Does the US not have a supersonic SSM?

[Pillar]

I've never heard of anything in the US inventory by way of a supersonic anti-ship surface to surface missile. The Indian navy has some SSMs which are said to do supersonic maneuvers on the last phase of their attack. Are American ships presently limited to subsonic anti-ship missiles?

[ekempey]

The only thing I know that they have is the SM2. From Wikipedia:
"The Standard can also be used against ships, either at line-of-sight range using its semi-active homing mode, or over the horizon using inertial guidance and terminal infrared homing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-66_Standard

[Molon Labe]

SeaSparrow has ASUW capability as well, and my guess would be that NLOS/Netfires is supersonic for at least part of its flight; but, yes, we don't have any dedicated surface launched supersonic antiship missiles.

[Pillar]

Unbelievable! 62kg of blast fragmentation is not trivial but I'm really quite surprised that India has a more capable surface-to-surface attack capability than the USN's latest and greatest.

[Molon Labe]

The USN hasn't deployed a new antiship SSM since 1984. India is developing a brand new one right now. So yeah, they're ahead right now. We'll have the Harpoon Block III in 2011 if all goes as planned, which will certainly have updated guidance capabilities for improved flexibility and lethality (and hopefully will combine a backup sensor with the radar for terminal homing--not something that's been announced as of today, but something they'll probably need in light of the incident with the Saar 5 vs. C-802 (http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2006/10/the_miracles_of.html)).

Speed isn't all there is to capability though. Subsonic seaskimmers have proven quite effective, in conflicts from 1967 to 2006 (and a subsonic non-seaskimming SS-N-9 in 2008). I'm only aware of one instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Gloucester_%28D96%29) where an ASCM was shot down (and it wasn't a seaskimmer) which is the key vunlerablility of a slower-moving missile. Supersonic weapons are about as vunlerable to soft kills, which has so far been the most successful defense.

[MBot]

Supersonic weapons are about as vunlerable to soft kills, which has so far been the most successful defense.

True, but supersonic missiles also reduce the time available to deploy counter measures in the first place.

[Molon Labe]

I don't want to claim to be an EW expert, but I think you still have enough warning to turn the jammers on, pop chaff, etc. I agree that the time factor will make them more effective in this regard, but I don't think it has a huge impact.

One thing to consider is the flight profile of most supersonic missiles. They're gas hogs, so if they're going to have any range, they have to fly at high altitude. Older missiles like the Kitchen are high divers; they stay up high until they're terminal. AEGIS or other modern SAM systems can deal with those rather easily today. More modern supersonic missiles (including the Brahmos) use a high-low profile, where the missile cruises at high altitude until the radar finds the target. It then dives for the surface, gets below the radar horizon and closes the distance to the target until contact is reestablished and it goes terminal. This profile allows for counterdetection by radar and ESM when the missile first searches for the target, which means they know they have to switch their jammers on, orient their ship to the missile to maximize ECM effectiveness, and start puking chaff. Also, by being larger and faster, they are easier to detect on radar.

FWIW, I can't wait for the RATTLRS, but right now subsonic seaskimmers have a proven track record of success, while their larger supersonic cousins have yet to be used in combat (at least in an antiship role).

[Pillar]

Interesting stuff. I think (disclaimer - I'm going by simulations and technical data) the NATO ships should have no trouble shooting down volleys of subsonic sea skimmers. But many of the Warsaw (and export variants) ships as well as stuff like the OHP are vulnerable to volleys of subsonic missiles. Basically, AEGIS changed the game by being able to ward off swarms of slow missiles indefinitely (as ammo allowed, which exceeds attacker SSM loadouts anyhow.) The supersonic missiles can get through that system using volley fire tactics again. The point therefore is not to beat the helmsman to the countermeasures control panel by going supersonic, but to increase the number of missiles the AEGIS system needs to deal with simultaneously within a given amount of time. The fact that each incoming missile is now much harder to hit (shorter time for engagement, including a much tighter lethal window for SAMs); -- So the dash has been to re-equip all the cruisers and missile boats on that side with supersonic missiles, and the program India is doing seems to be about getting VLS and supersonic terminal homing married. They already "upgunned" the missile boats with supersonic sea skimmers afaik. NATO simply hasn't had to worry about it because they are the only ones fielding AEGIS. Is that correct?

[Pillar]

The only thing I know that they have is the SM2.

SeaSparrow has ASUW capability as well, and my guess would be that NLOS/Netfires is supersonic for at least part of its flight; but, yes, we don't have any dedicated surface launched supersonic antiship missiles.

