The U.S has by far largest defense budget in the world.
It has been at the forefront of many grounds breaking technology when it comes to military
weapons like 5th generation fighter, stealth bombers etc.
US Navy is the most well-equipped navy in the world.
It operates around 10 nuclear-powered supercarriers which is more than all the other nations combined.
But there is one area where the U.S seems to have lagged far behind -Anti Ship Missiles.
The U.S currently uses Harpoon missile as the main Anti Ship weapon.
Initially developed in the 1970s, it has seen many upgraded over the year but is essentially
a 5-decade old design.
It is an over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile manufactured by Boeing.
Harpoon has a capability to reach targets at a maximum distance of 80 miles or 130 KM.
Harpoon has a speed of 0.7 Mach, which means it has high subsonic speed but not supersonic.
When compared to the what many other Anti Ship missile being deployed, Harpoon seems
prehistoric.
For example, the Indo Russian Brahmos missile can fly at supersonic speed and have a range
of 185 miles or 300 km.
The Chinese, the YJ-12 has a speed of around Mach 2, if launched from low altitude and
up to Mach 3.2, if launched from high altitude.
It has a maximum range of around 235 miles or 380 km depending on launch altitude.
The 3M22 Zircon developed by Russia can reach speed up to Mach 8 and has a max range of
600 miles or around 1000 km depending on launch trajectory.
U.S do have SM1 & SM2 supersonic missile which have a primary role of air defense with a
secondary role of as Anti Ship missiles, but their small warheads are not capable of crippling
a warship.
In this video, Defense Updates analyzes why the U.S is not deploying supersonic ant ship
missile unlike countries like Russia, China & India?
Let's get started.
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The U.S has been fighting with adversaries that have no or very small navy like Iraq
or Afghanistan.
All this while Russia and China were not in radar.
America was focusing on military assets that were more in line with these battles like
the development of drones.
This lead to a lull in the development of advance Anti-ship missile.
But things have changed, in the last decade, Russia & China have emerged as a critical
threat.
Both of these countries have strong navies and are actively pursuing ways to counter
U.S Navy by developing a wide variety of Anti-ship missiles.
A warship can detect and track an incoming Anti Ship missile depending on many aspects
like the performance of its radars, how high the missile is flying above the surface of
water and size of the missile
The first aspect ‘performance of the radar’ is is beyond control but the other two aspects
are directly governed by the doctrine adopted.
There is always a trade-off, let us understand this.
A supersonic anti-ship missile can sustain their speed over long ranges if they use a
parabolic trajectory where a lot of the distance is covered in the upper atmosphere where the
air is thin.
But when doing so, there are detected from much farther away.
The is a natural phenomenon attributed to the curvature of the earth.
When an Anti Ship missile is launched in sea skimming trajectory, they tend to have a much
smaller range and the platform launching them will have to be much closer to the enemy.
The U.S has gone with the approach of having a missile that is subsonic but can be deployed
with the low altitude flight path.
To mitigate the tradeoff some Anti Ship Missiles are designed so that they can carry a huge
amount of fuel and burn them at a very rapid pace.
Through this approach, they can achieve the goal of supersonic speed over long ranges
even when flying in sea skimming low altitude trajectory.
But this makes them very large which increases their RCS and make them bigger targets for
the radars to detect.
Also, there is another factor that hinders them, that is the - launch platform.
The large anti-ship missiles can only be deployed from very large warships or they will have
to deployed in very small numbers.
U.S Navy uses the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
Arleigh Burke-class was designed as multi-mission destroyers capable of Anti Aircraft Warfare
(AAW), Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) and Anti Surface Warfare (ASuW).
U.S Navy has 66 Arleigh Burke-class warships in active service.
Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is among the largest destroyers built in the United States
having an overall length of 509 feet (155 m) and displacement of about 9,200 tons.
Harpoon being very compact in dimension - 4.6 m in length, 13.5 in diameter and less than
500 lb are deployed through their own launchers in Arleigh Burke class warships.
Arleigh Burke-class has Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) as the main weapons chamber and
can be used for bigger missiles.
Each warship has a total of 90 or 96 cell Mk 41 Vertical Launch System depending on
variant.
These can accommodate many different types of weapons like Tomahawk cruise missile, SM1,
SM2 or SM3 missile to name a few.
But Mk 41 is not suitable for housing a large supersonic or hypersonic anti-ship missile.
For example, a Tomahawk missile housed in the Mk 41 VLS has a length 6 m of & width
of 0.5m & has a mass of 2900 lb whereas a Brahmos has a length of 8.4 m and width of
0.6 and has a mass of 6600 kg.
Similarly, P-700 Granit anti-ship missile used in Russian Kirov class has a length of
10 m, a width of 0.85 m and weigh in at almost 15500 lb.
The launch chambers used for Brahmos & P-700 are physically much bigger when compared to
the Mk41 VLS cells.
So, either the U.S Navy will have to design an entirely new launch system which will affect
the vessels capacity to accommodate the other weapons or build a new class of
guided missile destroyer.
It must be noted that serial production of Zumwalt class of stealth destroyer which are
much larger than Arleigh Burke-class having a displacement of 15,742 tons is now canceled
and only 3 will be available for U.S Navy.
Even keeping all aspects into consideration, it can be said that the U.S is lagging by
a huge margin when it comes to Anti Ship Missile.
Brahmos missile when using sea skimming path can achieve supersonic speed and strike at
a distance of 110 miles or 180 km which is significantly greater than Harpoon.
Russian 3M 54 Kalibr is able to balance speed, trajectory, size, and range to a great extent.
Certain variants of this missile which have a size similar to Tomahawk flies at subsonic
speed in the initial stage and boasts to supersonic speed in the final part achieving an excellent
trade-off.
American is deploying AGM-158C LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) to replace Harpoon.
The missile is stealthy, has a range of 230 mi and can reach high subsonic speed.
U.S Navy is in the process of acquiring Naval Strike Missile which is developed by Norway-based
Kongsberg Gruppen and U.S. missile maker Raytheon.
The missile smart and has a range of 100 miles and capability to flay at subsonic speed.
Though better than Harpoon, these still have a long way to go and U.S need to pull up the
sock especially when adversaries are deploying hypersonic missiles.
America’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) report have stated that the U.S currently
lacks the defenses required to protect against the latest crop of hypersonic weapons being
developed by China and Russia,
The report states, “China and Russia are pursuing hypersonic
weapons because their speed, altitude, and maneuverability may defeat most missile defense
systems, and they may be used to improve long-range conventional and nuclear strike capabilities.
There are no existing countermeasures.”
It remains to be seen how the U.S responds to this challenge.