The most credible threat to U.S Navy surface combatants like destroyers and supercarrier
comes from the anti-ship missile.
One of the most potent anti-ship missiles is the Brahmos missile.
The BrahMos cruise missile is produced by India-based BrahMos Aerospace, set up in 1998,
and is a joint venture between India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO)
and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia.
India is an ally of US and Indo-American relationship has been getting stronger in the last decade.
But this is not the case with Russia which is a rival.
In this video Defense Updates, analyzes if U.S Navy can defend against Brahmos missile?
Let's get in the details.
Brahmos weigh in at 3000 kg, has a length of 8.4 m and diameter of 0.6 m.
It has a solid fuel rocket booster for the first stage and liquid-fueled ramjet for the
second stage.
Brahmos can be launched from aircraft, land installations and warships.
It is being tested for induction into submarines also.
A hypersonic version of the missile, BrahMos-II, is also presently under development with a
speed of Mach 7-8 to boost aerial fast strike capability.
It is expected to be ready for testing by 2020
Brahmos is currently considered to be one of a most deadly anti-ship missile.
The reason is its unique features.
Let's check them.
1. It has a supersonic speed of Mach 3 or 1 km per second providing very little time to intercept.
2. Brahmos uses a 300 kg Semi-Armor piercing warhead and also has very high Kinetic energy
since Kinetic energy is directly proportional to the square of velocity.
Brahmos actually has about 9 times the Kinetic Energy of conventional subsonic missile
like Tomahawk.
The combined destructive force of massive warhead and kinetic energy is lethal for even
the biggest surface combatants.
Brahmas has been known to break ships in half in several tests.
3. It can perform S maneuvers in final stages of flight.The missile basically doesn’t
move in straight line, making it very hard to intercept.
4. There are lots of redundancies in the guidance system - right from the INS, GPS, GLONASS
and GAGAN making it hard to jam.
5.The accuracy of around 1 square meter makes it apt for a precision strike on high-value targets.
6. Russia is a signatory of the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime) and India was not.
According to the MTCR guidelines Russia could not help or jointly develop a missile with
a none MTCR nation, whose range is more than 300 KM.
This is why Brahmos range had to be limited below 300 KM initially.
But last year India has entered MTCR and both countries are now working to increase the
range to 600 km.
The excellent range will enable it to be launched from standoff distances.
The best defense against the Brahmos missile is to destroy the launch platforms before
the missile could be launched.
The diverse launch platform makes this task difficult but not impossible.
Once the Brahmos gets launched successfully, it's a totally different ball game.
The normal procedure is to direct fighter jets from nearby aircraft carriers towards
the incoming missile and shoot it down.
But this is not a viable option against Brahmos because of its Mach 3 speed.
US Navy will mainly depend on the onboard weaponry for defense and there are 3 of those.
1. The Medium range defense is provided by Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile which is quad packed and
has a range of 50 km range.
2. RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile is present for point defense in U.S supercarrier and
not on destroyers.
These have a speed of Mach 2 and range of 9 km.
3. Phalanx CIWS is a close-in weapon system is present for last-ditch defense.
It has 3,000 rounds/minute rate of fire and has a maximum firing range of 3.5 km.
For the analysis, we are considering a salvo of 8 Brahmos, half of what a new generation
of Russian frigates carries.
There are potentially 2 scenarios.
1. Solitary warship like an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer is targeted.
2. A U.S Carrier Battle Group is attacked.
When a warship is alone and not having AWACS cover then the BrahMos will be detected at
about 35-40 km from the ship when it is in its sea-skimming terminal phase and on the
verge of employing evasive S maneuvers.
The warship will have 35 - 40 seconds to react.
The 2 layer defense of Arleigh Burke theoretically be able to defend against all missile but
practically it may be able to intercept only 3-4 of the missile.
It is highly likely that the warship will be knocked out.
A U.S Carrier Battle Group always has an AWACS cover and Brahmos will be most likely be detected
at around 150 km range.
The flotilla will have around 150 seconds to react.
The Carrier Battle Group with multiple destroyer and frigates travel in such a formation that
supercarrier is not directly in the line of fire.
The ships will also be able to coordinate the defenses.
In this case, the outer layer of destroyer(and frigates) will be able to intercept most of
the missiles or could also maneuver to take hits to protect the supercarrier.
Still, it is not impossible that 1-2 may sneak in and home in on the supercarrier.
The 3 layer defense of the supercarrier may be able to take those out all of those on
some occasions and may not on some other.
So, it is difficult to predict and results will vary but the potential of Brahmos can
be judged by the fact that few of these launched in salvo has the capability to challenge multi-billion
dollar warships of the U.S Navy.