RN anti-ship missiles

Contains threads on Royal Navy equipment of the past, present and future.
Ron5
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by Ron5 »

Just blind your opponent. Shoot off a type 26 radars & eo, she's all yours.

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shark bait
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Yep, saturation attack with some small cheaper missiles (SPEAR) to take out the radar, then its dead in the water.
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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

The internal bay launcher system contract was just awarded:
shark bait wrote:saturation attack with some small cheaper missiles (SPEAR)
- and saturation will be the name of the game as the defending systems are getting so good (on "all" sides of the imaginary fence)
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
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WhitestElephant
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Would laser weapons not be the answer for cheap swarm attacks?
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Repulse
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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WhitestElephant wrote:Would laser weapons not be the answer for cheap swarm attacks?
Possibly, but is still a way off. 2 x 57mms could throw 8 shells a second.
”We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." - Lord Palmerston

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shark bait
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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A laser CIWS is very good countermeasure against saturation attacks because it should be fast and cheap with infinite 'ammunition'.

As well as that, nothing puts up a wall of steel quite like the Oto Melara 76mm Strales, plus its guided. Both would be effective against cheap drones trying to overwhelm a system.
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Repulse
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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My question is could a quick fire medium gun overwhelm most modern defence systems with a sustained volley of smart shells?
”We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." - Lord Palmerston

RetroSicotte
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Repulse wrote:My question is could a quick fire medium gun overwhelm most modern defence systems with a sustained volley of smart shells?
If you're close enough to a ship capable enough to even need to be overwhelmed to fire a 57mm gun at it, something has gone terribly wrong with your naval strategy.

Jake1992
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by Jake1992 »

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/raytheo ... ign=social

Could this be the answer for the anti-ship capability or would it not have a large enough war head ?

If so we could end up with a comman missile for anti-ship anti-sub and land attack

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Old RN
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by Old RN »

The Tomahawk has a very large warhead (1000lbs IIRC) but the issue would be the cost of a torpedo tube launched version and its (apparently) vulnerability to detection and interception?

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Always wondered about the Tomahawk against a first rate power/high tech power (eg Israel), in effect its a modern day V1 and understand 80% plus were destroyed with kit now 70+ years old.

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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ArmChairCivvy wrote: Well, Wildcat is there for ASuW, another thing "Joe" would not know.
if Merlin has ASu missiles you could make savings

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

US Navy performs another Harpoon Block II+ missile test
https://navaltoday.com/2018/01/26/us-na ... sile-test/

The Harpoon Block II+ provides a rapid-capability enhancement for the navy that includes a new GPS guidance kit, reliability and survivability of the weapon, a new data link interface that enables in-flight updates, improved target selectivity, an abort option and enhanced resistance to electronic countermeasures. It can be launched from multiple air and surface platforms.

Looks like a perfect solution for RN and all other UK armed forces, to save the day (or years) for, say, 10 years or even more.

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by Lord Jim »

So just to get things right, the USN plans to operate both the Harpoon and LRASM in the future. Seems to make sense.

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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donald_of_tokyo wrote:US Navy performs another Harpoon Block II+ missile test
https://navaltoday.com/2018/01/26/us-na ... sile-test/

The Harpoon Block II+ provides a rapid-capability enhancement for the navy that includes a new GPS guidance kit, reliability and survivability of the weapon, a new data link interface that enables in-flight updates, improved target selectivity, an abort option and enhanced resistance to electronic countermeasures. It can be launched from multiple air and surface platforms.

Looks like a perfect solution for RN and all other UK armed forces, to save the day (or years) for, say, 10 years or even more.
USAF Red Flag premier exercise under way, Jan 26 to Feb 16, large swathes of US south west will have GPS blacked out by jamming at various hours day and night during operations so as to be able test aircraft, missiles and bombs when in GPS denial.

Would infer from this that even with the new generation more capable satellites US considers GPS denial a high probability, either through jamming, spoofing or satellite attack. If so Harpoon Block II+ with new GPS guidance kit will be totally ineffective unless up to date long range targeting available, which is very difficult.

https://phys.org/news/2018-01-china-spa ... asers.html

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

GPS jamming is unrelated to adopt what missile, I think. All GPS-oriented missile (NSM, JSM, LRASM, TLAM, ...) will face the same problem and I think Harpoon BII+ has also INS = can do something without GPS ? What is making Harpoon obsolete is, target identification and up-link for re-targetting, I though.

I may be missing your point?

indeid
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by indeid »

I think the suggestion is that GPS is useless and can’t be trusted?

NAVWAR is certainly a growing risk, and a new buzzword. No doubt brought into focus in Syria and Ukraine, but it does not automatically make it unusable. As soon as you move away from the civvy single frequency to the military dual frequency you add resilience, and the US are still to implement M Code which will see another improvement.

Beyond going encrypted individual systems can add directional antennas, nulling antennas and processing to maintain lock amoungst jamming.

I would argue that you can still have GPS as a primary source of location and timing (time is just as important!) but you need to understand how suspectable you are to what EW effect and ensure an alternate option is there. The risk is that after years of counter insurgency and UORs you may be completely reliant on a service which can be reduced. I think we are waking up to the fact we cannot rely on any part of the EM Spectrum being there when we need it.

