Anti-Ship Missiles Thread

Singular_Transform wrote:

Peŕrier wrote:K

Speed won't change this, it will increase mainly the probability to overcome the defenses but at the end, radius of damages inflicted would change very little, and it's the radius that determines mainly to what degree the target's capability will be degraded or if the hit will result in a mission kill.

Mate, you haven't read that I wrote about the kinetic energies?
A harpoon will detonate practically on the hull, outside of it.

An onyx/granit will penetrate it, and it will detonate inside the ship.
The zircon will dug itself deeply into the ship, and will detonate practically at the centre of it.


Maybe not visible first time, but the speed increase exponentially the inflected VOLUME of damage.


Meany you need two-three tomahawk to inflict as much damage as on onyx, and  five-ten to inflict as much as a zircon.


and at the end of the day the target of the antiship missiles is to disable the ship, make it impossible to move fast ( or to move at all) , to operate the defence systems, and to launch aircraft.

To sink the ship the submarine will come closer to it, and will fire four -ten torpedoes, or the aircrafts will drop torpedoes .


That will sink the carrier/capital ship, not the tomahawk/onxy/zircon : )


And the equitations work inverse as well, say the Chinese carriers practically unsinkable for the US, considering that the US doesn't have any effective anti ship weapon.

No! And simply no!

A warships consist of more than 1 section. Bigger ship...more sections! And even the sections are divided in smaller parts!!! Destroying one section or maybe two will not destroy a big ship! A Zirkon can explode deep inside the ship and it will not sink, maybe a mission kill, not more. By the way, Harpoon explodes inside the ship, it goes through the hull like warm knife through butter. Kinetic energy is high enough to penetrate the outside hull and explode inside. There are many good videos (some very old) showing the destructive power of a Harpoon. In some you can very good see in slowmo the penetration of hull, a short delay and the big boom inside.

Effect of Zirkon, Onyx, Kalibr, Tomahawk and Co is the same...they ALL penetrate easy the hull go inside and explode after few meter inside the ship.

Danger of a Zirkon is because it's difficult to impossible for AD systems to intercept Zirkon. This means a salvo of Harpoon could be defeated, but a salvo of Zirkon means pure destruction!

To complete destroy a carrier a salvo of Zirkon missile is needed or a direct hit of the nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors are the biggest danger for big warships in time of hypersonic weapons, so maybe it's better to power a Lider class or a carrier not with a reactor!?

Hey...
But why sink a carrier? A mission kill is the best you can do!!! You save the life of hundreds of enemy sailors and the enemy can do nothing more. The enemy must go back and repairs could take months. So the mission kill is the A and O and the Zirkon garantuees a mission kill. Mission kill for a carrier means the WHOLE carrier battlegroup must go home by the way

A warships consist of more than 1 section. Bigger ship...more sections! And even the sections are divided in smaller parts!!! Destroying one section or maybe two will not destroy a big ship! A Zirkon can explode deep inside the ship and it will not sink, maybe a mission kill, not more. By the way, Harpoon explodes inside the ship, it goes through the hull like warm knife through butter. Kinetic energy is high enough to penetrate the outside hull and explode inside. There are many good videos (some very old) showing the destructive power of a Harpoon. In some you can very good see in slowmo the penetration of hull, a short delay and the big boom inside

Exocet successfully sunk a frigate in the Malvinas but in other cases it simply damage the ships like the US one Attack by Iraquis exocet. You will never be sure of the result of an Attack and it will always depend on how your missiles hit the target and where. But if an exocet has such result then we can conclude that a much bigger missiles with much biger warehead will do more damage.

Carriers will be in great danger if they are hit because they carry hundreds of tonnes of muntions and oïl and toxic things like nuclear combustible. During a war they are full which means you can be sure at 100% that if the missile hit it, it will touch one of those things.

If it was only the carrier, empty, then no missile on the world would sunk it with one hit that's for sure. There is even a chinese study for how much they need to sink Nimitz class ( Something like 6-11 torpedos or xx missiles or ...) you can find on the net the real conclusion of the study I don't remember the numbers.

