Is the large Missile Destroyer/Cruiser becoming obsolete?

On the subject of the Sheffeild, it actually sunk several days later under tow in high seas, not as the result of the actual missle impact (although the Exocet was powerful enough to mission kill the ship by causing it to list and disabling the elctrical system). The Sea Dart system is somewhat primitive compared to later systems like the SM-2 and the Aster, and CIWS has evolved since then too, so I think it's safe to say that today missle defences would not perform as badly as they did in the Falklands, but htat experience has caused me to wonder for a very long time; what if they really just don't work? If that's true, than all of the world's major navies are basically just sitting ducks.

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Hi Finn

Just a reminder of what the Exocet actually did



and remember, the missile warhead did not actually explode. Had it done so, then the ship would have gone down right away. The Sheffield was a 4100 ton displacement destroyer. I know this was more than 25 years ago now, but I remember the incident very clearly (I had mates in the task force) and both attack and defence systems will have come on considerably from then.

I still also remember just how many dumb bombs the Argentinians were able to drop on target against the Task Force Ships, despite our Sea Dart "Hittiles" which proved to be Missiles all too frequently!

SampanViking said:

and remember, the missile warhead did not actually explode. Had it done so, then the ship would have gone down right away.

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Well some of the crewmen of the Sheffeild insist that the missle actually did explode; I guess the Royal Navy says otherwise, we really don't know.

Can anyone prove that the ballistic missile boat/ aircraft carriers sinkers actually work, because I don't recall any tests being done.

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Well thats what I said earlier, the technology is quite difficult (at least as difficult as intecepting a satillite), and although it's feasibly possible, no nation currently fields a system that is capable of doing this and has been tested showing that capability. Some might claim that China has the ability to do this, secretly, but I say I'll believe it when I see it. Cluster munitions are one thing, but scoring a direct hit is extremely difficult.

bladerunner said:

I thought the BM was aimed at carriers, and Ive never heard that a large swarm of BM would be launched.
However given time could'nt they launch a group od ground search dedicated satellites just to monitor the opposing fleets?.
Anyway given the lessons the learned from Pearl. one had better damn well know the where abouts of the American fleets before embarking on a course of action that could result in a Mexican stand off in the China seas.

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The problem is that satellites are usually in very predictable orbits, and of course, the US does have anti-satellite capability. In the event of any real shooting war, I would actually expect the US would definitely employ anti-satellite weapons to either disable or destroy Chinese ground mapping satellites and communications satellites.

The Brits lost Sheffield through a comedy of errors. The missile warhead was a dud, but a fire was started from residual fuel. The missile severed the ship's fire main, so no pressure was available to fight the fires. Four nearby ships contributed a highly touted portable fire pump, but all of these failed, leading to an investigation by the RN afterward. Some glaring construction defects in the superstructure meant the crew could not set fire boundries, and she lost internal communication. USS Stark a few years later ate two Exocet, one of which exploded and the other a dud, but the crew fought the fires and brought their ship home. A missile hit is not a slam dunk kill. These were both 4200 ton ships, but Sheffield was all steel in construction ( I'v stuck a magnet to her sister's superstructure so it is assuredly all steel ) while Stark had aluminum upper works.
ECM. Jamming is far more sophisticated than simply flooding the environment with energy to be overcome. Most jamming takes advantage of the characteristics of the system being jammed to create false echos. Combine the false echo with chaff and flares that are deployed into the same point in space as the false echo and one creates a very realistic target for the incoming missile, diverting it from it's intended target. Read up on techniques such as inverse gain jamming, range gate stealing, crosseye and buddy to get the feel for this art. Larger platforms are much more successful at jamming because they have the electrical power to create a false echo that is stronger than the actual echo, a crucial necessity for most jamming to work. Sometimes however, it can be something as simple as firing the CIWS to flood an enemy radar with false echos ( a technique used to fool the radars on TU-95's ).
The MARV'ed IRBM's I'm aware of used their maneuverability to achieve smaller CEP's. As the missile falls towards the target, something like a Pershing would use an active radar to find it's target and then maneuver to hit it. These were fixed targets however. No one has demonstrated a MARV than can track a moving target like a ship, and as the missile falls, the area over which it can successfully maneuver shrinks quite rapidly. It would have to find the target at it's apogee or very close to it to have enough maneuver space to catch a fast moving ship. Not impossible, but not the slam dunk often implied. Btw, a carrier strike group under a weather system with it's radars and radios off is essentially invisible. This is a technique the US Navy uses all the time to hide carriers from prying eyes, or to achieve surprise. Read up on how Admiral Ace Lyons snuck a carrier strike group into the Barents without the Soviets finding it.
Missiles in combat. Take a look at the Israeli experience in the 1973 war. There were two major surface engagements between Israeli missile craft and Eqyptian and Syrian missile craft. Something like 48 missiles were fired at the Israeli craft in these two engagements without a single hit. All were spoofed by ECM. The Israeli's sank all of their opponent's craft, and keep in mind he Styx missiles used had a greater range than the Israeli's Gabriel I's, giving the Eqyptians and Syrians the first shot advantage. In Operation Praying Mantis, the Iranians shot multiple supersonic Standard missiles at the US Navy at close range, and all of these were successfully spoofed by ECM. CIWS was never used. Do not underestimate ECM, it has a great history of success.

