiser typically displace about 10 000 tons one-third as much as kirov the reason why the Soviets built such a massive warship was simply because it was designed around these massive weapons kirov has VLS space for some 20 P 700 missiles this requirement plus the need for formidable air defenses in order to protect it from usn Carrier air attacks is the reason why the ship is so large the same stands for submarines the massive oscar-class ssgn was essentially built around the requirement to employ this weapon this colossal nuclear submarine is some 155 meters long and displaces 19 000 tons when submerged they are roughly the same size as no higher class ssbn which deploys the Trident D5 submarine launch ballistic missile in order to employ the Shipwreck missile you essentially have to build an ssbn the Oscar class contains 24 of these weapons in all only three Soviet platforms were able to employ the granite the kirov Oscar and kuznetsov classes many of the problems with the Shipwreck were rectified by the next evolution of the p700 design the p800 Onyx the Onyx is known by the name yakant on the export Market its NATO designation is SSN 26 Strobel and evolutionary successor to the Shipwreck work began on the Onyx almost as soon as its predecessor became operational however as with many late Soviet military systems which became current generation Russian weapons all work on the Onyx ceased with the collapse of the Soviet Union despite eight years of development from 1983 to 1991 the weapon would only finally be fielded in 2002. Onyx possesses most of the shipwrecks capability whilst providing greater flexibility and speed all in a weapon that weighs only three tons the missile is powered by a kerosene fueled Ramjet rather than a turbojet which allows it to reach speeds in excess of Mark IV but Mark II is more typical in low altitude flight this is light enough that an air launched variant was developed which is a spelled 2550 kilograms although the missile is 9 meters in length it is still small and light enough to be employed by tactical Fighters such as the flanker family not to mention frigates destroyers and more typical sized submarines this gives the Onyx the kind of flexibility provided by Western missiles such as harpoon it even has a mobile coastal defense battery called the Bastion p with a range of 300 kilometers the Bastion is a highly capable anti-access areas in our weapon especially when employed in the constrained Waters of the Baltic Onyx also has a land attack capability the only major disadvantage in comparison to the Shipwreck is range utilizing a high altitude cruise and low altitude terminal attack profile it can strike targets at 300 kilometers or 161 nautical miles although this is reduced to 120 kilometers if it remains low from launch it delivers a much more typical 500 pound high explosive Warhead although the Russians still deploy a vast number of different weapons in this class Onyx is the basis for Russia's modern anti-ship cruise missile capability the major warships it has actually built since the fall of the Soviet Union such as the Admiral goroskov frigate are equipped with the Onyx it is a highly effective weapon and certainly remains one of the most capable anti-ship cruise missiles currently operational interestingly enough the apogee of the Shipwreck family tree was not seen in Russia but India in a joint venture between India's defense research and development organization and NPO National Australia a new missile design was developed to meet the Indian military's requirements called brahmos a portamanteau formed by the names of two rivers the Brahma Putra and moskaba the new weapon is an evolution of the Onyx missile system Ramos contains the propulsion section and basic design of the Onyx but includes a new Warhead and electronics package developed in India it is generally speaking more capable than its Russian counterpart though certainly comparable much like the Onyx brahmos can be employed by surface ships Shore batteries and aircraft it has been integrated with the su-30mki the new missile is similar in Dimensions to its Russian predecessor the ground launch variant is 8.2 meters long and weighs 3 000 kilograms at 2 200 kilograms the air launched brahmos is significantly lighter and a touch smaller it delivers a 200 kilogram Warhead as opposed to 300 for the surface launch variants brahmos includes several significant upgrades over the Baseline Onyx it has a longer range with some variants in Flight profiles allowing for a maximum engagement envelope of 500 kilometers or 270 nautical miles a submarine launched variant is under development it also includes an inertial navigation system that is updated by global positioning system data significantly increasing its land attack capability it has been claimed that signature reduction measures have been leveraged to reduce the missile's radar signature but given the basic design of the airframe the amount of RCs