But why sink a carrier? A mission kill is the best you can do!!! You save the life of hundreds of enemy sailors and the enemy can do nothing more. The enemy must go back and repairs could take months. So the mission kill is the A and O and the Zirkon garantuees a mission kill. Mission kill for a carrier means the WHOLE carrier battlegroup must go home by the way Wink

No admiral on the world would let it go after a mission kill. It would be either destroyed by aviation lunch missiles safely all the day until all the ships around are destroyed or captured by leting the crews know that if they don't surrender ships would be destroyed.

Isos wrote:
Exocet successfully sunk a frigate in the Malvinas but in other cases it simply damage the ships like the US one Attack by Iraquis exocet. You will never be sure of the result of an Attack and it will always depend on how your missiles hit the target and where. But if an exocet has such result then we can conclude that a much bigger missiles with much biger warehead will do more damage.

Carriers will be in great danger if they are hit because they carry hundreds of tonnes of muntions and oïl and toxic things like nuclear combustible. During a war they are full which means you can be sure at 100% that if the missile hit it, it will touch one of those things.

If it was only the carrier, empty, then no missile on the world would sunk it with one hit that's for sure. There is even a chinese study for how much they need to sink Nimitz class ( Something like 6-11 torpedos or xx missiles or ...) you can find on the net the real conclusion of the study I don't remember the numbers.

Sure! That's clear. Luck is an important factor in war. One serious hit in the nuclear section and it's game over for the carrier.

And of course..saturation attacks are mostly successful!

Isos wrote:No admiral on the world would let it go after a mission kill. It would be either destroyed by aviation lunch missiles safely all the day until all the ships around are destroyed or captured by leting the crews know that if they don't surrender ships would be destroyed.

Depends on whether it's worth it. If you have the advantage...why not!? But normally mission kill is ok, if the attacker retreats it's fine.

My point of view is from defender and the carrier (plus battle group) is the agressor. Normally the defender has less assets to strike the battle group. A concrete example...I think Russia is able to defends it's coast, but to chase and annihilate more than 10 carrier battle groups is something different. So the priorities could be different, focusing on the next attacker before chasing the mission kill carrier.

Another point would be a boiling nuclear reactor near the own coast, somewhere in the deep of the ocean!? Is it worth it?

Who knows...? I don't wanna see it in reality!

Azi wrote:
No! And simply no!

A warships consist of more than 1 section. Bigger ship...more sections! And even the sections are divided in smaller parts!!! Destroying one section or maybe two will not destroy a big ship! A Zirkon can explode deep inside the ship and it will not sink, maybe a mission kill, not more. By the way, Harpoon explodes inside the ship, it goes through the hull like warm knife through butter. Kinetic energy is high enough to penetrate the outside hull and explode inside. There are many good videos (some very old) showing the destructive power of a Harpoon. In some you can very good see in slowmo the penetration of hull, a short delay and the big boom inside.

Effect of Zirkon, Onyx, Kalibr, Tomahawk and Co is the same...they ALL penetrate easy the hull go inside and explode after few meter inside the ship.

Danger of a Zirkon is because it's difficult to impossible for AD systems to intercept Zirkon. This means a salvo of Harpoon could be defeated, but a salvo of Zirkon means pure destruction!

To complete destroy a carrier a salvo of Zirkon missile is needed or a direct hit of the nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors are the biggest danger for big warships in time of hypersonic weapons, so maybe it's better to power a Lider class or a carrier not with a reactor!?

Hey...
But why sink a carrier? A mission kill is the best you can do!!! You save the life of hundreds of enemy sailors and the enemy can do nothing more. The enemy must go back and repairs could take months. So the mission kill is the A and O and the Zirkon garantuees a mission kill. Mission kill for a carrier means the WHOLE carrier battlegroup must go home by the way

Check the harpoon videos.

At least half of them exploding outside of the hull, few penetrating the hull of small ships , IF the angle is right , the hull is thin, and there is no beam.

The onyx/zircon/granit works like a long kinfe, increase the chance of hitting something critical, and creating path for water , igniting fire in compartments.

Actually, say the carrier has 500 section, if you penetrate one, or say fifteen makes qualitative difference.

