seaspear wrote:Thanks for the reply but I was trying to understand if a radar system that could detect a ballistic missile but had no missiles of its own could pass such data to an escorting ship that did via a sensor network
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... her-172512
It depends on the navy and on what ships. For the US, they’re developing Co-operative Engagement Capability (and through that network Naval Integrated Fire Control - Counter Air). This is the ability to network all of the sensors and shooters together like you speak of, so a radar on a carrier could detect a missile and transmit the data to a ship with available interceptors to shoot it down.
Unfortunately, the UK failed to invest in such a capability and so now has essentially no comparative system to CEC. Royal Navy ships are equipped with data links like Link 11/16/22 although these are only good for voice/text communications and basic tracking/location data (not a high enough data rate for real-time raw target data to be transferred).
There was an investigation into purchasing the US’ CEC system in the early 2000s and installing it on the Type 23s/Type 45s. In fact, it was the justification given for reducing the number of Type 45s from 8 to 6. They even went as far as installing a test system on HMS Duncan (the 4 flat panels just below the Sampson radome on her foremast), however that is now non-functional and the CEC upgrade was cancelled.
I believe CEC is still an aspiration for the Royal Navy in the future (and an absolute must-have if you ask me). In fact, if you look at the cutouts on the first Type 26’s mast, some do look similar in size and proportion to the CEC antennas used by the US and seen on HMS Duncan.