(well this thread reminded me of that....so....)
Posted on 01/15/2020 11:08:45 PM PST by knighthawk
ARLINGTON, Va. - The Navy’s newest destroyer may fire a not-yet-to-be fielded Conventional Prompt Strike conventionally-armed missile engineered to hit anywhere on earth within an hour, service program managers said. The weapon, now being considered by Navy weapons developers for the emerging USS Zumwalt, will bring new attack options to the stealthy destroyer being prepared for combat as soon as 2021, Capt. Kevin Smith, Zumwalt-class destroyer Program Manager said Jan. 15 at the Surface Naval Association Annual Symposium.
“This would be the perfect platform for Conventional Prompt Strike,” Smith said.
The Conventional Prompt Strike weapons program, which emerged [in] the era of former President George W. Bush, is designed to arm a ballistic missile with a conventional warhead, bringing the range and speed similar to a nuclear weapon to conventional strike.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
They have been talking about missiles like this for decades now, but we don’t seem to be any closer to a deployable weapon than we were in the 90s.
Ship without a mission meets mission without a ship.
That is one sweet looking fishing trawler (radar signature).
An Arleigh Burke DDG has a similar signature - but it can actually transit overseas and remain there for months.
This seems kind of expensive when you could have a sub near by shoot a cruise missile.
How’s China and Russia to know the difference?
Arleigh Burkes aren’t stealthy at all by current standards. The Zumwalts have somewhere around 1/50th the RCS of a Burke, while being much larger in displacement. We try to reduce that with radar absorbing tiles and blankets all over the ship, but you can only do so much. But yeah, the Burkes actually deploy regularly and have purpose, while the Zumwalts have become a very expensive “proof of concept” for other future designs.
Stealth is overrated in aircraft and it is many times over overrated in ships. 1/50 of Burke is big enough to detect at any sufficient range with modern radar technology. Not to mention radar is not a single way to track assets of such sort.
“The Conventional Prompt Strike weapons program, which emerged [in] the era of former President George W. Bush, is designed to arm a ballistic missile with a conventional warhead, bringing the range and speed similar to a nuclear weapon to conventional strike.”
How does a jumpy nuclear armed adversary tell the difference?
L8r
That’s the whole point. These weapon systems are announced to make adversaries alter their protocols regarding second strike. To instill uncertainty and doubt are they under attack by WMD or not.
The idiocy of this policy is obvious for everyone who studied the history of WWI.
It’s enough (in both aircraft and ships) to massively reduce the ability of fire and forget weapons to get a good enough track and lock on to the vehicles. *Strategic* radar stealth, i.e., ‘no radar can see me at significant range at all and I can sneak past’ hasn’t been a viable technology since the early 2000s. A group of Australian scientists figured out that a virtual large array of radars that are datalinked to each other *can* see or infer the location of any stealthed craft - well enough to tell one is operating in the area and to vector air assets to the general vicinity of the craft, not enough for a missile lock or gun direction with current technology. Which is why the Russians and Chinese sell their antiaircraft systems with datalink capability now.
Why does the Navy want to replicate the mission of the SSBN’s. I ‘get’ that the “Zummwalts” are probably going to serve-out their lives as test-beds. Maybe they should paint them orange?
Whoa...
“The Navy’s newest destroyer may fire a not-yet-to-be fielded Conventional Prompt Strike conventionally-armed missile...”
—
Taking apart this sentence, the qualifier “may” disqualifies everything else that follows. And to add to the fluff factor of the article, the missile “yet to be fielded” means it is not yet out of testing and perhaps doesn’t even exist.
It’s unconventionally conversational.
It’s unconventionally conventional. Duh!
I believe the real driver behind making ships appear smaller/dimmer to RF sensors is to increase the effectiveness of RF defensive systems. Things designed to mask a vessel from an incoming seeker, or seduce one away, etc.
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