Interesting reading :
https://s3.amazonaws.com/CHINFO/USS+Fitzgerald+and+USS+John+S+McCain+Collision+Reports.pdf

That ship carried way less energy than an anti ship missile, but it scraped a lot of compartment on the fitzgerald.


Sinking the ship:
The US policy is to destroy all possible assets of the enemy, with preferably all life force as well.They sink all ships that was disabled.
During the second world war after disabling the weapons of a Japanese reinforced fortifications they filled up the upper levels with amfo and killed everyone in them.
There was a reason of the lack of Japanese POWs : )


Reactor : it is not as big danger as many think. The reactor is quite well protected, the ship has two, and in the case of emergency all that it need is full flooding.

Actually it is quite hard to make anything with the reactor than can be dangerous for the whole ship.

Harpoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObtBjoDGPiA


Visibly one harpoon detonated outside the hull.
Two penetrated the hull, and few more the superstructure.

Brahmos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl48bwYBDfA
2:22 - conical shaped hole in the ship, the entry point sized like the missile, exit extremely big.
4:00 - 800 tons ship disappeared from one brahmos.

Right, an 800 tons ship would be disintegrated.

A 10.000 ship would likely risk to sink.

A 100.000 tons ship would get serious damage.

What is a fault assumption is that a missile could penetrate at will walls.

It can't, because the warhead casing would get in turn serious damage with degradation of detonation properties or even only partial detonation.

Warheads are made of highly inert explosives, without the right impulse of heat and pressure they won't detonate, and collapsing against an armoured bulwark would in no way make the warhead detonate, but could damage or destroy the warhead.

So any missile, even if hypersonic, is fused to detonate with tenths of second after the first impact, to protect the warhead itself.

There would not be a detonation 20 meters inside the ship, because it would be too much probable that the warhead would be degraded or destroyed trying to get so deep inside the hull.

At the same time, it is a false assumption that a large warship like a carrier is full of dangerous items.

Ammunition and fuel are stored under the waterline, no missile could reach them.


Ammunitions' elevators and fuel piping run within armoured ducts, well within the hull.

Arming and refuelling happens on the flight deck only, no weapon and almost no fuel are allowed in the hangar.

It is not like naval engineers do not know how AShMs work.

There is only limited scope for passive countermeasures in smaller vessels, but as size goes up plenty of opportunities open up to the engineers to negate reach to critical parts and systems of the ship.

Like a II WW battleship was able to withstand a hit from a 381 or 406 mm armour piercing shell weighting between almost one ton to more than 1,2 tons, those being really armoured projectiles made only of steel and explosives, a modern day warship displacing far more than a II WW battleship would be able to withstand an incoming missile.

The same applies for any very large warship, it is just that a 300 to 400 kg warhead, terrific as it could seems, has just so much destructive power and radius, and as the hull grows in size, so grows the length the shockwaves have to run before reaching any vital part, ultimately being like outrun if the point of impact is not ideal.

FFS this is so far its absurd.

While OT, I'll defend my previous claim that a single heavy AShM hit on a large carrier is sufficient to achieve a mission kill. Damage the flight deck and set fire to aircraft and munitions like in the Forrestal accident and she WILL be out of action. Check out the pics of the incident. Does anyone really think a flat-top will keep fighting a battle in a situation like that?



Yeah sure... you can argue damage control is improved, and the Forrestal didn't have a automatic deck-edge spray system, but the Forrestal incident was from a single small air-launched Zuni rocket and caused a near loss of vessel. Think of what a Kalibre or Oniks could do by comparison, let alone a Granit/Sandbox.

Now lets cut the endless BS speculation and leave the thread to discussions of the Nahkimov....

Peŕrier wrote:

What is a fault assumption is that a missile could penetrate at will walls.

It can't, because the warhead casing would get in turn serious damage with degradation of detonation properties or even only partial detonation.

Warheads are made of highly inert explosives, without the right impulse of heat and pressure they won't detonate, and collapsing against an armoured bulwark would in no way make the warhead detonate, but could damage or destroy the warhead.

So any missile, even if hypersonic, is fused to detonate with tenths of second after the first impact, to protect the warhead itself.

