The US Navy has acknowledged the need for developing the next generation Anti Ship Missile.
Anti Ship Missile has been the area of concern for sometime now.
The US HARPOON missile is comprehensively outgunned by INDO RUSSIAN BRAHMOS.
India is an ally but Russia is a rival, and has deployed BRAHMOS to counter the US Navy.
In this video, Defense Updates analyzes the problems with HARPOON and examines if
LOCKHEED MARTIN LRASM (LONG RANGE ANTI-SHIP MISSILE) is th apt answer to BRAHMOS?
Lets get started.
HARPOON BLOCK II ER (Extended Range) is an over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile manufactured
by Boeing.
It is major upgrade of HARPOON BLOCK 1 missile and is currently the main ASM (Anti Ship Missile),
in USA’s armor.
HARPOON 2 ER has improved turbojet engine with electronic fuel controls giving it much
greater range, when compared to its predecessor.
It uses solid propellant booster for surface & submarine launch.
It has a capability to reach targets at a maximum distance of 124 KM.
HARPOON is powered by traditional solid propellant engine.
HARPOON has speed of 0.7 Mach, which means it has high subsonic speed but not supersonic.
The design is of older generation and coupled with low speed, it is vulnerable to air defenses.
BRAHMOS is one of a kind anti ship missile, which has supersonic speed.
It travels at 2.7-3.0 Mach.
It is a two-stage missile with a solid propellant booster engine as its first stage, which brings
it to supersonic speed and then gets separated.
The liquid ramjet or the second stage then takes the missile closer to 3 Mach speed in cruise phase.
Currently BrahMos has a range of 295 km.
Russia is a signatory of 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 non-MTCR nation, whose range is more than 300 KM.
This is why Brahmos range had to be limited below 300 km.
Recently India has entered into the Missile Technology Control Regime, which effectively
gives it a free hand in developing or importing long-range missiles from other countries.
India and Russia has decided to double the range of BrahMos missile from existing
295 km to 600 km.
Russian President Putin made a mention of this last year, when speaking to journalists
from Russia he said:, “We have agreed to improve the BrahMos missile, which will be
land, air and sea launched.
We will also work to increase its range.”
In both range and speed BRAHMOS is far ahead of HARPOON 2 ER, and pose one the strongest
challenge to US Naval fleet.
Russia is already working on hypersonic version of BRAHMOS and it is also developing ZIRCON
missile, which reached speed of Mach 8 in recent test.
Both of these employ scramjet engines.
The AGM-158C LRASM is a stealthy anti-ship cruise missile under development for the United States Navy
The joint DARPA & US Navy LRASM program was initiated in 2009 to deliver a new generation
of anti-ship weapons, offering longer ranges and better odds against improving air defense systems.
Rob McHenry, a program manager in the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA, explained it this
way to Aviation Week:
“We want US Navy cruisers and destroyers to be able to stand off from outside of potential
adversaries’ direct counter fire range, and be able to safely engage and destroy high
value targets they may be engaging against from extended range, well beyond potential
adversary ranges that we may have to face…
“Once the missile flies that far, it has a requirement to be able to independently
detect and validate the target that it was shot at.
Finding that target, the missile will have to be able to penetrate the air defenses and
finally, once it gets to that target, it has to have a lethal capability to make a difference
once it gets there.”
The US military is also expecting an environment where enemies try to jam or destroy the GPS
system, compounding its difficulties in targeting opponents.
Those considerations underline the importance of autonomous targeting.
Hence beyond its anti-jamming digital GPS, LRASM will also rely on a 2-way data link,
a radar sensor that can detect ships and a day/night camera for positive identification
and final targeting.
The LRASM is 168-inches long and 2,500 pounds.
It is estimated that the LRASM has a range of 300 nmi (560 km; 350 mi).
LRASM is armed with a proven 1,000-pound penetrator and blast-fragmentation warhead.
LRASM is expected to enter service in 2018.
It will be a major leap over HARPOON 2 ER.
Though it will be have extremely advanced automated targeting system, it will still
be a subsonic missile.
By the time of its deployment, Russia will be in position to field BRAHMOS 2 as well
as Zircon, both of which will be hypersonic missile.
As per the above details, it can be concluded that US will still be lagging in the
Anti Ship Missile category when compared to Russia.
Neither Russia nor China, the most powerful US rivals has the budget to match the US defense spending.
Total US military expenditure of $611 billion is over one-third of world military expenditure.
This is nearly 3 times the level of China’s spending and 9 times the spending of Russia.
Hence both Russia and China have searched for asymmetric weapons that can defeat American
aircraft carrier and destroyers that project power beyond the American shores.
Hypersonic Anti Ship missiles are part of this effort and are here to stay as a quantum
leap in destructive military firepower.
This is one area where US needs to pull up its socks.