PLAN Supersonic Anti-Ship Missiles

Hey, guys, i know that the PLAN's Moskits on their Sovremenny Destroyers are supersonic, as well as the Klub missiles on the Kilos. But does China's indigenous anti-ship missiles have supersonic flight too? Because from what heard, China's best anti-ship missile, the YJ-62 has a range of 300 km but just a speed of MACH 0.9???

Taiwan claims that the HF-3 is a supersonic missile, does this mean the HF-3 is better than YJ-62 and C-802?

Go to sinodefence.com and look it up, the missile section. You will find that there are indigenous chinese supersonic missiles.

And no, speed doesn't necesarrily mean a missile is better than a slow one. But if same guidance, tracking and targeting tech is used, then yeah, the faster one would probably be better. Disadvantages would be bigger heat signature and somewhat smaller potential manouverability. Real edge of speed becomes obvious when a salvo is fired, and ship defences just dont have time to coordinate their their attacks on every missile coming towards them.

How much more expensive is a supersonic cruise missile versus a subsonic one? Is it 2x more or 4x more? Defense systems are so good nowadays that the only way to hit a ship may be in shooting a full load and pray that one gets through. So the pocketbook will affect how many you can take with you.

the yj-83 is supersonic, going arounf mach 1.5 in the terminal stage of flight.
the hai ying 3 is also a supersonic ramjet missle, going mach 2. but it inly has a range of 45 km, so it never entered service.

CARRIER KILLER

I think the Moskit is a absolutly terrorfying weapons . not only do you need to look at the 600lbs of HE it carries but the kenitic force of a missile hitting a carrier at Mach 2.5 with the leftover rocketfuel would be no less than hell. I believe the SPEED of the missile is a HUGE factor. I Think if you were to develop a top attack system that went strait down through the ship to then exploded about at the bottom deck would be one hell of a system.

When in comes to anti-ship missile, speed and range are not everything. Guidance system and targetting are much more effective factors to develop.

How good is a 500km range missile if you can't "see" over the horizon. It is equivalent to having a long range sniper without a scope. You can still use it but not at the range you want to. Targetting issue is very important because range is a factor of accuracy. The further your target, the less likely you are to hit it or hit something else like a neutral merchantship.

Guidance is by far the most important. What good is your missile if it can't hit anything? The harpoon missile, for example, is not that 'glamorous' from a distance. It is not the fastest or the longest range anti-ship missile. On closer inspection, it is very sophisticated. Its guidance system allows the ship commander to fly the missile around islands, vector it around a target ship and approach it from an unexpected direction. Imagine if you will if you are a PLAN captain and you know that the USN is to your east. Then all of a sudden you get a "vampire" call from a harpoon coming at you from the west. You might conclude that it came from a sub or that the USN has outflanked you. Furthermore, several harpoons can be fired in such a way as for it to arrive at the same time from different directions.

Don't certain variants of the Klub missile family feature dive down attacks? Also, i'm positive some of them feature a torpedo, which is a nice idea, avoiding the RAM and phalanx defences. Anyway, if it's not the club missile which does the vertical dive towards the target then it's some ither- but i'm positive i saw some russian missiles featuring such ability. It is, however, questionable if that's such a good thing since a ballistic trajectory is easier to detect/track and intercept. And if it does the high altitude pop up only in the last 30 or so km that it's gonna get detected anyway, by doing that pop up it's sure to prolongue its exposure to the US defences, giving them more time to react.

A question: Does US count on its E2s on detecting and tracking the missiles below them, while they're still hundered or more km away from the ship they're attacking? Or is the wide spread confidence that the fleet can deal with any kind of antiship missile attack based purely on the capabilities of ship based radars? at mach 3, a missile needs only half a minute to hit the ship from the point where it pops up from the horizon. What is the time needed for the first standard to be launched, upon detection of the incoming missile? How many standards can be fired within 30 seconds from one ship? How many ESSMs? how many RAMs can be launched within 10 seconds?

IDonT said:

How good is a 500km range missile if you can't "see" over the horizon. It is equivalent to having a long range sniper without a scope. You can still use it but not at the range you want to. Targetting issue is very important because range is a factor of accuracy. The further your target, the less likely you are to hit it or hit something else like a neutral merchantship.

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The "Sunburn" missile is listed at 60-80% hit probability. So I figure in wartime it will be lower. The only thing that worries me is cost. If it's relatively "cheap", then it will be a problem.

KlubMarcus said:

The "Sunburn" missile is listed at 60-80% hit probability. So I figure in wartime it will be lower. The only thing that worries me is cost. If it's relatively "cheap", then it will be a problem.

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In what context was this probability listed? Was the target manuevering, decoying, and shooting it down?

Besides, how are you going to shoot the sunburn if you don't know where the target is. Say you send in your Helo for a recon mission about 90 miles from where you are. The helo needs to fly high in order for its surface search radar to "see a bigger area". It gets shot down by a standard missile before it can verify its target. You are a captain of a Sovremenny destroyer and you just lost 50% of your helicopter fleet, but however you have a "probable" enemy surface contact about 90 miles in the direction of your helo. Lets say you have pinpoint from the helo data that the enemy ship is in a 10x10 square mile of ocean. That's 100 square mile of open ocean that the enemy ship can occupy. The question is, will you fire your sunburns? If so, how many? Can your sunburn able to search that particular swath of ocean of enemy ships on its own, acquire the target, descriminate from neutral shipping, and have the manueverability to head for it...the Harpoon missile can.

What I'm trying to say is that speed and range are not the end all aspect of an anti-ship missile. If you have a good clear picture of your target and can effectively give your missile mid-course guidance, then speed and range can have a noticible impact. The problem is acquiring and tracking your target at such ranges. This problem is compounded by the low survivability of heliborne recon craft, which needs to fly high in order to see more area.

Totoro: I think Sea Dog can answer your question better than I can. But the rate of fire and the number of missiles the AEGIS can guide is more than 50.

I agree with you guys that speed isn't everything for AShMs. In a real combat situation the party with the ability to launch a multi-angle saturation attack accompanied by intensive jamming will win, not the one with the fastest missiles .

In addition to all the disadvatages you mentioned, only subsonic missiles are maneuverable enough to perform complex evasive maneuvers during their terminal approach in order to avoid CIWS-fire.

I think the reason that all western navies are equipped with and still develop sub- or transsonic AShMs (e.g. Harpoon, Exocet, RBS-15, Otomat, Penguin, Kormoran, Gabriel) is not that they aren't able to build supersonic ones.

However, I think we will never see top-attack-AShMs. You simply give the target ship too much time to react. It would be an invitation for any CIWS. Sea-skimmers will remain the most effective missiles.