reduction achieved is probably minimal like all Eastern block supersonic sea skimmers brahmos will have a very large signature both in the electromagnetic and infrared spectrums nonetheless the combination of its range speed responsiveness and low altitude attack profile make the brahmos an exceptionally dangerous weapon it is currently fielded by the Indian military and in 2022 the Philippines has signed an agreement to purchase the weapon the Russians are not the only Eastern Bloc player in the supersonic sea skimming ASM game as has certainly been the case in virtually all areas of military technology China has emerged from Russia's Shadow to become a leader in anti-ship cruise missile development as can be seen with the adoption and development of the silkworm series The pla relied heavily on Soviet research and development technological designs and Doctrine throughout the 20th century even after the sino-soviet split of the 1960s the pla was still dominated by weapons of Soviet origin indeed as can be seen by the purchase of the su-35bm China remains a significant destination from Russian weapons nonetheless over the last 15 years China's wider military-industrial complex has moved Beyond simply producing licensed or reverse engineered Soviet platforms to the development of real indigenous military hardware some of which is certainly globally competitive this is certainly the case in the area of anti-ship cruise missiles that is not to say that the pla does not still rely heavily on Soviet and Russian ascms in fact it currently Fields a large number of Russian systems including the p270 musket or SSN 22 Sunburn and the 3m-54e club NATO designation SSN 27b Sizzler despite the widespread use of Russian or Soviet missiles the plas fielded a family of increasingly capable ascms the first is the subsonic yj-83 NATO designation CSS N8 sakad essentially the Chinese Harpoon the yj-83 is a 2000 pound class turbojet-powered subsonic active radar-guided sea skimming missile it can be launched from surface vessels to smallest Corvettes and destroyers and tactical Fighters such as the j15 the weapon has a cruising speed of 600 knots and a range of around 100 nautical miles it utilizes a low altitude attack profile of between five and seven meters most of the plans older destroyers have been retrofitted with the yj-83 giving them a comparable capability to their Western counterparts a submarine launched variant the yj-82 has also been deployed on the Han Shang song and Yuan class attack submarines although other systems May generate more interest The Humble yj-83 Remains the backbone of the plans ASM Arsenal the pla has also fielded a number of SuperSonic asms over the last decade the first is the yj-12 essentially a larger kh-31 derivative the air and surface launched yj-12 utilizes a Ramjet to sustain terminal attack speeds of between Mach 2 and Mach 4 it has a range of between 240 to 400 kilometers depending on the speed launch altitude and flight profile selected it also uses an active radar Seeker the weapon has been developed into a land launched variant the yj-12b the Soviet design Heritage can clearly be seen in the yj-12 it is a Soviet supersonic anti-ship cruise missile with Chinese characteristics this is also true of the more capable yj-18 although it uses the same layout and attack profile as the Russian club and looks very similar it probably isn't a straight up copy the weapon has been under development by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation third Academy since the late 1990s it became operational in 2015. just like the Russian 3m54e the yj-18 is a multi-stage weapon combining a subsonic cruise with a supersonic terminal Dash this gives it the advantages of both a supersonic and subsonic weapon improving its range and reducing its weight while still applying severe pressure to the Target ooda Loop it achieves this by having multiple stages when fired by a surface warship or submarine a solid rocket booster accelerates the eight meter long missile up to cruise velocity in altitude once there the booster section is ejected and a pair of wings are deployed allowing the turbojet motor to spool up the yj-18 uses the efficient turbojet to cruise to the Target location relying on an inertial navigation system updated with bado satellite navigation information once at the terminal phase the sustainer section is jettisoned and a solid rocket accelerates the Warhead and Seeker to Mach 3. the weapon is also Guided by an active radar Seeker this multi-stage configuration gives the missile a maximum range of 500 kilometers at least for some variants indeed it's not just in the design of their weapons and platforms that the pla is emulating and perhaps even surpassing the mighty Soviet Union just as the Soviets had developed a large anti-access area denial complex designed to interdict the North Atlantic complete with raw SATs tu-22m backfire bombers and kirov class battle Cruisers so are the