JASSM cruise missile in crisis

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- When it comes to weapons procurement, the United States is its own worst enemy.

Witness the flawed hull design that sabotaged the Coast Guard’s Deepwater fleet modernization effort, the glitch-plagued and crash-marred 26-year development of the MV-22 Osprey headed for deployment in Iraq, and the inexcusable cost escalation in the Littoral Combat Ship program -- triggering cancellation of Lockheed Martin’s follow-on prototype.

Then there’s the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile -- JASSM. In development for 11 years, it has experienced ongoing problems with components in its engine, warhead, power, electrical and other systems. During tests in Utah this spring, three missiles reportedly missed their targets and the fourth suffered detonation failure.

Instead of canceling this flawed $5.8 billion program, the Pentagon has again deferred final decisions until next spring. What about the roughly 600 JASSMs already fielded? A leading industry journal reported that “at least 512 of (them) could have flaws related to the GPS guidance system.”

Meanwhile, despite a 42-percent failure rate in testing since December and major JASSM cost overruns already reported to Congress, Lockheed Martin continues to crank them out -- even though, according to another aviation publication, “the Air Force has suspended acceptance of more missiles until analysis of the problems is complete.” Weapons procurement has its own unique logic.

Appropriately, at the 2007 Paris air show, Sue Payton, head of U.S. Air Force procurement, attended briefings on Europe’s Taurus and Storm Shadow cruise missiles as possible JASSM replacements. SLAM-ER, an upgraded Harpoon, has also been mentioned.

And what about the Tomahawk? Following the Gulf War, the Defense Department’s initial report of a “98-percent success rate for Tomahawk and attack missile launches” with an earlier guidance package than the current GPS version was directly contradicted by the General Accounting Office’s 1997 analysis citing results closer to 50 percent at best.

Several highly accurate contemporary cruise missiles employ inertial or linked inertial/GPS guidance technologies superseding earlier terrain contour matching systems. Using terminal acquisition optical systems or radar employing target-matching algorithms, these advances vastly simplify land-sea usage options.

Yet all U.S. and EU conventional cruise missiles -- many capable of being air-, ground-, ship-, or sub-launched against land targets or ships -- share this significant deficiency: Powered by small jet engines, they fly at a slow Mach 0.8. On one test flight, JASSM took 22 minutes to cover 210 miles. Stealth-enhancing composite airframes help delay radar detection, but during such 22-minute flights over enemy territory, how would JASSM and any similarly subsonic cruise missiles fare against layered, networked, multi-sensor air defense systems employing Russian-made S-300PMU -- SA-10D -- surface-to-air missiles -- or their SA-N-6 ship-based counterparts -- intercepting at a blistering 4,500 miles per hour? Russia claims they are effective against attacking aircraft, cruise missiles and theater ballistic missiles at ranges of more than 100 miles and altitudes from 30,000 to 80,000 feet.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- Against Tomahawk-type cruise missiles, Russia's supersonic S-300PMU’s kill ratio is listed as 0.8-0.98. The ad brochure claim may be excessively high, but a U.S. Government Accountability Office report highlighted a six-Tomahawk “stream raid” against the Rasheed airfield in which only two arrived over target after surviving far less sophisticated Iraqi defensive systems.

How ironic that more than 40 years ago the United States fielded the AGM-28B Hound Dog, an air-launched Mach 2 standoff cruise missile with 710-mile range, inertial/stellar navigation, mixed hi-lo dog-leg attack profile, and a one-megaton thermonuclear warhead.

Today? France’s inertially guided ramjet-powered Mach 2-3 ASMP standoff cruise missile entered service in 1986 with a 300-kiloton nuclear warhead. Range: about 200 miles, similar to Lockheed Martin's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM.

But for pinpoint strikes in non-nuclear conflicts, current U.S. and EU conventional cruise missiles -- all subsonic -- would probably not survive advanced land- or ship-based defensive systems mentioned above.