There would not be a detonation 20 meters inside the ship, because it would be too much probable that the warhead would be degraded or destroyed trying to get so deep inside the hull.

Few interesting fact:
1. The currently employed onyx / granit of the russia navy has higher IMPACT velocity than the MUZZLE velocity of the WWII battleship armor piercing ammunition .(depending on trajectory)
2. The Kirov class battle cruiser has twenty rounds of Granit, each of them carry as big or heavier round then the armor piercing rounds of the WWII 16 inch naval guns.Each granit carry the explosives in an armour piercing steel alloy casing.
3.The current US/Russians/Chinese destroyers/cruisers/carriers practically has no armour compared to the WWII battleships.


Additionally ,your logic has flaws.
IF the harpoon can penetrate the side of the ship ( the structurally strongest part ) THEN why the onyx has to detonate prior of the impact?


Additionally, the detonation command is not depending on the depth, but the acceleration of the round.
Means if the round has higher armour, then it will be set to higher acceleration, means the explosion will be at higher depth.

Interesting information: the WWII armour piercing rounds can penetrate 9 meters of concrete.

SO , the garnit / onyx CAN penetrate any carrier from any direction, practically in any deep.
Each of them precisely guided munitions, they can penetrate the flight deck at 45 degree and hit the reactor at the bottom of the ship and disable it.

And it is easier to kill he AP round from an iowa class battlecruiser than to kill a granit .

Armour piercing round of the granit.

They can increase the casing:explosive ratio to overcome any protective armour.

No, it's not that a missile could not pierce a ship's hull, it'that after penetration it will be fused. There would be a delay, of course, but it won't penetrate at will internal bulwarks.

Quire the opposite, modern warships, at least from destroyer's size upward have armoured bulwarks, often doubled, i.e.two separate bulwarks separated by a small liner, typically a fire resistant/insulating one.

If the Onyx warhead seems impressive, take a look to any AP shell from II WW.

It's like comparing a nutshell with an anvil: the nutshell seems hard to knack just until you do not hit against an anvil.

Modern warships,the larger ones, are in no way less protected than those serving in II WW.

They have only changed protection's philosophy to best counter new weapons' characteristic.

Now most if not all of peripheral hull is designed to act as a large spaced armour around the citadel containing all of vital systems.

That is true for ships like aircraft carriers, but is still true for smaller vessels.

It's always the struggle between sword and shield, as always has been, and no weapon has been or will be risolutive.

It's not that larger vessels are immune from weapons, it's just that weapons could not assure a mission kill with a single hit, let alone a sink.

Maybe they will, but there is no assurance about it.

By the way, after the U.S. Forrestal accident, the U.S. Navy revised and changed armament procedures on the flight deck, recognising previous one were faulty.

The first lesson learned is that mishaps and weak points could always arise after years of routine,nothing is engraved in stone.

Present day's damage prevention in western ships could prove faulty, but the effort and technology to counter threats,specifically russian and chinese weapons, both present ones and those speculated to enter service in the near future, have been very significative.

Peŕrier wrote:No, it's not that a missile could not pierce a ship's hull, it'that after penetration it will be fused. There would be a delay, of course, but it won't penetrate at will internal bulwarks.

Quire the opposite, modern warships, at least from destroyer's size upward have armoured bulwarks, often doubled, i.e.two separate bulwarks separated by a small liner, typically a fire resistant/insulating one.

If the Onyx warhead seems impressive, take a look to any AP shell from II WW.

It's like comparing a nutshell with an anvil: the nutshell seems hard to knack just until you do not hit against an anvil.

Modern warships,the larger ones, are in no way less protected than those serving in II WW.

My point is quite simple: the cheapest part of the granit/zircon/onyx is the AP warhead. Nothing prevent the Russians to put into it a WWII 18" AP round, apart from that there is no ship on the oceans that needs it since the decommissioning of the Iowa battleships.


And NO the modern warships are NOT comparable to the WWII battleships in the respect of armour.
The Fizgerald had a hit from a container ship,and become disabled/ and was close to sink. Compared to the onyx the container ship has small energy and damage inflicting capability.

