[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Torpedo Fodder

First of all, as an O.H. Perry-class frigate, the Stark did not have an Aegis system; just a basic SPS-49 air search radar and four missile directors. As a relativly-low powered L-band radar, it's not terribly effective at detecting missles, unlike the S-band SPY-1 used by the Aegis system.

On the negative side, the weight of the SPY-1s force them to hunker low. There's a reason why they wanted a SPS-49 to supplement the SPY-1 on the CG-47s.

Second, although the Sunburn is still a good missile, it's reputation as a nigh-unstoppable superweapon is grossly overstated. Unlike subsonic sea-skimmers (like the aforementioned Klub), while fly at under 10 meters, the Sunburn flies at over 50m, meaning it will be detected much further out (especially by a radar as massively powerful as the SPY-1).

Actually, the Sunburn AFAIK flies at 20m cruise, 3-7m terminal. Even the ancient Sandbox can hack 30m.

Second, what you really want is PROCESSING. Just throwing radar energy at the water just means you have to sort through more sea clutter. Because the Sunburn also has a passive tracking mode, your choice of active defence also means that you can stop hoping on your soft-kill measures - hmm, nice radar source+ECM (Nulka decoy) vs nice radar source + ECM + massive SPY-1 radar emission ... tough decision. Further, to kill something with Aegis, the SPG-62 must manage to illuminate the target clearly in the endphase.

And although it can pull limited evasive maneuvers, it is still a big missile and it's high speed gives it a huge IR signature.

If your radars are your primary means of acquisition, that won't matter. When the Soviets built it, they were probably counting on the American reliance on radar.

And although Phalanx would not be terribly effective (since even if it killed the missile at maximim range, buring wreckage would still hit the ship), that is hardly the first line of defence, and point-defence SAMs like RAM and ESSM most certainly would be able to out-maneuver a Sunburn.

ESSM relies on the radar. As for RAM, you still want the radar to point the RAM launcher in the right direction and it is based on Sidewinder. Its speed and kinematics are thus relatively poor. A missile can maneuver a lot harder than a aircraft. Fortunately, the Sunburn is a relatively simple weapon, and still uses preplanned jinks (the Yakhont graduates to using RWR to control the dodging).