What about other countries’ comparable cruise missile capabilities? You judge:

China’s ramjet-powered C-301 anti-ship cruise missile: Mach 2; 80-110-mile range -- depending on variant -- 1,130-pound warhead; inertial navigation with active radar terminal guidance; operational since about 1995.

China’s Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyers carry sea-skimming Mach 2.5 carrier-busting SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship ramjet cruise missiles. Range: 100 miles with 660-pound conventional or 200-kiloton nuclear warheads.

Mach 2.5-2.8 BrahMos ramjet anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles -- a Russia-India joint venture -- now deployed with the Indian navy are about to enter service with India's army. They can be air-, ship-, sub-, or land-launched; 660-pound warhead; range: 80-200 miles, depending on altitude; preset inertial navigation with alternating inertial/active radar terminal guidance. Export discussions have reportedly occurred with Malaysia, Chile, South Africa, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Russia? SS-N-12 Sandbox, conventional or nuclear, 300-plus mile range, Mach 2.5; SS-N-19 Shipwreck, conventional or nuclear, 300-plus mile range, Mach 2.5, deployed for decades on Russian carriers, cruisers and Oscar-class nuclear submarines.

Operational since 1984 and offered for sale to countries in addition to China, Russia's SS-N-22 Sunburn equips Sovremenny destroyers and various patrol boats. Guidance: initially inertial, with mid-course updates via aircraft or satellite; during terminal phase it employs a multi-channel seeker and 15G evasive ‘S’ maneuvers. Combat Fleets of the World describes it as a “very sophisticated weapon against which other navies have yet to develop an effective countermeasure,” including the United States.

Indeed, in its entire cruise-missile inventory, the United States possesses no equivalents. Forget about replacing JASSMs with other subsonic missiles. Unless we develop and deploy our own stealthy, jam-proof, inertial/GPS-guided, terrain- and wave-hugging supersonic cruise missiles, technologically more advanced adversaries will control the battle space.

(Theodore Gaillard writes frequently on defense issues. His articles and book reviews have appeared in Jane's Defense Weekly, Defense News, the Washington Times and other newspapers and journals around the country. He is a consultant to the Center for Defense Information's Straus Military Reform Project.)

Sobering if true but...I have a little trouble with giving credibility to any GAO Assessment of the Gulf War during the Clintoon administration.

I have equal trouble giving the Russians and Chinese credibility in regard to assessments on the effectiveness of their own weapons.

This guy blows himself out of the water with this:

“Yet all U.S. and EU conventional cruise missiles — many capable of being air-, ground-, ship-, or sub-launched against land targets or ships — share this significant deficiency: Powered by small jet engines, they fly at a slow Mach 0.8. On one test flight, JASSM took 22 minutes to cover 210 miles. Stealth-enhancing composite airframes help delay radar detection, but during such 22-minute flights over enemy territory, how would JASSM and any similarly subsonic cruise missiles fare against layered, networked, multi-sensor air defense systems employing Russian-made S-300PMU — SA-10D — surface-to-air missiles — or their SA-N-6 ship-based counterparts — intercepting at a blistering 4,500 miles per hour? Russia claims they are effective against attacking aircraft, cruise missiles and theater ballistic missiles at ranges of more than 100 miles and altitudes from 30,000 to 80,000 feet.”

Um... he doesn’t think the sonic boom from a missile breaking the sound barrier would give away its position?

Subsonic stealth cruise missiles are the next best thing to invisible.

What is missing in this talk are the ready ability of the cruise missile being launched from a sub, ship, plane after only a few minutes required to program it for a target. At China Lake, they have pictures of a bldg witn a bullseye painted on it with a missile about 50 feet away heading for dead center after being launched at sea 500 miles and followed a low flight plan over and through the mountains. In fact they can follow a flight plan like it is a road with many turns and changes in altitude. That was 20 years ago and it has been upgraded since.