The carriers practically has no armour, - they depending on the aircraft to protect it from any enemy ship. C'mon, the US carriers hasn't got even self defence systems .

Frankly, your reasoning sounds like a motivational training for a freshly recruited US navy sailor.

The P-700 Granits warhead is like a WWII armor piercing high explosive round that trades penetration for explosive power Since modern ships don't have 300mm stell armor.

Again it is not true.

While modern warship gave away with large caliber artillery,because it was made obsolete by guided missiles, at the same time they gave away with heavy armoured belts because no longer threatened by heavy AP shells.

Nobody is saying modern warships would be better protected against a 381 mm AP shell than an equivalent warship from II WW. What is true is that modern warships are designed to cope with modern AShMs.

And larger vessels DO have armoured bulwarks, irrespective of whatever else people think.

Just they are designed a different way from old armoured belts, because the threat is different.

And it's not feasible to increase at will warhead's casing thickness, because it in turn will only make less effective the warhead itsels reducing the amount of explosives.

The very same problem afflicted II WW heavy shells: the AP ones could pierce enemy's warships armoured belts, but caused relatively little damage because of the little warhead, on the other hand HE ones had devastatinf effects if only they could pierce enemy's armoured belts, which they mostly couldn't do.

So the problem stay alive: heavy AP warhead with little explosive and little radius of destruction vs heavy warhead Not really AP (mostly they are semi perforating warheads, not true AP ones) with larger explosive and destruction radius.

The first could try to penetrate several bulwarks and explode as deep as possible in the ship, with little destructive power and the danger to just overshoot the target if hitting some soft spot without the expected amount of bulwarks.

The second will have a far greater destructive radius, but could't try to penetrate several bulwarks because the casing won't resist that long, so they should be fused just after first penetration is performed.

Peŕrier wrote:Again it is not true.

While modern warship gave away with large caliber artillery,because it was made obsolete by guided missiles, at the same time they gave away with heavy armoured belts because no longer threatened by heavy AP shells.
...

This is not WWII naval warfare, these things can hit the enemy ships quite precisely.


You can put onto the missiles different warheads for different ships, or you can decide warhead type for different trajectories / angles / target positions .

Example you can target two onyx with heavy armour piercing warheads into the carrier reactors, and few light round into the aircraft hangars.
Why not? What prevents the Russian navy from it?

It is prevented by several constraints:

Missile radars have decent/good resolution only at short distances, when little time and space is left to manoeuvre.

Countermeasures and decoys will likely degrade the target recognition in turn giving the incoming missile only a broad image of the target.

The target itself is not a static one, it manouvres and a warship is incredibly agile when needed, so the missile can't really choose the point of impact, at most can choose height of point of impact above the waterline.

The target will NEVER stay passive against an incoming missile, so nobody could plan in advance where the impact should happen.

And even if already remarked, it could be useful to repeat that reactors, weapons depots, fuel tanks in a carrier are all placed under the waterline, so no missile will likely reach them.

Naval engineers are always studying, day by day, the best ways to counter threats, and any new ship's class adopt new ideas and technology to mitigate or nullify opponents weapons' letality.

It is enough to actually hit the enemy, the real option is if aiming to the hull or the superstructure, not if hitting left or right size, one third from the stern or halfway from aft and stern.

Armour piercing round of the granit.

Wow
Never actually seen that before, heard rumors but also counter-rumors doubting the existence.

May be better to call it a semi-AP but is definitely very much more a piercing warhead than normal.
Some anti-ship missiles do use shaped charges apparently & even multiple self-forging penetrators.

The Fizgerald had a hit from a container ship,and become disabled/ and was close to sink. Compared to the onyx the container ship has small energy and damage inflicting capability.

Not strictly true, the kinetic energy of a 30,000ton freighter at 18kt is really really big: 252,000,000 kg m/s vs only 933,450 kg m/s for a US superheavy 16" at muzzle velocity.

Nevertheless both the 2 recent freighter hits & the older Cole bombing seem to me to have caused a lot more severe damage (to ships that are supposedly better protected than previous post-WWII generations) than I'd have expected.


