Anti-Ship Missiles Thread

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.

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.

Singular_Transform wrote:
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.

Like I wrote before. Sea skimming ist best to avoid AD systems, but for max. efficiency "attack from above" is best.

In advertising videos the hit and boom of ASM looks quite impressive, but in reality not every missile will hit, or hit a vital section or from right angle. So it's important to direct the attack...correct information, good radar and/or satellite photos, a bit time...that the missile could fly the perfect course.

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

Of course

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

No! They explode same way like older ASM or like western counterparts. Yes, they have higher kinetic energy, but they don't really need it. They are fast to be troublesome for enemy AD Systems.

The hardened warhead is not only for penetrating the hull, it's against AD missiles and against CIWS also useful. It's a higher chance that the missile will reach intact the ship.

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

Yes and NO! The missile is not smart, it has no AI onboard. The missile doesn't know if it hits the ship from side or length. So theoretical a Zirkon could fly 100 or more meters through a carrier, but leave only one small hole (of course destroying the warhead...simply everything of the missile). But hitting from side??? If a Zirkon would explode after 40 meters of penetrating it would be outside of the ship again, causing a big boom only in the air and not in the ship ;D So Zirkon, Onyx, Harpoon, LRASM and Co. will all explode a few meters after penetrating the hull.

Other situation is if the hypersonic cruise missile will be smart, knowing from where it attacks. But this is music of far future.

Singular_Transform wrote: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.

Much of energy goes oustide, but the blast is enough for a whole section Believe me! Smaller ships like corvette will be complete ripped off, bigger ships have higher chance of survivability.

Singular_Transform wrote: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.

Some ships burned good after a small hit, some never really burned but after few hard hits. Depends on the hit...

Singular_Transform wrote:The internal metal plates looks 20 mm thick.

For me it looks a bit more, than 20 mm. If you zoom in the first photo you will see how thick the plates are, dimensions here are gigantic

Azi wrote:
Yes and NO! The missile is not smart, it has no AI onboard. The missile doesn't know if it hits the ship from side or length. So theoretical a Zirkon could fly 100 or more meters through a carrier, but leave only one small hole (of course destroying the warhead...simply everything of the missile). But hitting from side??? If a Zirkon would explode after 40 meters of penetrating it would be outside of the ship again, causing a big boom only in the air and not in the ship ;D So Zirkon, Onyx, Harpoon, LRASM and Co. will all explode a few meters after penetrating the hull.

Other situation is if the hypersonic cruise missile will be smart, knowing from where it attacks. But this is music of far future.


Much of energy goes oustide, but the blast is enough for a whole section Believe me! Smaller ships like corvette will be complete ripped off, bigger ships have higher chance of survivability.

The whole granit/oscar/heavy subs and ships ( like the kirov ) was bigger project in the SU than the Apollo program in the US.
I don't know the capability of them,, but they put waaaay more engineering resources into them than say into to Saturn-V rocket.

Impact - The target of the engineers visible - the whole missile design means that it hit a small hole, but leave a big on the opposite side.

The fuzing, trajectory, sensors, hit probability, warhead design organised around this.


And of course the smaller ships can take less hit than a big one
The main point in the discussion is two point:
1. what is the damage capability ratio between the harpoon/sea tomahawk/granit/onyx/zircon
2. How many missile needed to destroy one ship?

I think the data supports quite well that one onyx can cause as much damage as several (2-4) sea tomahawk.
Next question is how many tomahawk needed to sink a carrier or a destroyer.

The fire produced by a Granit would be much bigger than one created by an exocet. The fire will make the structure weak and it will be fatal to it.

A carrier is 100 kt, imagine now that you burn one of the parts that "hold" the ship. It is like making a big hole in on of the wall that hold your house, the house will be destroyed the same way as will be your ship.

This is the missiles used by houtis. Look at the warehead, it is meant to make a big explosion and to make (HEAT) big hole that will burn everything where they go. Most of antiship wareheads are like that so that even if you have a lot of compartiments, it will go through and start fires everywhere. Those HEAT parts are far bigger than those on Kornet missiles whichis already capable of >1m penetration. You won't stop it with 20mm of armour.




Now look at the Nimitz and see how there is stock of everything everywhere on the ship.

GarryB wrote:
The energy comparisons between a cargo ship and an Onyx are pointless... a person running into you on the playground of a school would have the same energy as a rifle bullet but one will kill you and one will not because the energy is concentrated in different ways. A train weighing thousands of tons moving a 5km/h will bump you aside, while a 5 gramme projectile moving at 300m/s can kill you easily yet it would have a fraction of the energy of the train.

The oposite is true, if a slow moving hockey puck can cause serious injuries, then a 2 gram 0.22 projectile having the same energy can cause death.


so, if a slow moving container ship can cripple a destroyer then a fast moving missile with the same amount of kinetic energy can kill it.