How Many Shots?

The Iowa class battleship of WWII had a bit over 1200 16” shells of various types in its magazines.  In addition, it carried several thousand 5” shells.
 
Cruisers had some 1400 8” shells depending on class.
 
The Fletcher class carried around 575 5” shells per gun for a ship total of nearly 3000 shells.
 
That’s a LOT of striking power! 
 
Well, sure, you say, but given the accuracy of the time, most of the shells fired were doomed to miss so they had to have large magazines.  WWII naval gun accuracy against ships was generally something on the order of 5%-10%, depending on a host of factors.  Of course, in the land attack/bombardment mission, every shell was a hit against something (that’s what area bombardment is!). 
 
Today, we have precision guided weapons and we like to believe that almost every shot is a hit.  We don’t need large inventories of missiles and we certainly don’t need large magazines of shells for our 5” guns since we just don’t use them and, if we do, we have advanced, precision fire control systems to ensure amazing accuracy.
 
Um …    Why?  Why do we think we don’t need large inventories of weapons?  Why do we think our weapons will hit with unerring accuracy?  It’s certainly not because of any realistic live fire test or exercises that have proven the effectiveness of our weapons because we flat out don’t do those.  It’s not because of the extensive history of actual combat use because there isn’t much and the existing data (Hughes) demonstrates that the accuracy of offensive weapons is actually pretty poor.[2]  It’s not because of calm, objective, reasoned analysis because, except for this blog, no one attempts that.  It’s not because of an objective analysis of modern defenses that our weapons would face because if we did that we’d have to admit that it’s highly unlikely our weapons would be very effective.
 
It turns out that we believe in our weapon’s accuracy because that’s what the Navy and the manufacturers tells us and because that’s what we want to believe.  Of course, the defensive weapon manufacturers also tell us that their weapons will defend with unerring accuracy and invincibility.  Wait, what now?  How can offensive and defensive weapons both have unerring accuracy and flawless performance?  One of the two – or both – has to be wrong.  Elementary logic dictates that you can’t have 100% successful offensive strikes against 100% successful defensive platforms.
 
Uh, oh.  I don’t like where this is going.
 
Is it possible that our vaunted, unerring, offensive missiles may be less than 100% accurate and successful?  If so, that would suggest we need bigger magazines/inventories.  I wonder how much less than 100% effective our attacking missiles will be?  10%?  50%?  80%? 
 
Uh, oh.  I really don’t like where this is going!
 
Maybe we’d better take a brief foray into the font of wisdom … historical data.
 
Unfortunately, there is very little direct, relevant, historical data regarding the accuracy of modern offensive weapons.  That being the case, why, then, do we so firmly believe our weapons will perform as advertised?  Here’s some of the data that I’m aware of, in no particular order:
 
Vincennes – The Vincennes tragedy saw the cruiser fire around 100 5” shells at Boghammer vessels with no recorded hits.
 
Praying Mantis – The April 1988 attack by the US against Iranian forces demonstrated that 5” gun attacks against oil platforms were almost totally ineffective with almost all shots missing.  This may have been due to the lattice-like nature of the target more than any inherent inaccuracy of the guns.
 
INS Hanit – A Hezbollah launch of two (some reports say three) C80x missiles against the unsuspecting Israeli Sa’ar 5 frigate resulted in only a single glancing hit that did little damage.
 
HMS Sheffield – The Sheffield was hit by one of two Exocet missiles fired by Argentine aircraft.
 
SS Atlantic Conveyor – The merchant ship was hit by two Exocet missiles after they reportedly were decoyed away from HMS Hermes (or HMS Ambuscade or transport Regent, depending on sources) and subsequently locked onto the merchant vessel.[1]  That’s zero strikes on the initial target and two strikes on a subsequent, fortuitous target.
 
HMS Invincible – A single Exocet was launched at the Invincible but missed.
 
USS Mason – The Burke class destroyer, USS Mason, was supposedly attacked several times by missiles (C-80x?) fired from Yemen.  No hits were recorded.  It should be noted that the attacks are unverified (see (“Yemen Missile Attacks”).
 
Latakia and Baltim - Israeli missile boats engaged Syrian and Egyptian boats (see, “Missile Boat Battles –Latakia and Baltim”).  Exact missile numbers for launches and hits are unavailable but the overall missile performance of the Gabriel Mk1 and SS-N-2 Styx missiles appears to have been around 10% effective though far more effective on the Israeli side than the Syrian/Egyptian side.
 
Hughes[2] (compiled by John Schulte) presented the data for every known anti-ship missile attack (222 ASCMs from 1967 to 1992), broken down by the defender’s status at the time of attack.  For defenseless ships, primarily large commercial vessels, the probability of hit = 91%.  Against defendable targets (ships capable of defending themselves but that did not), the probability of hit = 68%.  Finally, against defended targets (ships that attempted some form of defense), the probability of hit = 26%.
 
Noting the 26% probability of hit against defended targets and noting that very few defensive missile intercepts have ever been attempted, we can conclude that most defensive efforts are electronic warfare (EW) in nature.  Thus, the vast majority of that diminished 26% hit probability is likely due to EW defensive efforts.  When actual, active, surface to air missile defenses are added to that, the 26% probability of hit is going to drop substantially to something on the order of 10% or less.  Those 8 rack mounted anti-ship missiles that the US is so fond of, then, are going to be very, very lucky to generate even a single hit.
 
Iran-Iraq Tanker War – This would provide an interesting data set for missile effectiveness against unresisting targets but I’ve been unable to find any data on the number of hits/launches.
 
 
Conclusion
 
We see, then, that the historical record across multiple generations of offensive weapons shows that none are particularly effective.  That should tell us something about our habit of providing ships with just two 4-missile, bolt-on, racks of anti-ship missiles (Mk141 Harpoon launcher or similar) as our main offensive firepower.
 
As our fathers in WWII understood, large magazines are necessary to ensure success (reminder – we’re talking about offensive weapons; large magazines are not indicated for defensive weapons). 
 
So, what does all this mean on a practical basis?  It means that we need much larger offensive magazines and inventories if we’re to be combat effective.  Specifically,
 

• We need more SSGNs due to their large missile inventory.
• We need more offensive missiles, particularly anti-ship missiles on Burkes/Constellations.
• This demonstrates that the Marine’s tiny missile shooting units are worthless since they lack the salvo density to be combat effective.

 
We need to remember that offense wins wars, not defense.  We’ve become a defensive Navy (see, “Defensive Mindset” and “MoreOffense, Please”) and we need to refocus on offense which means significantly increasing our offensive magazines and inventories.
 
The truism, ‘Attack Effectively, First’, reminds us what’s important but we can only attack effectively if we have sufficient offensive weapons.
 
 
 
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[1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/falklands-war-argentina-used-french-jets-sink-two-british-ships-186710
 
[2]”Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat”, Wayne P. Hughes Jr., Naval Institute Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55750-392-3, p.275-276.