This whole conversation stems back to the question of if a modernised Kirov is a valid ship.
I say yes: modernised Nakhimov will be unquestionably the most powerful surface combatant ever, with both massive anti-surface & air-defense capability, it will create a very strong core to Russian taskforces.

I am also sympathetic to the small missile boat argument but tempered by the similarity of that argument to the Jeune Ecole argument that Torpedo Boats invalidate BBs & Cruisers and the fact there is an existing combat record for missile boats.
In both cases (torpedo boats and missile boats) historic combat examples have shown both some very successful operations & some severe limitations/shortcomings proving that it can't be relied on solely.

I like that Russia is building good missile boats but also modernising the two Kirovs.
Eventually hopefully there will be a decent number of Frigates that can both provide backbone to missile boat swarms & be the swarm around a Kirov core.

Peŕrier wrote:It is prevented by several constraints:

Missile radars have decent/good resolution only at short distances, when little time and space is left to manoeuvre.

Countermeasures and decoys will likely degrade the target recognition in turn giving the incoming missile only a broad image of the target.

The target itself is not a static one, it manouvres and a warship is incredibly agile when needed, so the missile can't really choose the point of impact, at most can choose  height of point of impact above the waterline.

The target will NEVER stay passive against an incoming missile, so nobody could plan in advance where the impact should happen.

And even if already remarked,  it could be useful to repeat that reactors, weapons depots, fuel tanks in a carrier are all placed under the waterline, so no missile will likely reach them.

Naval engineers are always studying, day by day, the best ways to counter threats, and any new ship's class adopt new ideas and technology to mitigate or nullify opponents weapons' letality.

It is enough to actually hit the enemy, the real option is if aiming to the hull or the superstructure, not if hitting left or right size, one third from the stern or halfway from aft and stern.

Agree, the only way for a ship to defend itself from the onyx/granit/zircon/brahmos is to use countermeasures, and fool the sensors of the missiles.

The air defence systems has to use up asymmetrically high amount of resources to have slightest chance to destroy them.

Peŕrier wrote:
And even if already remarked,  it could be useful to repeat that reactors, weapons depots, fuel tanks in a carrier are all placed under the waterline, so no missile will likely reach them.

Doesn't matter, actually the incoming missiles will be 1-2 match faster if it drop down from bellow.
It is a classical game theory example.
You have X amount of missiles, the enemy has different defeating chances for every trajectories, and each trajectories carry different damage inflecting capabilities.

Means say sea skimming trajectory have 35% chance of intercept, semi ballistic trajectory say 70%, so the ballistic has to inflict twice as much damage to use.

and generally, on a ship NOT only the fuel and ammunition is the only thing that is flammable.
Actuary, if the temperature high enough then even the sailors will burn light a torch. And the metal walls . And the equipment.The engine oil. Everything.


There was transport accident, when the break fluid burned out a funicular train .Not only a bit, but completely.
Again, the result on this picture was caused only by the break fluid in the systems of this train and the excess heat :

hoom wrote:

Armour piercing round of the granit.

Wow  
Never actually seen that before, heard rumors but also counter-rumors doubting the existence.

May be better to call it a semi-AP but is definitely very much more a piercing warhead than normal.
Some anti-ship missiles do use shaped charges apparently & even multiple self-forging penetrators.

The Fizgerald had a hit from a container ship,and become disabled/ and was close to sink. Compared to the onyx the container ship has small energy and damage inflicting capability.

Not strictly true, the kinetic energy of a 30,000ton freighter at 18kt is really really big: 252,000,000 kg m/s vs only 933,450 kg m/s for a US superheavy 16" at muzzle velocity.

Nevertheless both the 2 recent freighter hits & the older Cole bombing seem to me to have caused a lot more severe damage (to ships that are supposedly better protected than previous post-WWII generations) than I'd have expected.


This whole conversation stems back to the question of if a modernised Kirov is a valid ship.
I say yes: modernised Nakhimov will be unquestionably the most powerful surface combatant ever, with both massive anti-surface & air-defense capability, it will create a very strong core to Russian taskforces.