Chinese building their own a2ad complex in the Western Pacific in fact China's vast Battle Network comprised of SuperSonic anti-ship cruise missiles satellites Maritime Patrol aircraft submarines bombers destroyers and drones is not only modeled on its Soviet predecessor many of the systems and platforms utilized to achieve it are actually of Soviet origin for example the early elements of the pla's yalegan satellite constellation were literally based on the Soviet USA raw sat just as the Soviets aim to keep USM battle forces out of the North Atlantic so does the pla aim to Bar them from the Western Pacific essentially they're using exactly the same means to do so albeit with high altitude long endurance drones instead of bare foxtrots Clancy's Dance of the vampires May well come to fruition yet but instead of backfires armed with as4 kitchens the usn may be facing h6s with yj-12s when it comes to current generation anti-ship cruise missiles one of the most perplexing conundrums is why there is such comparatively little development in the west compared to the Eastern block to this day Western Air Forces and navies are primarily armed with the same weapons they were in the 1980s the Harpoon and exocet although they have been upgraded over time the West still relies exclusively on active radar-guided subsonic sea skimming missiles yes one could certainly argue that these systems were largely equivalent to high altitude supersonic missiles such as the kitchen and Kingfish but for decades now Eastern anti-ship missiles have combined a supersonic velocity with a low altitude terminal approach Soviet Russian Chinese and even Indian systems are capable of flying almost as low as Harpoon or exocet but going two to three times faster whilst doing so dramatically improving their terminal lethality given the vast military-industrial complex and research and development based in the collective West and the vast military budgets that fuel them why hasn't Europe Japan or the United States followed suit why isn't there a Western equivalent to the Shipwreck brahmos or yj-18 this is probably the most commonly asked question when it comes to contemporary Naval Warfare and there are a few reasons why more lethal ascms have not been prioritized in Western navies the first thing to realize is this is not fundamentally an offense offense contest it's the offense versus the defense that really matters Western navies have for 40 years now dominated surface air Warfare capabilities the Aegis equipped vessels in particular deploy an anti-ship missile defense capability that is truly formidable the combination of combat system sensors networking supporting assets countermeasures and layered missile and gun defenses make them a truly formidable opponent for any anti-ship cruise missile even the less heavily armed European vessels such as the type 45 deploy world-class air Warfare capabilities especially in terms of their sensors basically you need more capable anti-ship cruise missiles if you are going to have any hope of effectively engaging something as formidable as a carrier strike group from the other perspective over the same 30-year period from the fall of the Soviet Union the anti-ship missile defenses Western navies have had to contend with have simply been far less formidable as can be seen in the example of the Moscow the vast majority of the Russian surface fleet has seen limited refits and upgrades and therefore still largely deploys the same defensive complex they were built with the primary air Warfare destroyers and cruisers Western navies were likely to face such as the Cyber many and Slava classes had not meaningfully moved on from the 1980s although they certainly feel capable area air defense missiles such as the navalized book and s-300 variants and close-in weapon systems they're largely analog combat systems and sensors are still key weaknesses as throughout the 1990s and 2000s other Regional powers like China and India still relied primarily upon Soviet equipment this level of air Warfare threat was global in essence the Harpoon and Nexus set were still more than capable of engaging these kinds of threats when employed correctly especially when the concept of saturation is kept in mind and thus there simply was no need to develop a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile generally speaking weapons are developed in order to achieve specific tactical effects and if you can effectively employ a harpoon then the fact that your competitors have developed a Mach 3 capable C skimmer is fundamentally irrelevant this all began to change in the 2000s and 2010s China has embarked on one of the greatest shipbuilding programs in modern history it is comparable to the rapid development of the Kaiser reich's High Seas Fleet in the early 20th century putting dozens of new hulls in the water over this period as part of this vast Naval modernization and expansion the pla has filled a number of new modern