"Operational range 40 to 90 nautical miles" (from the Wiki)

Yeah this is what I was looking for. Thanks.

[Molon Labe]

SM-2 and SeaSparrow are SARH missiles, so their range is limited by the horizon. 40-90nm is against aircraft, not ships.

[Pillar]

Yeah I was just thinking about the motor running out and a heck of a lot of that range being glide... so no, this isn't a good anti-ship missile. The motor burn range and then a little bit of cruise after that probably aren't far at all. The radar problem might be solved by a helicopter - ? I'm not sure they have the capability to do third party guidance for missiles like that. At glide-phase ranges they probably wouldn't be harder to shoot down than a harpoon, maybe easier, in fact.

[Molon Labe]

Yeah I was just thinking about the motor running out and a heck of a lot of that range being glide... so no, this isn't a good anti-ship missile. The motor burn range and then a little bit of cruise after that probably aren't far at all. The radar problem might be solved by a helicopter - ? I'm not sure they have the capability to do third party guidance for missiles like that. At glide-phase ranges they probably wouldn't be harder to shoot down than a harpoon, maybe easier, in fact.

I'm quite positive that they don't have that capability. The SM-6 will have AMRAAM-style datalink guidance followed by autonomous capability, so it's possible in theory that a 3rd party platform could provide the link information, but the SM-2 and SeaSparrow absolutely do not have that capability or anything like it.

[Pillar]

Anything about the volley vs aegis post?

[Molon Labe]

Interesting stuff. I think (disclaimer - I'm going by simulations and technical data) the NATO ships should have no trouble shooting down volleys of subsonic sea skimmers. But many of the Warsaw (and export variants) ships as well as stuff like the OHP are vulnerable to volleys of subsonic missiles. Basically, AEGIS changed the game by being able to ward off swarms of slow missiles indefinitely (as ammo allowed, which exceeds attacker SSM loadouts anyhow.) Slow or fast. AEGIS was designed with Mach 3 missiles like the Kitchen in mind.


The supersonic missiles can get through that system using volley fire tactics again. The point therefore is not to beat the helmsman to the countermeasures control panel by going supersonic, but to increase the number of missiles the AEGIS system needs to deal with simultaneously within a given amount of time. If you fire two missiles two seconds apart, they arrive two seconds apart, whether those missiles are going 500kts or 2000kts. Speed doesn't force the system to deal with any more missiles. What it does it gives it less time to deal with each missile; this is true whether you fire 1 or fire 100.

Beating missile defenses today is all about reaction time. The less time the boat has to detect, classify, and react, the more likely you're going to get a hit.


The fact that each incoming missile is now much harder to hit (shorter time for engagement, including a much tighter lethal window for SAMs); -- So the dash has been to re-equip all the cruisers and missile boats on that side with supersonic missiles, and the program India is doing seems to be about getting VLS and supersonic terminal homing married. They already "upgunned" the missile boats with supersonic sea skimmers afaik. NATO simply hasn't had to worry about it because they are the only ones fielding AEGIS. Is that correct?
The early trend with the Soviets was to build faster missiles, but that trend has since turned to lower-altitude missiles (SS-N-22, -25, -27)

As for the NATO side, the SA-N-6 and -9 systems, like AEGIS, use phased array radars tied to high-performance VLS missiles. US, and probably the rest of NATO as well, has simply not cared about ASUW as a priority since the Cold War ended. It's all about strike warfare now that the Russian fleet is rusting away in port and only leaves with a salvage tug as part of the formation. Even the RATTLRS is primarily being sold as a strike weapon that's more likely to reach the target before the targets change location.

[Pillar]

Interesting stuff, thanks. I asked a similar question (in more general terms) on another forum and the advice was that main advantage of dealing with slower vs faster inbounds was shot allocation, i.e, getting to wait and see the results of your shots before deciding to shoot again or retain the missile for other use. That is reduced to expected defensive use as far as I know with frigates, because they use dedicated missile systems for each purpose. A friend actually wrote out a simulator in Mathematica and passed along the findings. I can dig up a link for that if you're interested in the analysis. I'm curious how significant (or not) the difference in kill probability for defensive missiles is against supersonic vs subsonic sea-skimmer missiles?

[Molon Labe]

That's alright, I've already done a lot of that math on paper and saw the results when helping LW tweak the AEGIS doctrines so I know what you mean. It definitely helps waste defensive missiles in a saturation warfare situation.