I am also sympathetic to the small missile boat argument but tempered by the similarity of that argument to the Jeune Ecole argument that Torpedo Boats invalidate BBs & Cruisers and the fact there is an existing combat record for missile boats.
In both cases (torpedo boats and missile boats) historic combat examples have shown both some very successful operations & some severe limitations/shortcomings proving that it can't be relied on solely.

I like that Russia is building good missile boats but also modernising the two Kirovs.
Eventually hopefully there will be a decent number of Frigates that can both provide backbone to missile boat swarms & be the swarm around a Kirov core.

You calculated the impulse, not the kinetic energy.(liner vs square)

The container ship had twice as much overall kinetic energy than an onyx, but the actual speed of it just decreased slightly ,so the energy that was transferred into the fitzgerald was fraction of the energy of an impacting onyx.

Would someone be so kind as to move this to a topic about the effectiveness of naval missiles.

Singular_Transform wrote:You calculated the impulse, not the kinetic energy.(liner vs square)

The container ship had twice as much overall kinetic energy than an onyx, but the actual speed of it just decreased slightly ,so the energy that was transferred into the fitzgerald was fraction of the energy of an impacting onyx.

I was curious about the example...so I calculated a bit...

The impact of the Onyx missile and the crash of the freighter (estimation 30 km/h both at crash and weight from example) have nearly the same energy! If the speed of both ships would be higher at impact (I doubt!) the kinetic energy of the ship crash would be significant higher.

Singular_Transform wrote:Doesn't matter, actually the incoming missiles will be 1-2 match faster if it drop down from bellow.
It is a classical game theory example.
You have X amount of missiles, the enemy has different defeating chances for every trajectories, and each trajectories carry different damage inflecting capabilities.

Means say sea skimming trajectory have 35% chance of intercept, semi ballistic trajectory say 70%, so the ballistic has to inflict twice as much damage to use.

and generally, on a ship NOT only the fuel and ammunition is the only thing that is flammable.
Actuary, if the temperature high enough then even the sailors will burn light a torch. And the metal walls . And the equipment.The engine oil. Everything.


There was transport accident, when the break fluid burned out a funicular train .Not only a bit, but completely.
Again, the result on this picture was caused only by the break fluid in the systems of this train and the excess heat :

There is only one way to threat sectors under waterline, it's the attack from above. Some missiles have the attack mode.

If a sea skimming missile would try to dive...you must imagine the water will be hard as concrete for any fast missile and the missile never will make a long distance under water. Other way is using anti sub missiles, there are combined torpedo and missile.

I remember your fire disaster example, it was in Alps many years ago. It was so disastrous because of the chimney effect! Fresh air from the below end of the tunnel climbed up and was delivering oxygen to a small fire and that escaleted quickly. Fuel burns at specific temperature and not higher, if the supply with oxygen is good. With less oxygen...incomplete combustion. Without oxygen no fire!!! A modern warship is divided into sectors and the sectors are divided into smaller parts. The bulkheads are not made of paper, they consist of steel and are able to withstand incoming water, small explosions, fire etc...

Old WW2 ships there made to withstand shells from other warships and bomb attacks from light bombers. With creation of anti ship missile it was complete useless to create ocean going "tanks" (normally with the creation of topedos big hulls
were actually superfluous). First defence are long or medium range AD missiles, after that short range missiles and EW countermeasure, last line of defense is CIWS (by the way very effective!). But what if everything failed and the missiles hits? Modern warships are multilayered...vital components are deep inside and at best under the waterline. The main energy of the explosion goes the way of smallest resistance, through the entrance hole! But explosion energy of an anti ship missile is enough to annihilate a smaller ship, like a corvette.

And of course a anti ship missile can hit seriously a big ship, causing a mission kill or maybe sinking the ship. Everything possible. But Zirkon, Onyx and Co. will not go 20 m or more through a ship, in worst case they are outside the ship X-D *LOL* or the warhead is too damaged. Onyx and Zirkon will work very similar and explode short after penetrating the hull. And of course Onyx goes deeper than Harpoon, because Onyx was build for this. But Harpoon mostly penetrates the hull, if the angle is correct, same for Onyx and Co.