destroyer and Cruiser classes that possess a far more capable air defense capability the type 52 class destroyer as an example deploys a highly capable type 346 s-band aesa air search radar which combines medium to long range with high resolution and extremely rapid scan rates when engaging see skimmers the type 346 is a significant improvement over The Late generation Soviet systems used on the subramanian Slava such as the top plate and top steer mechanically scanned arrays this is combined with a layered defensive complex built on the long range hhq-9 surface-to-air missile a modernized s300 variant the HQ 10 point defense missile which is comparable to the rolling airframe missile and a 30 millimeter close-in weapon system although the type 52d and type 55 classes still lag behind their Aegis competitors in areas such as networking Over the Horizon engagement capability long range fires and combat system they are a very significant upgrade in comparison to their Soviet predecessors given the pace of Chinese Naval shipbuilding and the investment in new technology more generally we should only expect PLA and anti-ship cruise missile defenses to improve over the coming decades as Chinese defenses continue to get better the probability of a kill for anyone Harpoon missile shot will decline increasing the number required to both have a high likelihood of getting a hit and the level required to achieve saturation thus with this increase in the defensive challenge a new generation of Western anti-ship cruise missiles has belatedly been developed but these new Western systems are not supersonic if we remember the earlier discussion of how Naval anti-ship missile defenses work missile systems can increase their chances of survival and thus achieving a kill on the target primarily by limiting the amount of chances the warship has to defeat the missile current generation Eastern block missiles do this by combining a low altitude with a supersonic Dash screaming over the radar Horizon at Mach 3 giving line of sight defenses a mere 30 seconds to react but there is more than one way to skin a cat the next generation of anti-ship cruise missiles aim to apply the same udal Loop pressure on Naval defenses as supersonic missiles by using stealth as opposed to speed the fundamental design philosophy behind these weapons is if you can delay detection of the incoming missile to as late a time as possible ideally until it is well over the radar Horizon you will achieve precisely the same effects as a supersonic missile despite these weapons only traveling at 600 knots this approach has several advantages over supersonic missiles the first is the vulnerability of SuperSonic systems to Over the Horizon missile shots low-level supersonic systems inherently have large signatures both in the infrared and electromagnetic spectrums that's going to be seen in weapons such as the Shipwreck Onyx and brahmos the requirement to travel at high supersonic speed with air breathing engines imposes significant aerodynamic design limitations hindering the use of shaping to reduce the missile's RCs the punishing environment of SuperSonic low altitude flight also puts extreme heat stress on the surface materials posing significant challenges in the use of radar absorbent materials going fast generally means a large engine and large fuel supply which makes for a large missile even the relatively small brahmos is a massive in comparison to the Harpoon it's more than twice as long all this means these supersonic missiles will have a far larger radar cross section than even a non-stealthy harpoon or exocet this problem is Multiplied in terms of infrared signature going fast in the lower atmosphere requires a very powerful engine such as a solid rocket or Ramjet which give off enormous amounts of infrared energy plus sea level flight in excess of Mark II causes very significant skin Heating these effects give these weapons a massive infrared signature even at long range to an f-35s distributed aperture system they will stand out like beacons in the night with Aegis equipped vessels now moving almost entirely to active homing surface-to-air missiles including the sm-6 sm-2 block 3C and essm block 2 all of which will be able to engage low altitude targets over the radar Horizon the range at which these missiles can be engaged has vastly increased this extended detection and engagement range effectively buys the defense's time allowing more chances at interception and balancing the increased speed of these weapons the second major advantage is space and weight supersonic missiles tend to be large the kitchen Kingfish shipwreck Onyx brahmos and yj-18 are all comparatively large weapons at least eight meters in length the Shipwreck weighs 7 tons this complicates Delivery Systems significantly meaning that on Surface ships and submarines these weapons will take up more space Western subsonic anti-ship cruise missiles are so light and small that they can