Oh yes, regarding big destroyers and cruisers. As the PLAN develops one would expect to see large surface escorts for a carrier to be built. This was true of the Soviet Navy, if one recalls the building of the Sovremmeny and Udaloy classes about the time the Soviets started a serious carrier program. These were the VMF's first serious long range surface escorts, other combat ships being more short duration missile attack ships intended to confront Nato forces in a one shot engagement then head home to be rearmed, assuming they made it.

Defeating modern radars is actually more difficult as time goes on, even with more sophisticated measures of spoofing. For example you can modulate a hidden signal within signal. A radar system simply can disregard any other echo trying to imitate the signal simply by the lack of this signal or if the spoofing signal has a different hidden signature than the true signal. If you use a combination of phase and frequency modulation, you can produce a waveform that is analogous to the outline of a key. Simply said, if the spoofing waveform doesn't match this key, it can be disregarded. Another technique is pseudo random. Only the host radar knows what the true form is, since the waveform is essentially coded. If you try to spoof it with another pseudo random waveform even at the same frequency, no jamming or spoofing will occur since the second wave will disregarded. Pseudo random vs. pseudo random on the same frequency doesn't produce a jamming result.

How about improvements in electro-optical targeting? ASM's like Taiwan's HF-2 have dual RF and IR imaging for guidance. It's not impossible with technology improvement & miniaturization that other future ASM's may have multiple guidance systems for terminal engagement.

IR guidance is mainly used for littoral operations, because RF performance tends to suffer in those conditions. But by itself the IR performance is limited in the open sea due to lack of range and the fact water vapor tends to absorb IR bands quite well. If you put different guidance systems on a single head, you sacrifice space and weight parameters that you could have used to make one single system superior. The result is a jack of all trades, master of none approach.

crobato said:

IR guidance is mainly used for littoral operations, because RF performance tends to suffer in those conditions. But by itself the IR performance is limited in the open sea due to lack of range and the fact water vapor tends to absorb IR bands quite well. If you put different guidance systems on a single head, you sacrifice space and weight parameters that you could have used to make one single system superior. The result is a jack of all trades, master of none approach.

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No, not really. If, for example, your ship is engaged by the anti-radiation homing version of C-802 the IR seeker is crucial. The missile itself will have no RF emissions on which the ship's missile can home in on. Likewise, supersonic missiles such as 3M80 and Kh-31 are very hot due to skin friction, making IR homing very reliable when engaging these. This is why RAM relies primarily on IR homing but has an RF back up guidance, integrating information from both for a guidance solution.
Btw, notice most US missiles used to counter ballistic missiles, such as THAAD, SM3 use IIR guidance. It is most reliable in space.
No IR seeker has a range much exceeding 13-14 km in the atmosphere, but the sea does not affect their performance since they operate in such a different wavelength than visual light. The aspect that makes most IR missiles poor performers at low altitudes has little to do with atmospherics and everything to do with the optics of reticle seekers and the material the seekers are made of. Early Russian seekers had equally miserable performance below 20 meters or so over land or water ( and this was true of the air to air IR missiles of the era ) because the rotation of the reticle was such that discrimination of a target at such low levels was impossible. Cooling the seeker only improved this performance slightly, but did allow some ability to disregard countermeasures. Later seekers, especially rosette scanned seekers do not suffer these problems to as great a degree, and IIR seekers are mostly immune. RAM has an RF seeker to allow intercepts at greater range than the IR seeker has, allowing what appears to be a lock on after launch capability for this missile's IR seeker. Notice RAM Block 2 has a much larger rocket motor than previous versions had.
In space however, IR and IIR seekers have outstanding performance and have become the preferred seeker for the BDM mission.

Actually, water vapor is really effective at absorbing IR wavelengths. (And least effective in the visual spectrum.) And I would think that especially close to an ocean surface, there is an increased amount of water vapor.

IR seekers are used in BMD because they provide a higher resolution / accuracy then RF seekers due to the shorter wavelength, wich is crucial at the high closing speeds involed. I also don't think that the range of RAM outperforms it's IR sensor.

Yet, I do believe that at least for the close in defense a IR seeker is the best solution, esp. when backed up by passive RF.

I also think a multi sensor approach in attack missiles has it's merits, exploitung the full spectrum. One may not even have to have multiple sensors on one missle, but have many missiles with different seekers and have those missiles communicating with each other.