[Pillar]

What is LW? The effect I originally had in mind was just engagement time. For the system on board, all that matters are how many missiles are inbound and how much time it has to engage them. 20 missiles in 3 seconds is too much for the system, just to pick a figure, but 20 missiles over 3 minutes might barely strain it. The effect of fast missiles purely on the volley-tactic side is to reduce the time factor and stress the overall performance of the missiles. Fire two missiles ten seconds apart and they arrive ten seconds apart no matter their speed, but the stress on the system is not the same. The effect is the same as increasing the volley size. It's always going to be time/#inbounds and making the time smaller is the same as making the #inbounds bigger. The AEGIS system probably has some enormous capacity in terms of "max reliable kill rate per second", but somewhere it does top out, and a supersonic volley will exceed that capacity before the same number of subsonic inbounds. Is this not correct?

So overall there are at least four kinds of effects - evasiveness: how hard is it to hit the missile with defensive weapons, window: how long each missile is available to target with defensive weapons overall, surprise: how close can you get the shot to target before it can detect it? allocation: can you watch the "fall of the shots" before you decide what to do next, or do you need to just fire some # of shots at each missile and rely on a healthy safe average pk?

Basically, missile speed is going to affect all those things. I'm not sure whether surprise is something that can be had easily. Would the NAVY have search radars on any time these threats were possible?

[To be]

LW = Luftwolf, who comprises the LW of the LWAMI mod.

[Imamar]

Saar 5 vs. C-802 (http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2006/10/the_miracles_of.html)).

Religious mumbojumbo. Miracles, after miracles. That would have been a great article, without all that manipulative bs.
They were lucky, yes. Miracles, no. :damn:

[To be]

Well if you look at what it was written for, I think the religious emphasis over the historical can be explained.

[Molon Labe]

Saar 5 vs. C-802 (http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2006/10/the_miracles_of.html)).
Religious mumbojumbo. Miracles, after miracles. That would have been a great article, without all that manipulative bs.
They were lucky, yes. Miracles, no. :damn:

I took something different away from that article. The crane was the one thing on that ship that wasn't stealthy. And that's what the missile hit.

[To be]

Suggesting the 'stealth ship' design actually does work. Personally I had been somewhat discounting the possibility of making anything more than minor reductions in ship RCS.

[Molon Labe]

Suggesting the 'stealth ship' design actually does work. Personally I had been somewhat discounting the possibility of making anything more than minor reductions in ship RCS.

Yes, hence why I said that I hope the Harpoon Block III will have dual terminal sensor capability. I'm wondering why Imamar thought a backup sensor would defend against miracles occurring. One would think that if God wants to prevent a radar seeker from homing, He'd foil the infrared seeker as well. :rotfl:

[Pillar]

IR is really easy to spoof, with IR blocking smoke. Stealth ships aren't going to be overcome by IR guidance. Directed energy also works, but more expensive. The smoke is pretty basic stuff though afaik.

[Apocal]

IR is really easy to spoof, with IR blocking smoke. Stealth ships aren't going to be overcome by IR guidance. Directed energy also works, but more expensive. The smoke is pretty basic stuff though afaik.

I can't think of any current or projected first world ship deploying with IR-defeating smoke. We don't even have chaff on my ship, let alone smoke dischargers. Do you know of any? And, FWIW, I never had any trouble tracking Saar V's with either low freq (L-band) or high freq (X-band) radar. They might have been small video for their physical size, but it wasn't readily apparent.

[OneShot]

Well, there are and have been IR Smoke and Chaff dispensers onboard for some time now at least in the German Navy....

[LoBlo]

Here's a question?

How many and which navies could actually defeat a Subsonic missle swarm? Aegis equipped navies could... but anyone else?

[SandyCaesar]

Aegis, plus the Russian S-300 cruisers, the Slavas and Kirovs. Maybe the SA-N-9 equipped ships, too, Neustrashimy and Udaloy classes. From what I've heard, the Gauntlet is a scary little missile at short ranges, and combined with the Kashtan rotary-30mm/SA-N-11 system I'd rate it as a pretty good point-defense weapon.

Aside from that, I'm not sure. The PAAMS missile, Aster 15 and 30, seem to be the European counterparts, but as far as I know they're not yet in active service.

So apart from Aegis, the Russian S-300/SA-N-6 (and maybe the SA-N-9, but its short range precludes defense against big swarms), and the future PAAMS, I don't know of any real anti-swarm weapons. ESSM has the range and the ability to do it, but it requires a powerful radar system, like the Aegis, to engage swarms effectively. Other systems, like Crotale, Sea Sparrow (RIM-7, not RIM-161), or Sea Wolf, are point-defense weapons that probably can't handle SSM swarms very well.