simply be placed on the deck where there is some spare room this means more weight and buoyancy for other systems but where this really matters is in the air the massive tu-22 Blinder bomber could only carry a single kh-22 the legendary backfire could carry three which would compromise its range significantly the much smaller F-111 was capable of employing four harpoons we see this in current generation systems an su-30mki is limited to a single 2.5 tonne or 5 500 pound brahmos per sorti whereas the f-35a can carry six Joint Strike missiles over a comparable range anti-ship cruise missile employment is fundamentally a numbers game it's all about achieving sufficient Mass to overcome your enemy's defenses and being able to employ up to six times more missiles per strike package is a very significant advantage there are two primary Next Generation Western anti-ship cruise missiles the 21st century is Harpoon and axiset Lockheed Martin's long-range anti-ship missile or lrasm and kongsberg's Naval Strike missile the air-launched version of which is called The Joint Strike missile although very different weapons with different design heritages the NSM and lrasm follow the same fundamental design philosophy and Achieve improved terminal lethality in the same way both rely on stealth rather than speed to apply ooda Loop and command and control pressure and to avoid interception they achieved this via two methods passive sensors and signature reduction having a low RCS airframe and Low Infrared signature is not all that helpful if you are using an active radar Seeker as the electronic intelligent systems on board your target will detect the radar emissions emanating from the missile as soon as it comes over the radar Horizon thus both weapons rely upon passive electronic surveillance and off-board sensor information provided by a data link for long-range Target acquisition and an Imaging infrared Seeker for terminal Target prosecution neither missile emits any significant electromagnetic energy both combine a very small frontal radar cross section with a small and efficient turbojet engine limiting their visibility to both air search Radars and infrared search and track systems both have a maximum speed in the highest subsonic range and both are very low C skimmers with a minimum altitude as low as 1 meter by keeping the maximum speed subsonic both weapons are comparable in size to a harpoon or exorcet in essence the agm-158c lrasm is an anti-ship variant of the highly successful joint Edge surface standoff missile which has been the United States premiere air launch standoff cruise missile for over a decade the Baseline Jass SM is also used by Finland Poland and Australia the jasm is already a stealthy cruise missile from its Inception it was designed to be able to penetrate integrated air defense systems with high-end surface-to-wear missiles such as the s-400 and tor in order to increase its survivability extensive effort was given to keeping the weapon's signature as small as possible especially its frontal RCs this is achieved both via the shaping of the weapon and the use of radar absorbing materials the weapon already has an Imaging infrared Seeker to Aid in Precision targeting the lrasm is a maritime strike variant of the 500 nautical mile ranged ja SSM ER however the inclusion of a new seeker and its dedicated Electronics package has reduced internal Fuel Volume somewhat Lockheed Martin claims the weapon has a range in excess of 200 nautical miles but something between 300 and 400 seems quite likely intended for both air and surface launch the lrasm weighs a svelte 1 100 kilograms and is some 4 meters long about the same size as a harpoon its air launched variant is currently operational and a surface-launched lrasm is under development it delivers a 1 000 pound brooch Warhead that is designed to penetrate hardened structures allowing it to reach deep into the vitals of an enemy warship including engines fuel bunkers and magazines the weapon is currently operational with the USAF and usn and a contract for 200 weapons has been signed for the Royal Australian Air Force one of the most interesting things about the lrasm is how smart the weapon is using a long-range subsonic anti-ship cruise missile poses some unique challenges the greatest of which is area of uncertainty mitigation as discussed previously ships move often at up to 30 knots that means as soon as you lose contact every second the area of uncertainty grows when you have a missile like the lrasm which may cruise at 400 knots even if you know exactly where the enemy vessel was when you launched the weapon it will be an hour before it gets there this is a more challenging issue for sea skimming missiles which use infrared Seekers for terminal prosecution because their sensor footprint is small if the enemy warship has moved some 30 nautical miles since you launched chances are without a position update the weapon won't acquire the Target and