Anti-Ship Missiles Thread

Stealth is less effective at closer ranges and different angles, manuvering and speed changes definitely make the task more difficult. If a missile is headed at you at mach 3, and it if it a large one like the Granit or Vulcan, if your explode the warhead 300 m before impact it is still gonna be pretty unpleasant as hundreds of pounds of supersonic debris hit your ship like gods personal shotgun. If LRASM is launched from several directions it is deadly. Heck even old silkworm missiles launched in volume from multiple directions are very dangerous

That's right but the subsonic missile could be designed to be more stealthy than supersonic missile which means it also has an advantage to sneak giving low detection time for the enemy to detect and react ,so by some how subsonic stealthy missile is also dangerous .

The attacks on the Saudi Arabian oilfields show if you don't see it coming it does not matter how fast or how low you can't stop it... but when the Soviets were formulating their attack strategies against the USN they quickly worked out that with aircraft carriers and AWACS aircraft and of course the many powerful radars and sensors on AEGIS cruisers that there is no chance of sneaking up on a carrier group... and land based OTH backscatter radars and satellites it is getting even worse.

The solutions they came up with are numbers and speed... but they also go for stealth as well... there is still a subsonic antiship Club based on the supersonic model but with slightly better range and twice the HE payload.

The point is that modern ships are bristling with sensors and equipment... it is only during peace time like conditions when most of those systems are turned off that a single attack might sneak through... but after that when everyone is vigilant such attacks become much less effective.

It's possible to make a supersonic missile stealthy, but much more difficult, & expensive. It's particularly difficult to reduce the IR signature .

Well that is true, but if you are not expecting an attack you generally have your radars turned off or just listening for signals... how many western aircraft have IRST systems... how many of their ships can detect a missile attack from a large distance based only on IR signals?

Kh-32 flys at 40km altitude... you wont know it is coming for you until it starts to dive and it dives at mach 5... and it manouvers as it dives...

Stealth is less effective at closer ranges and different angles, manuvering and speed changes definitely make the task more difficult. If a missile is headed at you at mach 3, and it if it a large one like the Granit or Vulcan, if your explode the warhead 300 m before impact it is still gonna be pretty unpleasant as hundreds of pounds of supersonic debris hit your ship like gods personal shotgun. If LRASM is launched from several directions it is deadly. Heck even old silkworm missiles launched in volume from multiple directions are very dangerous

Actually most of the time when AA and SAMs hit incoming missile targets they take out wings and control surfaces and the target flys into the water and explodes... with a supersonic target you could blow off the fins and wings within 800m and it will probably still hit you anyway... intact.

ahmedfire wrote:

Kh-32 flys at 40km altitude... you wont know it is coming for you until it starts to dive and it dives at mach 5... and it manouvers as it dives...

I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

Not really.

You need radars that can provide targeting data for your rail gun. If the missiles are hypersonic and your railgun launches rounds at hypersonic speeds, the interception will be very hard because :

- the high speed means the processing speed of your fcs needs to be very fast

- but also if your round isn't really exiting the gun at the speed your FCS think it is, then at the speed they travel, it will miss in best case by few meters the calculated interception point and miss the missile.

A round can't correct its trajectory like a missile.

Lasers and some sort of hard kill (like on tanks) are the future.

ahmedfire wrote:

Kh-32 flys at 40km altitude... you wont know it is coming for you until it starts to dive and it dives at mach 5... and it manouvers as it dives...

I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

The shell would still have to correct it's trajectory to intercept it. Also Russian AshM's like P-500/700 as part of it's ECM suite allows it's on board radar to actually projects/reflects their radar image off the top of the surface of the ocean, making it appear several hundred meters closer than it actually is. Russian AshM's have been known to be armored with titanium to make them resistant to shrapnel.

ahmedfire wrote:I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

If that logic was sound, we would be protecting tanks from penetrator rounds by using other penetrator rounds. The problem is that no FCS on the planet can perform such a feat in a reliable fashion in the field, nor likely ever will. In the real physical world, some things are just next to impossible.

Big_Gazza wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

If that logic was sound, we would be protecting tanks from penetrator rounds by using other penetrator rounds. The problem is that no FCS on the planet can perform such a feat in a reliable fashion in the field, nor likely ever will.  In the real physical world, some things are just next to impossible.

Lasers are the only theoretical interceptors of hypersonic missiles that are guaranteed to overcome any non-ballistic maneuvering since no chunk
of metal, composite and ceramic will ever approach the speed of light. But lasers are nowhere near the sci-fi level required to have the
energy density to do the job.

I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

Actually that is not a great idea... the APFSDS round from a 125mm tank gun goes from zero to 1.8km/s which is about mach 6 in the length of a 5-6m long barrel so less than 10 miliseconds I would guess...

And how often to armies promote tanks with APFSDS rounds as anti aircraft weapons?

A round can't correct its trajectory like a missile.

Lasers and some sort of hard kill (like on tanks) are the future.

