So how would a ship protect itself in a Persian Gulf type situation, with multiple missile attack, if it has only seconds to respond, or they come one after another from moving launchers? And how would the military respond fast enough if China takes out communication satellites early in a war?
Questions from armchair soldier.
Check back tomorrow.
“And how would the military respond fast enough if China takes out communication satellites early in a war?”
With the heavy reliance on sophisticated comms in modern warfare, this is a great question. But, do the Chinese or anyone else have the capacity to take out satellites at will?
You have the Phalanx CIWS is an anti-ship missile defense system the U.S. Navy uses. The U.S. Navy calls it R2-D2.During the first Iraqi War,it shot down a Iraqi Silkworm missile.It also accidentally shot down an A-6 Intruder.The Navy also uses the Rolling Airframe Missile.It is designed to shoot down cruise missiles. I really cannot answer yopur last question, but the military relies on communication satellites but I think that they have secondary methods of communication to all the armed forces.
Everything is networked. Above and maybe forward of the ships are surveillance platforms, aircraft, satellites with radar, that watch the air space. Ships, fleets, air defenses are designed for multiple incoming targets.
But before a ship is targeted, it has too be seen, over the horizon, by an enemy platform emitting radar. Existing fixed radar sites will first be destroyed. Then any departing enemy ship or aircraft will be destroyed. So then, more or less, the enemy is blind, doesn’t know who is out there, how many or where.
All that aside, again a launch, multiple launches are detected ( and site launch remembered if not quickly counter attacked ) then there is distant interceptions at a hundred miles out, intermediate and then close with guns, radar chaff, electronic jamming and decoys. The ship’s radar, jamming, electronics, chaff are way bigger, more sophisticated than carried on a missile. In short you have a simple, kind of dumb missile vs a smart ship.
Lastly, you might not stop them, so you get hit.
The last line of defense would be the Phalanx. A number of these from surface ships would, (in theory) throw up a radar guided hail of projectiles that would shred an incoming missile(s).