And another point...
Please all don't think that a anti ship missile will always hit, have always the perfect angle of attack and so on...

By the way...
Soviet Navy was leading ALWAYS in anti ship missile technology and now Russia is!!! That's a fact! LRASM is just a project in testing stadium and the good OLD Harpoon (ok, it's modernized variants) is now state of the art for US Navy.

Before speculating about missiles, small ships and big ships...

There is a way for a lot information. The "Iran - Iraq War" from 1980 to 1988. They used everything they had, a US Navy frigate was hit by two Exocet and despite heavy damage not sunk. Many Harpoons were used. A lot of other stuff happened during the time.

Operation Praying Mantis - wikipedia

Falkland War is another example for modern naval warfare.

Conclusion...
Not every missile hits! Countermeasures and AD systems works (sometimes)! Not every hit will sink the ship! But sometimes a hit can sink the ship!

Azi wrote:
There is only one way to threat sectors under waterline, it's the attack from above. Some missiles have the attack mode.

If a sea skimming missile would try to dive...you must imagine the water will be hard as concrete for any fast missile and the missile never will make a long distance under water. Other way is using anti sub missiles, there are combined torpedo and missile.

I remember your fire disaster example, it was in Alps many years ago. It was so disastrous because of the chimney effect! Fresh air from the below end of the tunnel climbed up and was delivering oxygen to a small fire and that escaleted quickly. Fuel burns at specific temperature and not higher, if the supply with oxygen is good. With less oxygen...incomplete combustion. Without oxygen no fire!!! A modern warship is divided into sectors and the sectors are divided into smaller parts. The bulkheads are not made of paper, they consist of steel and are able to withstand incoming water, small explosions, fire etc...

Old WW2 ships there made to withstand shells from other warships and bomb attacks from light bombers. With creation of anti ship missile it was complete useless to create ocean going "tanks" (normally with the creation of topedos big hulls
were actually superfluous). First defence are long or medium range AD missiles, after that short range missiles and EW countermeasure, last line of defense is CIWS (by the way very effective!). But what if everything failed and the missiles hits? Modern warships are multilayered...vital components are deep inside and at best under the waterline. The main energy of the explosion goes the way of smallest resistance, through the entrance hole! But explosion energy of an anti ship missile is enough to annihilate a smaller ship, like a corvette.

And of course a anti ship missile can hit seriously a big ship, causing a mission kill or maybe sinking the ship. Everything possible. But Zirkon, Onyx and Co. will not go 20 m or more through a ship, in worst case they are outside the ship X-D *LOL* or the warhead is too damaged. Onyx and Zirkon will work very similar and explode short after penetrating the hull. And of course Onyx goes deeper than Harpoon, because Onyx was build for this. But Harpoon mostly penetrates the hull, if the angle is correct, same for Onyx and Co.

And another point...
Please all don't think that a anti ship missile will always hit, have always the perfect angle of attack and so on...

By the way...
Soviet Navy was leading ALWAYS in anti ship missile technology and now Russia is!!! That's a fact! LRASM is just a project in testing stadium and the good OLD Harpoon (ok, it's modernized variants) is now state of the art for US Navy.

The anti ship missile doesn't need to go sea skimming trajectory.

If it choose a high trajectory, and dive down on a semi ballistic one that can be effective as well.

The onyx/granit/brahmos has variable air intake, means they can fly any altitude by any speed.

I think the bulkheads are one of the reason why these missiles has so high speed.
They can penetrate with one hit many bulkhead.

Practically they can fly along the main axis of a destroyer , puncture many section.

An if the blast happens just under the skin then the best part of energy will go outside.
But if the warhead penetrate many bulkhead then the explosion damage will be absorbed by the ship structure.
It can be debated how the damage profile looks like, but I think we can assume that it will be devastating.


The missile open up way to the air, to the fire .
Actually, the closed box like structures in the ship are quite favourable to fire, the steel walls reflect back the IR waves to the ignited material.

If there is any entry for air then it will burn nicely.


Actually, I checked the ford cross section, and it looks like this:



As a matter of fact, the Kirov doewn't look stronger.




The internal metal plates looks 20 mm thick.