Indeed.. the closing speed of an incoming Kh-32 with an outgoing mach 6 weapon will be mach 11 or about 3.3km/s, but even the slightest change of trajectory by the Kh-32 after the EM gun round is fired means it will miss... and the Kh-32 could fly in a loose spiral trajectory and no rounds fired at it will connect...

As you mention only a laser because it reduces the intercept time to so close to zero that the lazer could be kept on target even if it moves, and of course hard kill, but compounded by the fact that hard kill systems reduce armour penetration to the level where the kinetic target can no longer penetrate the heavy armour of the target... in the case of a ship against a 2-7 ton incoming round means you would need to go back to WWII battleships with heavy belt armour over its entire surface... which is not really practical.

Russian AshM's have been known to be armored with titanium to make them resistant to shrapnel.

The Granit has an angled titanium plate protecting the warhead... if you set off the incoming missiles warhead the tiny fragments rapidly slow down and protect the ship very effectively... the Phalanx uses DU rounds to penetrate the titanium plates used to protect warheads in the hope of setting off the warheads.

the speed of these new missiles makes Phalanx useless... in the half second such a missile would take to cover the effective range band of the Phalanx it simply couldn't fire enough rounds to assure a kill...

Indeed the lead required would mean that any shots fired by the time it gets to about 800m would be fired in to the ship you are trying to protect... so a quarter of a second to shoot it down... a 7.5 ton anti ship missiles with 50 cal DU rounds.

Lasers are the only theoretical interceptors of hypersonic missiles that are guaranteed to overcome any non-ballistic maneuvering since no chunk
of metal, composite and ceramic will ever approach the speed of light. But lasers are nowhere near the sci-fi level required to have the
energy density to do the job.

Exactly... lasers have a long way to go before they are more effective than missiles or guns, but that is no reason not to use lasers too... they wont get better if they stay in the lab... or they will get faster as they are made and new ideas to make them better and more efficient can be worked on in the field as well a the lab.

The ideal would be an energy beam weapon that sets off HE or remaining propellent...

To be clear the US believes that shooting at high speed air targets needs high velocity rounds... their 20mm gatling gun they use for their fighter aircraft fire light projectiles at about 1km/s muzzle velocities... which sounds fine because it means it shoots flatter and gets to the target faster, but the problem is that there is no level of velocity that could get a solid projectile to a target intercept point fast enough to mean the target has no time to manouver in any direction or speed up or slow down.
The much more sensible idea is lower velocity but high rate of fire... widely used with small arms. When shooting at birds and other small fast targets you use a shot gun.... not very fast projectiles but lots of them scattered all around the point of aim so that if the target dips or weaves or speeds up or slows down after you fire you are still going to get pellets on target due to their spread around the point of aim.

Larger calibre slower rounds can often be more effective than smaller lighter faster rounds if they have proximity fuses...

Big_Gazza wrote:

ahmedfire wrote:I think EM railgun will play a role to defend against supersonic missiles . it's projectile can reach from zero to 6 Mach in 10 milliseconds ,giving it a safe impact distance away from the ship .

If that logic was sound, we would be protecting tanks from penetrator rounds by using other penetrator rounds. The problem is that no FCS on the planet can perform such a feat in a reliable fashion in the field, nor likely ever will.  In the real physical world, some things are just next to impossible.

At slower speeds you have the new 57mm gun. But its rounds explode near the target which corrects the mistakes of FCS precision.


IMO they could create an afghanit for ships. They already did it for the tanks but also for their silos. They had a system design made of grenade launchers or guns that destroy incoming MIRV warheads targeting the silos of nuclear missiles.

Exactly... lasers have a long way to go before they are more effective than missiles or guns, but that is no reason not to use lasers too... they wont get better if they stay in the lab... or they will get faster as they are made and new ideas to make them better and more efficient can be worked on in the field as well a the lab. wrote:

Peresvet is probably a great advance in laser technology. If it is powered by a nuclear reactor and has a capacity of several MW, it can be dangerous and not only blind satellites.

Peresvet is probably a great advance in laser technology. If it is powered by a nuclear reactor and has a capacity of several MW, it can be dangerous and not only blind satellites.

Indeed, but in terms of size and weight and cost a TOR mount with 16 missiles might do a better job most of the time.

My point is that lasers are not at the point of missiles and guns already are but their growth potential means they will eventually surpass missiles and guns and they wont get there if they stay in the lab.

Right now lasers are probably at the point where they render IIR guided and other optically guided missiles ineffective simply by blinding their optics.

They can also work on more AD missiles equiped with a EMP warhead.

Or maybe a Peresvet but with a micro-wave canon to burn electronics.

Isos wrote:
IMO they could create an afghanit for ships. They already did it for the tanks but also for their silos. They had a system design made of grenade launchers or guns that destroy incoming MIRV warheads targeting the silos of nuclear missiles.

Are there any photographs of this silo defence system? I would very much like to see it.

