Chris Rawley has an article up on ID where he talks about the Tomahawk anti-ship missile and the issues that have in the past made them difficult to use and how they're overcoming those difficulties.
He also talks about the long range of the missile.
I say that's all well and good but one problem remains. We're going to need more cells. A subsonic missile is not hard to kill. That means saturation attacks....or at the very least multiple missiles per target.
So you take your average Burke class destroyer and now you have to go to war with the thought that I need a war load that takes into account anti-air missions, anti-surface missions and land attack missions. All these missions are fighting for space in my vertical launch system.
How do you figure out your warload? Who's gonna get stiffed when it comes to needs? Is it gonna be the Marine thats looking to the Navy to use its Tomahawks to interdict the enemy's supply lines in heavily defended air space? Or is the carrier going to have to take a chance that the anti-air missiles that its depending on have been filled with anti-shipping missiles...or is it the LCS' guys that were hoping that big brother has enough missiles to tag more heavily armed ships if they popped up over the horizon?
We need more cells and this, while nice, just illustrates the problem.
*I just realized that this missile really has applications for the P-8, B-52 and even the J-8...remember every sensor must be a shooter and every shooter a sensor. The Navy is simply providing a tool to get Air Force heavies into the anti ship battle!
hence why the four ohio ssgns are sp valuable and would be great to have more of them
ReplyDeleteeveryone cheers for the subs and their missiles but everyone forgets that they have an intel mission that might preclude them from being able to fire their missiles! or they might be in a place where they can't....or whatever...but the subs are not the answer to this question.
ReplyDeleteSol,
ReplyDeleteHave more subs than intel missions.....
Obviously, subs are expensive, and it would be cheaper to use surface ships, but there's no reason a fleet admiral shouldnt be able to hold an SSGN back for this sort of role.
If it was up to me, there would be arsenal ships too,
i hear what you guys are saying but procurement dollars just don't bear that out. we're building 2 nuclear subs a year for the next.....whatever...the ship building plan doesn't have a stop point to the sub building.
ReplyDeletein that regard we're becoming like the old Soviet Union. and i think we must be following their sea denial strategy.
Another thing to consider is making VLS cells containerized among a variety of surface ships including carriers, amphibs, oilers, escorted tankers. Decentralize the arsenal so it isn't stuck in one large sea-going target(which is why the Arsenal ship was shot down). The containers would prevent the enemy from knowing which weapons it held and couldn't be sure which one had surface-to-air, cruise or supersonic anti-ship missiles. Is that T-AO or T-AKE defenseless or is it carrying something that could shoot down an aircraft?
ReplyDeleteWe don't just need more VLS cells, we also need a supersonic replacement for the Harpoon. We don't have to replace Harpoons, but all of our anti-ship missiles are subsonic and it is time for an upgrade. Taiwan has the Hsiung Ffeng (Brave Wind) III and the Japanese are developing the XASM-3 both of which have greater range than the Harpoons.
greater range than the harpoon but they don't hold a candle to the anti ship tomahawk range wise.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of being indelicate, that TASM video is Raytheon's wet dream. Half of that stuff is barely going to work and the other half will require years more development and huge amounts of money if it ever works. How do I know this? History. What weapons program in history has delivered on all its promises? A great weapons program is lucky to deliver on half. We all recall the LCS sales pitches, don't we? A single LCS was going to utterly dominate the littorals. Turns out the LCS is actually an expensive but mediocre Coast Guard cutter.
ReplyDeleteThe video basically displays a list of wishful thinking capabilities while totally ignoring enemy defenses, jamming, satellite loss, etc. As a sales pitch, that's to be expected. Hopefully, we are smart enough to take the claims with a grain of salt the size of the moon.
Having said that, bringing back the TASM, with possibly a few modest enhancements, as a stopgap measure is quite reasonable and I hope the Navy follows through.