Russian "Sunburn" anti-ship missle threat neutralized...

Yes. Of course, you have just triggered a nuclear war....

This article also ran on the Washington Times,July 16/2003

Dangerous defense deficiency

By William L. Stearman

"Our nation's expeditionary forces will remain at considerable risk for want of suitable sea-based fire-support until DD(X) [destroyer] joins the fleet in significant numbers."
Thus was Congress reminded of one of our most serious defense deficiencies by the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Michael Hagee, in April 1 testimony. It could well be 30 years or more (if then) before the DD(X) could be fielded "in significant numbers," which means there is no near-term naval surface fire support in sight for any future conflict in the vital littorals.
Gen. Tommy Franks wrote me, after September 11, "Naval surface fire support will remain key to the success of future littoral operations."
Gen. Hagee's predecessor, Gen. James Jones, was also greatly concerned about the "absence of naval gunfire." In April 6, 2002, hearings, Senate Seapower subcommittee Chairman Edward Kennedy, quite correctly declared that there was "little hope the Navy would be able to meet Marine Corps fire support requirements in the foreseeable [future]." Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vernon Clark only countered that "Marines are going to be supported by combat air."
However, the Pentagon transformation director, retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, recently wrote that close air support, the kind Marines (and soldiers) need, is only about 25 percent effective. Unlike guns on ships, air support is affected by the weather and is not reliably tactically responsive.
There is, fortunately, right at hand a very effective and affordable solution to this gap, if the Navy could sidestep its groundless anti-battleship bias and think "outside the box," as the Air Force has in extending the 1950s B-52 to 2040 by upgrading its systems. Public Law 104-106 requires the Navy to maintain the battleships Iowa and Wisconsin as reserve mobilization assets with the necessary logistics for both in active service, providing fire support for the Marine Corps. As the Marine Corps told Congress in 2000 and 2001, "Battleships can provide a significant fire support capability and maintaining them on the Naval Vessel Register ensures they are available in case of conflict."
Consistent with the intent of the law, upgrading these two ships ready to fight on short notice could largely provide adequate naval surface fire support for our troops for up to 30 years, greatly mitigating a serious and potentially dangerous deficiency.
The two battleships strikingly proved their worth in the Persian Gulf war. Nevertheless, after the war, the Navy needlessly retired these two battleships. In a 2000 interview, Gen. Jones stated he regretted taking these ships out of service before the fire support problem had been fixed. Clearly the two battleships had fixed this problem and could have continued to do so up to now. The Navy, however, has disregarded this and has consistently defaulted in providing other fire support for Marines.
The Navy, however, reportedly believes it would be a waste of money to upgrade the two reserve battleships because they have no future utility in its 21st Century fleet.
These ships were extensively modernized in the 1980s. They are by far the world's most survivable warships and among the world's fastest and most powerful capital ships. They have a good 30 years of service life left. The range of their 16-inch guns can be increased near-term to more than 40 miles with a proven 13-inch sabot round. Ranges of thousands of existing projectiles can be extended. And 100-miles-plus 11-inch guided sabot rounds will meet future Marine needs.
Most dramatically, 16-inch precision-guided scramjet projectiles, which Pratt & Whitney experts have declared "feasible," could reach 500 miles in seven minutes. With sufficient support, these rounds could come into service as soon, if not sooner, than the DD(X). This could revolutionize naval warfare.
For example, reportedly, the air campaign launched against Iraq on March 21 "unleashed more than 2,500 missiles and bombs across Iraq in the first 72 hours." (The Washington Post, April 27) Two battleships could, however, in 24 hours, have fired 2,600 precision-guided scramjet projectiles that could have reached any target in Iraq within seven minutes and with a variety of warheads, including deep-penetrators. The battleships would have had a total of 2,200 personnel as opposed to the many thousands more required for the 2,500.missiles and bombs.
The massively protected battleships are the only ships we have that do not have to retreat in the face of terrorist or other threats, as did the 5th Fleet when, on June 22, 2001, it prudently put out to sea in the face of an al Qaeda threat to avoid another USS Cole disaster.
Also, with their vast supply and fuel capacities, extensive repair shops and good hospital facilities, they can double as secure forward-based logistics support ships in high-threat areas. They could also effectively insert and extract special forces by sea or air (with helicopters and Ospreys) and provide them fire support as needed.
Upgrading the two battleships for rapid reactivation with adequate support would cost far less than the cost of one DDG destroyer, one SSGN (converted missile submarine) or one future DD(X). And as the late Bob Stump, recent chairman of the House Armed Services Committee once cogently stated: "Measured against their capabilities" battleships are "the most cost effective and least manpower intensive warships we have."

