[quote=Molon Labe]
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Originally Posted by MBot
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Of course it can be argued that the primary offensive element of the USN are the carrier and its aircraft. But ironicaly, the primary anti-ship weapon of the aircraft would also be the Harpoon. While the Falklands war has shown that modern warships can be successfully attacked with bombs, I think that such a attack against a soviet warship would have been a lot harder.
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Penetrating a Russian area-defense SAM envelope would have been risky, and not favored as long as enough Harpoons were on hand. But, the reason why bombs were as effective as they were in the Falklands was because the British area-defense SAMs couldn't get low enough; many Russian systems of the Cold War also have this limitation. Also, the Navy deployed glide-bombs like the Skipper that could be lofted from out of range of medium-range SAMs, so the bomb can still be a standoff weapon.
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I think our primary ASuW asset was, and is, the carrier based strike aircraft, which were/are supported by electronic jamming to reduce the effectiveness of Russian radars, increasing the pK of the Harpoons.
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Yes, I agree that strike a/c were the primary ASUW capability. In case of an alpha strike against an enemy SAM-equipped taskforce, the Harpoons would have been preceeded by HARMs and 'decoy' drones. The intent was that the enemy's surface-to-air capability would be close to nil by the time the 'poons and bombers arrived.