you'll miss the easiest solution to this problem is simply to keep an eye on the target task force with something like a drone and update the missile via satellite data link which is certainly something you can do with the lrasm however what if you lack this element in the kill chain what if you are in a highly contested battle space and you simply can't provide that kind of persistent targeting data or you want to use a fleeting satellite contact to provide the firing solution alone well the lrasm is designed to provide bid course updates all by itself the missile is Guided by Advanced AI software that can make complex tactical decisions including reducing the area of uncertainty simply by relying on its own sensors as the missile approaches The Wider Target area at high altitude it relies on its electronic intelligence Suite to build a passive electromagnetic picture of the battle space logging and tracking hostile emissions such as radar signals and data links by doing this it can both locate and classifying Target warships via their electromagnetic signature identifying what Radars are operational for example and all at very long range if multiple missiles are in the area they can share this information by a low probability of intercept data link forming a local network with this updated picture now available the lrasm identifies the most valuable targets such as an aircraft carrier and plots its own course the weapon is smart enough to identify threats such as radar pickets or escorting air Warfare destroyers and navigate around them maintaining a large enough distance to minimize the possibility of detection once the weapon approaches the selected Target it drops to wavetop level using a radar altimeter to maintain an altitude of one to two meters and accelerates to 600 knots as the target comes into view the Seeker visually identifies the class of Warship aiming for vulnerable points such as the bridge or magazines if there are multiple missiles connected in a local network they can conduct a coordinated strike simultaneously attacking the same Target from different directions the LR ISM can do all of this without a single update from the launch platform or centralized Commander control it literally does it all on its own we certainly have come a long way from the Harpoon simply following preset waypoints until it turns its radar on we don't know exactly how stealthy the lrasm is but suffice to say it's quite likely that it will be detected within the radar Horizon gracefully compressing reaction time and the lack of a radar Seeker increases the chances that an enemy warship will be caught with its pads down and not at a high state of readiness the NSM and JSM deploy many of the same capabilities the currently fielded Naval Strike missile has been operational since 2012 with the Norwegian polish and American militaries and has been selected for use by the Royal Australian Navy Royal Canadian Navy Spanish Navy Royal Malaysian Navy and Romanian Navy the subsonic NSM provides much of the Tactical lethality of the lrasm it also uses an Imaging infrared Seeker maintaining a minimal electromagnetic profile which is capable of visually classifying Target vessels the Seeker is equipped with a Target database ensuring that the appropriate and most valuable vessel is struck it also feels a two-way data link allowing for mid-course update Mission abort and Target switching the NSM is much smaller than the lrasm the entire weapon weighs just 410 kilograms less than a thousand pounds despite its tiny size it has a range in excess of 100 nautical miles for mid-course guidance the weapon uses a GPS updated inertial navigation system after it is launched by a solid rocket booster the Naval Strike missile is propelled by a micro turbo tri-40 turbojet engine which has a tiny infrared signature although RCS reduction was certainly a priority when designing the missile one of the main reasons why the weapon is so hard to detect is its tiny size it is just 48 centimeters in diameter meaning even without RCS reduction techniques it's a hard weapon to spot one of the primary shortcomings of the Naval Strike missile platform is its relatively small payload a semi-armor piercing blast fragmentation Warhead that weighs just 125 kilos or 250 pounds a far cry from the lrasm's 1000 pound Broach Warhead however as we saw with the loss of Sheffield which succumbed to a fire that was started by an exorcet that didn't even detonate even this sized explosion inside a modern warship can do tremendous damage although certainly multiple hits would be required to do crippling damage to a capital ship the NSM can be deployed by either ship or Coastal battery the air launched variant is the Joint Strike missile a joint development of the NSM by both Raytheon and kongsberg the JSM uses a very similar design to the NSM although the single overhead air intake has been changed in order to fit fifth generation weapons base currently the JSM