William L. Stearman is executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association.

**Pretty clear thinking here Paul....I like it..except for "Ospreys" : )

SEA RAM System Test on Royal Navy Destroyer HMS YORK

Raytheon Systems Limited recently announced that the trial fit of the SEA RAM Inner-Layer Defence System (ILDS) onboard HMS YORK has achieved its first significant milestone with the system being lifted onboard the ship ready for final installation and trials. SEA RAM is the low cost evolution of the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) into an autonomous Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Inner Layer Defence System.

Six companies from Europe and the United States, including Raytheon, RAM-System GmbH (RAMSYS), Devonport Royal Dockyard Ltd. (DML), Hunting Engineering Ltd., and Thales Optronics (formerly Pilkington Optronics), have formed a transatlantic consortium to pursue the next step in the evolution of ship defence. Raytheon Systems Limited (RSL), Raytheon's UK-based subsidiary, will serve as the prime contractor. The consortium will draw upon the various strengths of the member companies to establish a strong industrial base in Europe for the SEA RAM programme.

The Operational Suitability Model (OSM) has been jointly developed by Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Ariz., and RAMSYS GmbH. It has undergone extensive shore based trials in the US before being shipped to the UK where the system was re-assembled and Set to Work by a joint Raytheon / DML Team. Basic training on the system has been conducted for the benefit of HMS YORK's maintainer and operators whilst at DML. Once final fitting has been completed onboard HMS YORK, the system will undergo extensive trials at sea and will remain onboard the YORK until towards the end of the year.

The demonstration embraces the tenets of the Smart Procurement Initiative, giving the RN the opportunity to work with industry on developing and de-risking the system, but with no current formal commitment to buy.

The aim of the trial is to demonstrate:

Compatibility of the system and that it is supportable and safe when used in all RN activities.

Operationally that it meets the perceived need and that the SEA RAM system could provide the extended protection range for RN ships against various forms of attack.

Cost effectiveness and affordability; a system that could be acquired, installed and supported at an affordable cost and low risk via use of existing assets, infrastructure, training and logistics.

Live firing will not be carried out during this specific trial, as sufficient missile performance data is already available from the records of more than 150 RAM firings, resulting in greater than 95 percent success.

