Rolling Airframe Missile
Posted on 08/18/2003 8:20:55 PM PDT by 1stFreedom
This is the headline that should have been
Instead, the headlines stated that Raytheon rolled out the SeaRAM anti-ship missle defense system.
What is significant about this anti-missile defense system is that it can defeat the Mach 2.5 Russian "Sunburn" anti-ship missle. Until the rollout of the SeaRAM, the Russians have enjoyed a very dangerous advantage in anti-ship missile technology. In order to destablize the power of the United States, the Russians have been selling the Sunburn missles to China. The Russians have refused to sell them to the West, and despite the best efforts of it's spies, the west has very little information on them. (Thanks Klinton for passing up the deal when they were offered!)
The Sunburn missles are capable of delivering conventional and nuclear warheads to sea-based targets.
The standard US Navy anti-missle defense system is too slow to engage the Sunburn. This system, called the Phalanx, has only about 2.5 seconds to react to the Sunburn. In multiple tests, the Phalanx failed to engage high speed missiles in time to protect a ship.
Speed aside, the other threat the Sunburn poses is it's destructive force. The Sunburn skims the sea and pops up at the last seconds to slam down on the decks of ships. The combined speed and warhead payload would be devastating to all ships in the US arsenal.
The Chinese have purchased a number of Sunburn missiles from the Russians and are counting on them to neutralize the threat from the United States Navy in any scenario involving Tiawan.
One has to do some digging to find out how effective the system is. Raytheon isn't really saying much about it's performance, but I've managed to dig up some info.
"In 10 scenarios, real Anti-Ship Missiles and supersonic Vandal target missiles (Mach 2.5) were intercepted and destroyed under realistic conditions. RAM Block 1 achieved first-shot kills on every target in its presented scenarios, including sea-skimming, diving and highly maneuvering profiles in both single and stream attacks."
"With these test firings RAM demonstrated its unparalleled success against today's most challenging threats. Cumulatively to date more than 180 missiles have been fired against anti-ship missiles and other targets, achieving a success rate over 95%"
The SeaRAM is a drop in replacement for the Phalanx system. The RAM missle itself is a mach 2, second generation derivative of the Sidewinder and Stinger missles. It features BOTH infrared and radar based target tracking, allowing for use against future low radar cross section (stealthy) anti-ship missles.
The effective range of the RAM missile is 11 miles. The CIWS part of the SeaRAM can track multiple targets and fire multiple missles at a single target. Each SeaRAM platform holds 11 RAM missiles.
Wait, how can this be? Everyone knows a missile can't hit another missile. Don't tell the democrats.
And another thing, if its success rate is less than 100%, then its no good. We need to stop spending money on this right now.
Rolling Airframe Missile
Don't get me wrong, this is all well and good but now that the technological questions are solved the real question is one of relative costs. How much does the bad guy spend for his offensive missile verses how much we spend on our defensive missile(s!), and how much does the platform being protected cost(not all platforms cost as much as a carrier or sub)? After all if it cost us 10 times as much to shoot down one of theirs we are on the wrong side of the lever.
Peter Schulz of Porsche once stated that the physical plant of Porsche could be burnt or bombed to dust and, if only his people survived with their skills, they'd be back building cars within a year and a half. That has to apply double for the people of Taiwan, who mostly build printed circuit boards and things requiring far less heavy tooling than building Porsches does.
The United States still owns any number of islands in the Pacific. The chicoms could be made to answer this question:
Are you claiming to own an island, or are you claiming to own the 25 million people who moved to Taiwan precisely because they did not wish to live under communist rule?
The US should have a plan to move the entire population of Taiwan along with as much of their productive capabilities as possible to some other island or US territory, several thousand miles from China. The Taiwanese would be back in business as usual within a year, and the chicoms would be DIH.
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