PAAMS Chasing Aegis

The Aegis combat system has been the undisputed champion of naval air defense since the USS Ticonderoga entered the U.S. fleet in 1983. The United States currently has 22 cruisers and 49 destroyers in service with this system, with another 13 destroyers on the way. Recently, though, a new system is on the way, the Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS).

PAAMS is slated to enter service with three navies – the Daring-class destroyers in The United Kingdom, the Forbin-class destroyers in France, and the Andrea Doria-class destroyers in Italy. This system operates the ASTER family of surface-to-air missiles. There are two versions of the ASTER, the ASTER-15 and the ASTER-30. The ASTER 15 is a point-defense system, with a range of 30 kilometers. It has been installed on the Formidable-class frigates in the Singaporean Navy and the al-Riyadh class frigates in the Saudi Navy. The other missile in the family is the ASTER 30, with a range of to 70 kilometers. This will be on the destroyers. The ASTER missiles are guided by a variant of the active-radar seeker used on the Mica air-to-air missile

The missile used with the Aegis system is the Standard missile. This missile comes in two varieties. The first is the SM-1, which has a range of 37 kilometers. This was primarily used on older vessels and it is largely being replaced by the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM), which has a range of 33 kilometers. The ESSM’s advantage over the SM-1 is that four ESSMs can fit into one VLS cell – as opposed to one SM-1. The other missile is the SM-2, which has a range of up to 111 kilometers. The SM-2 is on every one of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The Standard and ESSM missiles are semi-active – they home in on reflected radar emissions. Aegis has been exported to Japan (for use on the Kongo and Atago-class destroyers) Spain (for use on the Bazan-class frigates), and Norway (for the Nansen-class frigates).

Which system is better? While PAAMS is newer, the Aegis system has had a track record of over 20 years of superb performance (the 1988 shoot down of an Iranian airliner was the result of human error). The missiles also have a slightly longer range. The gap is close, though. That said, the gap exists, with a slight edge to the more numerous Aegis vessels (84 vessels compared to 12 for PAAMS). – Harold C. Hutchison (hchutch@ix.netcom.com)

I'll stick with the US navy any day.

That's probably a smart policy.

Looks like the Australian Navy has decided to go with the Aegis system:

The SEA 4000's AEGIS combat system will provide significantly increased protection from air attack for troops being transported and deployed, long-range air warfare defence for Royal Australian Navy task groups, and a coordinated air picture for fighter and surveillance aircraft. In-service with the U.S., Japanese and Spanish navies and soon to be introduced into the South Korean and Norwegian fleets as well, the AEGIS system is capable of detecting and defeating multiple hostile aircraft and missiles at ranges in excess of 150 km.

More here.

Interesting, but unsatisfying. What is the purpose of PAAMS? Why do these countries use it instead of Aegis? Just political reasons, or technical? Are there fundamental differences?

One of the (if not the) main reason might be that if they purchase AEGIS all they do is provide jobs to American industry, but if they invest in the PAAMS the beneficiaries are British, Italian and French industry (and economies). That HAS to be a prime consideration. Add to this that they are technological capable of actually building a system that is analogous to the AEGIS and it starts to make sense why they would do so. Thus I think that a prime consideration for this was economics. There is also a chance that they wanted an indigenous system .....something that is 'theirs.' Much in the same way the British use the Challenger Mk2 instead of the Abrams (or for that matter Germany uses the Leopard, or the Israelis with the MErkava MBT). If they wanted to buy the Abrams they would be allowed to (after all we have been selling the stuff to countries like Egypt), however countries that are able to will develop their own systems where they can (especially when you add other considerations, like jobs and core industry development). Even nations that have a good number of American-made acquisitions (eg Israel, the UK) will still have a huge chunk of indigenous systems.

Anyways, the following is a more comprehensive description of the PAAMSystem. Notice the parts that I have added underlined lettering to (which show the European industries that will benefit ....industries that would get ZERO benefit if the UK, Italy and France just paid Uncle Sam several billion for AEGIS suites):

The primary weapon system of the Type 45 will be the Principal Anti-Aircraft Missile System (PAAMS). PAAMS is a tri-national programme involving France, Italy and the UK. The contract for series production was placed in November 2003. The prime contractor is Europaams SAS, a joint venture company owned two thirds by Eurosam (MBDA and Thales) and one third by the UKAMS subsidiary of MBDA.

The missiles being developed for PAAMS are the Aster 15 and the Aster 30. It is expected, although not confirmed, that the UK Royal Navy will select only the longer range Aster 30. The Aster missile carries an inertial computer with datalink, an active J-band Doppler radar seeker and 15kg warhead. The speed of Aster 30 is Mach 4, and range is over 80km. The missile has manoeuvrability of up to 62g, achieved through the use of the EADS Aerospatiale PIF/PAF guidance system.

While the French / Italian PAAMS uses the Empar G-band radar, the UK PAAMS has the BAE Systems Insyte Sampson multi-function, dual-face active array radar operating at E/F bands. Each face of the array carries 2,500 gallium arsenide transmit and receive modules, with an output of 25kW. BAE Systems has reconfigured Sampson to produce a near spherical design which retains the two arrays internally. Modes of operation include long and medium range search, surface search, high-speed horizon search and high angle search and track. Sampson uses digital adaptive beamforming which makes it highly resistant to electronic countermeasures. The first Sampson radar has been installed on a representative Type 45 foremast in preparation for PAAMS integration in 2006.

PAAMS uses a DCN Sylver A50 vertical launcher with eight cells. The Type 45 will have six Sylver VLS. The command and control system will be supplied by UKAMS, although Thales Airsys will build some of the core elements.

BAE Systems, teamed with Radamec Defence Systems (now part of Ultra Electronics) will provide the Electro-Optical Gunfire Control System (EOGCS).

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