Raytheon Company is the prime contractor for the Phalanx CIWS and continues to serve as the Phalanx design authority for the U.S. Department of Defense and 20 international navies including the Royal Navy. Raytheon's Missile Systems business unit in Tucson, Ariz., has an equal partnership with RAM-System GmbH (RAMSYS) in Germany to design, develop and produce the RAM Weapon System and are now jointly developing the SEA RAM system. RSL and the SEA RAM UK Consortium will be responsible for the UK demonstration and potential introduction into UK service.

~~~

In other news, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told PLA Gen. Xiong Guang-kai to, "get down, B!tch."

AAMOF, I remember Clinton turning down Russian offers to sell us some Sunburns for whatever use we wanted to make of them. I wonder how long that delayed this good news?

Words can not express my loathing and contempt for that hominid...

Thanks for the ping PhilDragoo.

I didn't see that Condoleeza Rice quote on the news. :-)

Yes. Of course, you have just triggered a nuclear war....

Some opponents may not even care. See my tag line...

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

And the alternative defensive strategy would be ?

Ah! Details ... :)

This is a perennial thread on the sci.military.naval newsgroup on Usenet. The consensus there of a lot of very smart people who have professional expertise in the area is that bringing back battleships was a bad idea in the Reagan era, and would be a worse idea now.

Among the issues: Their power plants are accidents waiting to happen.

Without air cover they're sitting ducks, so you'd need a carrier with them anyway.

Their heavy armor would be largely ineffective in stopping the current generation of antiship missiles.

Launching cruise missiles or other high tech weapons can be done just as well by ships that are much less expensive to operate.

The effectiveness of the sixteen-inch main battery in the gunfire support role is exaggerated. Getting close enough to use the guns puts the ship danger-close to shore-based antiship missiles, and there are few targets ashore that really NEED the explosive power of a sixteen inch shell. Those that do would be better taken care of by air power.

Your comments may seem valid..but then..you must apply them to all U.S. surface Naval combatants..including the pre-positioned Fleet ships..allong with RO -RO.
They are all within reach to stand off munitions in the Asian theatre..Persian Gulf..Med.
Maybe Mid Pacific and Mid Atlantic trans gets one outside the danger envleope..but soon enough..one is in Harms way.
Scramjet munitions..with a 500 mile range.?
Why not let satillite wollop the enemy from afar.
A BB's powerplant..insignificant cost in regards to the value of the asset if it can lob shells at fraction of the cost of a cruise missile..or Airdropped JDAM.
2,000 crew...heck..they could tech the BB'S up and run them on little staff..they could be like the author states..a vessel to carry troops in theatre.
One day..an automated arsenal ship will appear..
Tooling up a BB'..playing with scramjet muntions..learning automation and satillite targetting over the horizon.
For the blood money paid out to nations like Turkey and others..and to have limited power projection useage for it...I'm for doing up 2 BB's..and see how they reshape theatre combat..from 500 miles out : ).

Thanks for the correction.

Good article from the archives by Charles Smith - CLICK.

Thanks, PhilDragoo! Your posts are always very interesting!

The Yakhont is essentially a ramjet Starbright. As a ramjet sea-skimming mach 2.5 missle, it acts as a longer ranged Moskit/Sunburn
The Russians have developed some rather nice ASMs, the latest being the Klub, a three stage supersonic sea skimmer, with a diameter under 533cm. India has purchased some of these.
The real problem is detecting the incomming anti-shipping missle in time to react.
A quick moving missle flying 5 meters off the sea o (or worse land) is hard to detect. If a SPY1 Aegis ship of an American or allied battle group is active, missles can be detected miles away. However, doing so makes the battle group's presense detectable from over 350 miles away. Thus, in many situations, the ships will only use passive sensors until they detect a threat.
Assuming that we can detect sea skimmers at a reasonable range of 20 miles, a commander would only have 9 seconds to shoot down the threat.

Thanks, Phil for the bump and the article.

Ping.

Each SeaRAM platform holds 11 RAM missiles.

I've been tracking with great approval the RAM programs since the inception, and agree that this is the best interim fix...but the limited 'ammo' of each installation poses a dillemma. They can potentially be over-whelmed by a fusillade of missles which exhausts the defense battery. The Chinese have been openly stressing the 'innundation' approach, so they may be mass manufacturing Sunburns/Akula and variants now that they have working models to reverse-engineer.

Therefore, We need to probably have 'air defense' salvo ships that have the equivalent of ten or more of these installations, and pair these salvo ships up with high-value ships such as the carriers and amphibious assault ships.

The more effectual long-term fix would likely be a deployment mixture of the following two technologies on all our ships:

(1) a naval version of the Army's (TRW) new tactical high-energy laser system which has proven effectual against hypersonic missiles...even able to intercept and destroy the extremely small target of artillery shells coming in at close to Mach 2. Each of these units can apparently make about 100 intercepts. The technology is developed, and what needs to be done is adapt it's use to the Navy and gear up over the next five years for installation. Heavy weather may degrade performance however.

(2) A supplemental technology is the rail gun, which can be tailored in size to fire a smart projectile at Mach 4 or 5 and better. This technology is already closer to availability than is commonly known. Adapting this to the 'Close In Weapons System' air-defense role should be feasible in the relatively near future...say having a deployable package in some 10 years or so. And it would be all-weather.

In the 1980s, the British deployed their much heralded, and very expensve, Hi-Tech, "SEA-DART" naval anti-missile system. They even tried to sell this system worldwide, including to China.There was no takers

Not surprisingly, as the system turns out to be, unfortunately a total failure

Thank you so much for the information and insight!

I'd add this:

3. Metal Storm CIWS. If a missle makes it past the anti-missile missiles, then flood the sky / sea with hundreds of thousands of rounds. A wall of lead which is impregnable. Especially effective against skim/diving missiles, could defend the top of the ship from diving attacks. Unlike the Phalanx machine gun, the metal storm could cover a very broad area in milliseconds.

>>However, doing so makes the battle group's presense detectable from over 350 miles away

In this day and age, I don't think any battle groups presence is unknown by Russia, China, or the United States.