Posted on 02/11/2016 8:30:05 PM PST by Mariner
Back in 2014, the guided missile-carrying destroyer USS John Paul Jones made history. During a live fire missile tests, one of its SM-6 air defense missiles completed the longest surface-to-air engagement in naval history. The Navy wouldn't say the exact range of the missile for security's sake, but the ability to take out incoming missiles or aircraft at long range is obviously valuable.
Now, that ability is expanding. The Navy says it will modify the Raytheon-built Standard Missile-6 to act as a supersonic anti-ship missile. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has confirmed the service was developing the anti-ship SM-6 in an effort to give Navy cruisers and destroyers a weapon capable of reaching such targets more than 200 nautical miles away.
"We are going to create a brand-new capability," Carter said during a February 10 press conference in San Diego. "We're modifying the SM-6 so that in addition to missile defense, it can also target enemy ships at sea at very long ranges."
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
This would be far worse because it would be far more efficient.
Also, a hydrogen bomb is really just a more efficient fission bomb with the neutrons from the hydrogen isotopes further splitting the uranium.
Hello, barbarians! Please, come right through the gate. Make yourselves at home. Stay as long as you like. Yes, dig right in. Oh, don’t mind the natives. They won’t resist for long. Flail away, ha, ha! Say, allow me to show you this great anti-ship missile we’re developing to punish anyone who crosses us one day. Woah, hey! Watch what you do with that axe! You nearly split my head open!
The warhead on the Exocet that sunk the Sheffield didn’t detonate.
In the end, fusion is much more efficient in terms of energy output than fission and therefore has a greater potential of destructive capability.
Donald Trump has a supersonic ship.
Ahhhh. But can it hit the target? We used to be worried about a lot of their missiles till the wall came down and we got our hands on some.
Very inaccurate. And their engineering has not got any better.
Their solution is numbers. Throw a whole lot of them and one of them might hit.
This is a major deal, we’ve only had subsonic harpoons for 40 something years.
The Chinese actually have a supersonic anti-ship cruise equipping some of their destroyers (the Luyang III Class), with these missiles to be carried on their submarines soon. The missile is the YJ-18, which is a copy of the Russian supersonic Klub. If they managed to copy the Klub properly, then they have a very capable missile that carries a big warhead at supersonic speeds.
Outside China, a few countries have bought Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles (e.g. Algeria and Viet Nam), but the big users are Russia and India. Russia has had supersonic anti-ship missiles for decades due to their naval doctrine that called for big ships and submarines that would mass-launch large ASMs at USN carrier groups, and once those ships (e.g. the Soveremny) and submarines had launched the missiles, they had 'permission to die.' It is very interesting now to read strategic projections of what a Cold War naval battle between the US and USSR would have been like, and seeing that surface combatants on both sides were not expected to survive first contact. The Russians had missiles like the Sunburn and Shipwreck (with missiles like the Shipwreck having ranges of almost 700 miles, and coming in ripples with some hitting at the waterline and some top-attack) for decades.
Recently the Russians have the Strobile, out of which they produced the Indian BrahMos. The Russian version of the Strobile (the Oniks) has a range of 600 miles and a warhead over 500 pounds, and is able to do coordinated waterline/top-down attacks from different angles.
Personally I am very happy that the USN is getting a supersonic ASM, even though it has a small warhead. Why? Because several Standards launched against an enemy ship will do a softkill by taking out radars and communication, and without that the ship becomes absolutely defenceless. Once it cannot defend itself, then a single anti-ship version Tomahawk, or a Harpoon, would have a very high chance of taking out that ship (as opposed to the chances a subsonic missile like a Harpoon or Tomahawk would have against a modern ship operated by the enemy - which would be quite low). The standards are a major game changer for USN surface ships.
USN submarines don't really need a supersonic ASM though, as the Virginias are quite enough to get close enough to deploy their heavy torpedoes (unlike MOST enemy subs that require the safety provided by sub-launched supersonic ASMs). A USN submarine is quiet enough to get in within range of its torpedoes, launch them, and manage to egress safely/quickly/deep. Enemy diesel-submarines are quiet enough to get close enough to launch torpedoes, but would not be able to safely egress. Supersonic long-distance ASMs help them out.
Anyway, great news that the USN has a supersonic ASM. DARPA was working on two ASM designs by the way - one very stealthy, and the other hypersonic. So far the stealthy version seems to be getting all the funds, but I would not be surprised if in the near-future the USN fields a supersonic, or even hypersonic, ASM. Survivability against very-high-speed missiles, coming in from different vectors, is quite low. Almost zero with gun-type defense systems like the Phalanx and AK-630 CIWS, and while missile-based systems like the Rolling Airframe Missile and OSA systems provide better protection than gun-type systems like the Phalanx, they are still not yet guaranteed against a mass attack. Laser systems in the future will be better.
Ping
China has many more long range ASGMs than the US which also have programmable attack altitude profiles. The US most certainly is playing catch-up.
Are you forgetting this one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit
And these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-ship_missiles#People.27s_Republic_of_China
quick-response repair crews - which are unfortunately becoming more and more reliant on women who lack the strength to so the job, not to mention the Navy’s penchant of building self-sinking ships and planes that can’t fly, and still other ships are made with aluminum which burns easily.
I contact people. To take out the toyota, what is the proportional response? If it’s cheaper and safer (remember talk about the A-10 taking out the miles long caravan? would the A-10 have been hit in the process?) then hopefully the generals will order more training and supplies.
You mean the shrapnel falling into the water? Not a dammed thing.
And if, if the intercept was so close that shrapnel impacted the ship, it’s energy is already dissipated or never reached a maxima sine the warhead would detonate low order.
It might leave scorch marks on the hull. That’s about it. Scrub and repaint. Next!
You make a very bad assumption about the physics of impacts. If the CIWS impacts the munition, it will, at an absolute minima, interrupt its flight path. Probably causing the munition to tumble.
Typically, the hit is so catastrophic that the fuze assembly is disable or damaged... no boom: But the possibility of a kinetic hit still. But then you have the whole interrupted flight path again.
And at supersonic speeds, tumbling leads to rapid, less than 250 milliseconds, disintegration.
There are some pretty good YouTube videos that show what happens to a supersonic body that gets clipped. It’s over quickly.
Does this mean that the ship survives unscathed? No. Does it mean it’s out of the fight? No.
That would be true if the incoming missile flew true after being hit, but I suspect that the flight profile might go a bit askew after it is no longer even close to being symmetrical.
Unless Obama pulls another Clinton Tech givaway... Or another clinton.
Neither the Russian or Chinese missiles match the SM-6 for range and speed.
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