Um... he doesn’t think the sonic boom from a missile breaking the sound barrier would give away its position?

Um....sonic booms are inaudible till after something passes you. They give zero warning of anything incoming.

Faster missles do have more of an IR signature, and there are some radar/IR visbility tradeoffs vs. speed, but a Mach 3 missile is a serious, serious problem, and one extremely difficult to defend against, probably, right now, for the US, more difficult than a stealthy subsonic missile.

I remember watching Patriot missiles shooting down Scuds on TV during the Gulf War and a couple years later the GAO said they didn’t actually hit anything. I didn’t believe that report either.

This turned out to be largely correct. You saw Patriots being fired and their warheads detonating somewhere near an incoming Scud, but most of the time the incoming Scud had broken up before interception, and the Patriot was intercepting the body of the missile, and the warheads fell to earth and exploded.

I was sort of suspicious during the war of shots of where "Scud debris" landed, and it was a big freaking crater.

Having a Patriot explode somewhere near an incoming Scud and having the Scud warhead hit the earth and explode isn't much of a successful intercept.

The Patriot PAC-3 (which is misnamed, it's essentially a completely new missile, designed to intercept incoming IRBs instead of aircraft) was introduced prior to Gulf War II, and it actually worked.

I don’t believe the Patriot (at that time) was designed to disable the warhead. And the Scud broke up into pieces as it was incoming. The Patriot worked as designed. If the Scud had been an accurate weapon it would have missed its intended target. My point was that expecting the Patriot to do something after the fact it wasn’t designed for is unreasonable. And you’re right, the lesson learned during the Gulf War was that it is important to destory the warhead.

To amplify on the other replies you already have seen, the Patriot 1 was an anti AIRCRAFT missile retasked as a Scud killer. To destroy aircraft it merely had to explode in proximity and allow the flak to strike and disable the fragile aircraft.

Applied to Scuds this meant in most cases the flak striking the expended booster, a useless exercise as the warhead would continue to earth.

In a news report of an attack on an Israeli civilian neighborhood I noticed the “intercepted” Scud booster largely intact, laying on its side perforated as though somebody took a shotgun to it. I felt that was odd enough to note and remember but I didn’t think it through to realize the failure of the system.

The Patriot 3s used in the last war don’t use flak, but instead the warhead targets the incoming missile for a direct hit, the “bullet hitting a bullet” that SDI critics swore for a generation could never be accomplished.

From memory they intercepted and totally destroyed in flight 27 of 28 incoming Iraqi missiles. The only one that got through to civilian areas hit a beach near a Kuwaiti shopping mall spraying its entrance with fragments. Other Scuds tracking towards uninhabited areas were not fired upon.

‘Other Scuds tracking towards uninhabited areas were not fired upon’

I take it that you are using ‘SCUD’ in the generic term?Not a single SCUD was launched by the Iraqi’s in 2003. The longest range ballistic fired by the Iraqis were Al Samoud 2s. These are tiny in comparison to the SCUDs that Iraq fired back in 1991. It was a SEERSUCKER anti-ship missile that exploded near the Kuwaiti shopping mall.

"Unless we develop and deploy our own stealthy, jam-proof, inertial/GPS-guided, terrain- and wave-hugging supersonic cruise missiles, technologically more advanced adversaries will control the battle space."

Yes, those Russian anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems sure did a number against U.S. aircraft over Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and against Israeli aircraft over Syria on September 6...

...Rolls eyes...

In contrast, U.S., Israeli, and Japanese missile defenses are intercepting ICBM's (e.g. North Korea's latest long range attempt) and SCUDs on a somewhat predictable basis...so the much slower mach 2.5 Waraw-Pact era cruise missiles would hardly seem to challenge AEGIS, Arrow, and PAC-3 defenses.

The Russian and Chinese/North Korean anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems are going to have to show better performance if the adults on our side are going to take them seriously.

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