lacks the kind of autonomous targeting capability provided by the lrasm although there were plans to integrate a similar passive electronic intelligence package which were being funded by the Australian government it's unclear whether this is still being pursued especially given Australia's purchase of the lrasm nonetheless the JSM still uses Advanced targeting software it can autonomously classify targets and aim for vulnerable positions and conduct swarm attacks with other missiles that are linked via data link the JSM provides a truly impressive capability given its tiny size using a high altitude launch high altitude cruise and low altitude attack profile the missile reportedly has a maximum range in excess of 300 nautical miles allowing the launch platform to stand off well beyond any conceivable defenses using its internal and external weapon stations six jsms can be employed by a single f-35a allowing a single strike package to generate a formidable mass of Fire 12 strong Squadron attack will be able to fire some 72 missiles at a target from 300 nautical miles will be on the range of even most carrier-based fighter defenses using passive sensors and off-board targeting the missiles will then conduct an autonomous massed coordinated attack sharing targeting information by a data link like a swarm of bees dozens of these tiny stealthy missiles will scream over the radar Horizon just three feet above the waves posing an extreme saturation threat to even the most well-protected task forces truly the JSM exemplifies the adage that sometimes bigger is not better anti-ship cruise missiles truly are the artillery of modern Naval Warfare Doctrine tactics Naval design and force structure are all built around the employment of this one weapon system more than anything else the anti-ship cruise missile is the dominant feature of 21st century naval combat this is likely to remain the case well into this century and probably Beyond despite the emergence of new technologies that are currently stealing the headlines such as anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonics both of these are fascinating topics that really go beyond the remit of this discussion one that is already too long in fact Both Deserve their own specific treatment as is often the case when breakthrough and potentially disruptive Technologies developed extremely high hopes are being placed on these two new weapons however much like the hype that surrounded the invention of the torpedo which led to many pundits claiming that the weapon had rendered the big gun Battleship indeed the capital ship itself obsolete these hopes May well be excessive very similar claims are currently being made about these newer Technologies especially hypersonics but as good historians we should always keep the Long View in mind remembering that even successful vundavatha rarely live up to the high expectations placed upon them after all history shows us just how wrong they were in the early 20th century and perhaps that should make us cautious in the early 21st that is not to say that hypersonics and anti-ship ballistic missiles will not change Naval Warfare they certainly will but we should be very skeptical of claims that these weapons have rendered the aircraft carrier obsolete or that they are unstoppable arguably the 80 ship ballistic missile is a niche weapon and the technological maturity of hypersonic anti-ship missiles is grossly overstated indeed many of these highly touted developments such as the brahmos II are simply slightly faster anti-ship cruise missiles and even the Soviets deployed a Hypersonic ascm in the 1980s the kh-15 NATO's designation as16 kickback Hypersonic systems will certainly not completely replace the conventional anti-ship cruise missile anytime soon the usn which is one of the few organizations that have both Hypersonic and anti-ship ballistic missile weapon development programs through missiles like the multi-role sm-6 block 1B which will act both as a terminal phase Hypersonic and ballistic missile Interceptor and as an anti-ship ballistic missile itself has no plans to retire The Humble subsonic anti-ship cruise missile new anti-ship versions of the tomahawk are being developed as I speak in any case the employment of hypersonics and the anti-ship ballistic missile still rely upon the same fundamental mechanics as the anti-ship cruise missile the Primacy of the Battle Network kill chain and winning the Battle Network competition more generally saturation and the offense defense contest will dominate Naval Warfare throughout the 21st century just as they did throughout the last half of the 20th and the anti-ship cruise missile will surely Remain the primary arm of navies across the world for decades to come

Channel: hypohystericalhistory

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Id: ZhY-QLPt0f0

Length: 136min 21sec (8181 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Strontium_frog]

Well named.