The-thing-next-door wrote:

Isos wrote:
IMO they could create an afghanit for ships. They already did it for the tanks but also for their silos. They had a system design made of grenade launchers or guns that destroy incoming MIRV warheads targeting the silos of nuclear missiles.

Are there any photographs of this silo defence system? I would very much like to see it.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/mozyr-kaz.htm

Actually the description of it being a sort of APS system is surprisingly accurate.

Soviet ICBM missile silos are very hard and it would take a direct hit from a nuclear warhead to destroy them... a bit like the frontal armour of a tank needs to be hit by a kinetic or HEAT round to penetrate. These air defence systems set off the nuke above ground so it does not contact or bury itself in the ground before detonating... the blast wave would be intense as would the heat... but not enough to damage a missile inside such a silo.

Guy Plopsky
@GuyPlopsky
·
27 juil.
Starting this year, #IskanderM brigades will train to target ships and amphibious forces. First such exercise conducted during recent snap drills; Kuban-based Iskander-M (i.e. 1st Missile Brigade) conducted simulated launches against "costal targets."

Russia’s Tactical Missile Corporation is developing new seaborne weapons, including a next-generation high-speed anti-ship missile with an extended strike range, Tactical Missile Corporation CEO Boris Obnosov told TASS on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary on Monday.

https://tass.com/defense/1392115

That anti sub rocket propelled torpedo sounds downright scary. I have not heard of any analogues in the west.

George1 wrote:Russia’s Tactical Missile Corporation is developing new seaborne weapons, including a next-generation high-speed anti-ship missile with an extended strike range, Tactical Missile Corporation CEO Boris Obnosov told TASS on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary on Monday.

https://tass.com/defense/1392115

Tsirkon-M???

Hole wrote:

George1 wrote:Russia’s Tactical Missile Corporation is developing new seaborne weapons, including a next-generation high-speed anti-ship missile with an extended strike range, Tactical Missile Corporation CEO Boris Obnosov told TASS on the occasion of the company’s 20th anniversary on Monday.

https://tass.com/defense/1392115

Tsirkon-M???

Probably one of the air launched hypersonic cruise missiles announced last two years

Would be nice if it was carried by Su-33 and mig-29K from Kuznetsov. That would increase its power by a great factor. Even better if they can carry 4 of such missiles.

That anti sub rocket propelled torpedo sounds downright scary. I have not heard of any analogues in the west.

Actually ASROC launched from a ship and SUBROC launched from a submarine are direct equivalents.

Their contemporaries at the time were SS-N-15 and SS-N-16... the latter adopted in the early 1980s...

Interestingly the Metel or SS-N-14 is a winged rocket propelled weapon that carried an underslung torpedo a bit like the Australian Ikara missile... later versions of the Soviet missile had IR guidance for anti ship use which made it effectively an IR guided anti ship weapon...

Would be nice if it was carried by Su-33 and mig-29K from Kuznetsov. That would increase its power by a great factor. Even better if they can carry 4 of such missiles.

Well if it is anything like Brahmos-M was supposed to be a much smaller missile for tactical fighters then four for the MiG and 6 for the Flanker would be a likely potential load.

GarryB wrote:

That anti sub rocket propelled torpedo sounds downright scary. I have not heard of any analogues in the west.

Actually ASROC launched from a ship and SUBROC launched from a submarine are direct equivalents.

Their contemporaries at the time were SS-N-15 and SS-N-16... the latter adopted in the early 1980s...

Interestingly the Metel or SS-N-14 is a winged rocket propelled weapon that carried an underslung torpedo a bit like the Australian Ikara missile... later versions of the Soviet missile had IR guidance for anti ship use which made it effectively an IR guided anti ship weapon...

Ok correct me if I am wrong, but ASROC actually dropped a conventional torpedo over the target correct? Where as this one is an actual rocket powered torpedo

Sorry... missed this question:

Ok correct me if I am wrong, but ASROC actually dropped a conventional torpedo over the target correct? Where as this one is an actual rocket powered torpedo

SUBROC and ASROC are both ballistic solid rocket boosters to launch and deliver a guided torpedo to the vicinity of a located enemy sub. SUBROC is sub launched and ASROC is surface ship launched.

Have you seen the videos of Soviet ASROC equivalents that are launched from a ship mounted torpedo launcher and the weapon is blown out of the tube and into the water like a torpedo... there is a delay and then a rocket leaves the water a couple of dozen metres away from the ship. They also have ship launched missiles that don't have to be fired into water before their rocket motors carry them to the target area.

Ovtet can be launched from a UKSK launcher and flys a direct ballistic path to the target area where it releases its torpedo to enter the water and hunt down the sub.... just like ASROC.

Onyx has a range of 300 km.

The Export Yakhont has a range of 300km.

New fuels developed for Ziron could extend range and increase speed signficantly if used in Onyx. Changing fuel production to the newest type that could be used in older missiles would be useful.