Red Flag is the epitome of ‘train as you fight’. If an enemy is doing it, it will be on Flag. This isn’t a first for them......

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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donald_of_tokyo wrote:GPS jamming is unrelated to adopt what missile, I think. All GPS-oriented missile (NSM, JSM, LRASM, TLAM, ...) will face the same problem and I think Harpoon BII+ has also INS = can do something without GPS ? What is making Harpoon obsolete is, target identification and up-link for re-targetting, I though.

I may be missing your point?
A few thoughts

I expect nearly every man and his dog who needs to know will be able to jam the Harpoon Block II with its active homing radar head as it has been sold around the world including Egypt.

The new generation NSM and LRASM use passive homing heads, LRASM is very sophisticated.

Long range AShM all suffer from same problem, how do find your target at 100 nm, they are few and costly so can't fire and hope for the best on suspect intel as ship could have steamed out of homing head search range.

In a hot war with China or Russia no military is going to risk its P-8A or UAV BAMS/Triton within 300+ nm of their equivalent SM-2 ER/SM-6 and Meteor missiles to carry out the necessary reconnaissance and then radio target location to ships. All the GPS, Comms, Spy etc satellites will likely be space debris by then.

The best prospects for using the LRASM is the USAF with its B1B's with its built in EW capabilities, the short range F-18 and later F-35C thought more problematical, the F-35 SAR mode with the Northrop Grumman APG-81 radar is rumoured to be drifting out beyond Block 4.

An AShM load out on a ship has it uses but against a top tier adversary limited.

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shark bait
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Don't have to get that close, all surface platforms have big powerful location transmitters on the roof, it shouldn't be too challenging for a modern electronically capable military to localise that. Paired with satellite data, the military can know the area an enemy fleet is operating in.

This is probably why LRASM has long loiter times and an autonomous search function within a geofenced area.
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Think that's just wishful thinking in a real war scenario

"Paired with satellite data" Chinese building up their capability to turn all those powerful multi-million$ satellites into space junk. It may be against international treaties, but when did that ever stop them, re. the artificial islands they built in the South China Seas, declared illegal by the UN international court and Chinese have just ignored the ruling and kept on building up their military capabilities.

"big powerful location transmitters on the roof" EMCON, emissions control/radio silence widely used in WWII and during cold war major exercises.

The West, UK particularly has not invested enough in LPIR, IR and ESM so as to operate effectively in EMCON.

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shark bait
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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Do we really think a major surface group will operate in a hostile environment with the air defense radars turned off?

With only a minute to respond to a sub sonic sea skimmer it's far too greater risk to take.
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by NickC »

If you wanted to mount a covert attack on enemy of course you would, war is all about risk and reward, many, many examples from history.

Think you under estimate the capabilities of passive IR and ESM sensors plus the low power LPIR to give adequate warning of AShM attack before activating main radar. An ESM can pinpoint an emitting radar approx. ten times the range the emitting radar able to discriminate a target. If you have the air defence radars on you are just giving your position to enemy so enabling targeting with modern AShMs with ESM homing heads and enemy equivalent of the USN anti-radiation missile AGM-88E (recent new contract awarded to update and redesign to fit F-35C weapons bay) and RAF ALARM now sadly retired.

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shark bait
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

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I don't know of any passive sensor capable of tracking a missile using a passive seeker, that has fidelity required to launch an interceptor missile.

The airborne threat is huge, and fleets are becoming increasingly dependent on cooperative data networks, so I struggle to see a formation being effective without continuous use of the electromagnetic spectrum, which does leave it continually exposed.

Good thing the RN and RAF are getting a fleet on mini signals intelligence aircraft (F35)
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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Future of ASM is a bit complicated issue.
1: Even if you think GPS will be jammed from Russia and China, ALL THE OTHER NATIONS CANNOT do it. And GPS guidance will be still cheap, accurate, and effective measure. As Harpoon Block II+ is a stop gap measure, there is no need to think seriously of these pear2pear war.

2: EMCON will become "outdated" quite soon, because warships location will be found quite easily. Now hundreds (really hundreds) of cube-sats with 2-3 m resolution is flying. Super computer with AI-software will easily identify the task-force-fleet in the image within a minute = right after the data was downloaded. It is getting very fast. Very fast. Also, not only satellites, but hundreds of drones will be flying.

3: I think this is why long-range is becoming a trend. Knowing the enemies' location is getting easier, and will become much more easy within 10-20 years. This trend is mitigated by the fact the "long range, clever missile" is very expensive (=worth hard kill), and defense-side is also benefit from sensor improvements that hard-kill or active-soft-kill (not only decoy, but also sensor kill with jamming and/or laser shooting) is becoming also easier.

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Re: RN anti-ship missiles

Post by NickC »

"ALL THE OTHER NATIONS CANNOT do it"
North Korea can and does.

China has the tech, knowhow, facilities, AI, money and political will if it so wishes to make hundreds of cube sats into tiny pieces of debris.

Please provide thoughts/sources for statement that "warships location will be found quite easily" as at moment it is not easy.

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