Red Sea Weapon Expenditure

The War Zone website has an article offering the first glimpse into weapon expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis.  As stated by head of Naval Surface Forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, here are the weapon expenditures:
 

• 120 SM-2 missiles
• 80 SM-6 missiles
• 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles (combined, for some unknown reason)
• 160 rounds from five-inch guns

 
Total = 220 missiles
Total = 160 shells
 
CIWS was not mentioned although at least one example of CIWS use has been documented and acknowledged by the Navy.
 
Against this expenditure, the Admiral claims “more than 400” targets were engaged.
 
 
Elementary arithmetic shows that if the Navy’s 380 total munitions fired destroyed “more than 400 targets”, that’s a kill ratio (pK) of greater than 1.0 !!!!!  In other words, every Navy munition killed its target and many killed more than one target.  That’s amazing.  That’s incredible.  That’s unbelievable.  No, seriously, that’s not believable.  In fact, it’s blatantly wrong.
 
The admiral continues his unbelievable statements with,
 

“We’ve done the analysis with what we used to shoot in World War II, and we’re at about two rounds per incoming missile,” McLane said.[1]

We didn’t engage missiles in WWII so I have no idea what he’s talking about.  Aerial targets in WWII required thousands of rounds per hit so, again, I have no idea what he’s referring to.
 
Further, the good admiral undoubtedly is not including 5” shells in his statement of analysis as 5” guns have a near-zero chance of hitting a missile.  So, subtracting out the 5” shells, that means the Navy’s 220 missiles destroyed more than 400 targets for a pK of 1.8 or almost two targets destroyed by each defensive missile fired.  That’s just totally absurd, of course.
 
Setting all that aside, the admiral claims that two ‘rounds’ (which I assume to mean missiles) were used per engagement which would conform to the Navy’s standard ‘shoot, shoot, look’ tactic.  That means that the 220 missiles could have engaged only a maximum of 110 targets not more than 400.  That also assumes that every engagement worked and that would so greatly fly in the face of all historical defensive missile performance as to be flat out unbelievable.  The pK’s throughout history have been uniformly in the 0.01-0.25 range not 1.0-2.0.
 
Now, to be fair, the admiral wasn’t offering a detailed engagement analysis;  he was just providing weapon expenditures and likely threw out a ballpark number of targets just to provide context.  I don’t think he was lying or even being intentionally misleading.
 
I can readily imagine that some of the 400 targets were engaged by aircraft whose weapons (Sidewinders, presumably) weren’t included in the Navy’s ship weapons expenditure although that would mean that even fewer targets were actually engaged by ship missiles and that would significantly lower the pK.
 
We know that 5” guns are notoriously inaccurate (recall the Vincennes incident where some one hundred rounds were fired with zero hits) so the 160 shells fired were probably directed at just a few targets.
 
Clearly, this scant bit of information the admiral provided is not useful in analyzing weapon performance, only total expenditure and even that has gaps in the information since Sidewinders, CIWS, and RAM, among others, were not mentioned.  While the presumed pathetically poor quality and performance of the attacking missiles would result in better pK’s than historically found, I’m certain that the pK is nowhere near 1.0 and, indeed, the admiral’s own claim of two rounds per engagement disproves the apparent pK.  Unfortunately, until the Navy provides some detailed performance data, we can only speculate.
 
The only valid conclusion from the admiral’s statements is that we are on the wrong side of the cost curve … big time!  We’re using $2M-$4M missiles (two at a time!) to shoot down thousand dollar drones and cheap missiles.
 
This simply reinforces the common sense conclusion that you deal with attacks not by defending but by destroying the source of the attacks.  Perhaps the new administration will take a different view of the Red Sea actions than the previous administration.  We’ll have to wait and see and, in the meantime, we’ll continue to bleed money, deplete our missile inventories, and risk our ships while waiting for the inevitable leaker that gets through.
 
 
 
____________________________

 
[1]The War Zone website, “Navy Just Revealed Tally Of Surface-To-Air Missiles Fired In Ongoing Red Sea Fight”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 14-Jan-2025,
https://www.twz.com/news-features/navy-just-disclosed-how-many-of-each-of-its-surface-to-air-missiles-it-fired-during-red-sea-fight

Tamp Down????!

As you are no doubt aware, there have been a recent flurry of reports of drones and missiles, fired by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, against various naval and merchant ships.  Multiple US Navy ships have reportedly downed several drones and missiles in self-defense.  A normal response would be to destroy the attackers.  Instead – and unbelievably - , the administration’s response is to attempt to create some sort of international group to “tamp down” the attacks. 

Last week, White House officials said they were working to create an international force to tamp down attacks.[1]

Our response to direct attacks is not to destroy the attackers but to “tamp down” the number of attacks????  So, apparently, there is some number of attacks that we consider acceptable as long as they’re “tamped down”?  And we wonder why our forces aren’t deterring China, Iran, Russia, or NKorea? 
 
History tells us with absolute certainty that appeasement only begets more attacks. 
 
 
______________________________

 
[1]USNI News website, “Lethal Drones from Yemen Attacked French Frigate in Red Sea, Say Officials”, Heather Mongilio and Sam LaGrone, 11-Dec-2023,
https://news.usni.org/2023/12/11/lethal-drones-from-yemen-attacked-french-frigate-in-red-sea-say-officials

New Threat Upgrade and Aegis

From a certain perspective, the Aegis combat system was one of the worst developments in the history of the Navy.  It directly led to the [literal] sinking of an entire class of the best ASW destroyer ever built and has resulted in expensive ships with permanently degraded radar systems.  Worse, there was an alternative to Aegis which was the New Threat Upgrade (NTU) program which would have modernized the existing conventional radars and combat systems, providing much the same capabilities.  Let’s take a closer look at NTU and Aegis.
 
 
Background
 
It became apparent to the Navy that the existing aerial (meaning, mostly, missiles) threat of the time would only grow more lethal and that this would happen sooner rather than later.  Prior to this, incoming targets had been engaged one at a time in an almost leisurely manner.  Now, however, the Navy could foresee sea-skimming, saturations attacks and they recognized that a much more flexible, rapid defense was needed with the ability to engage multiple targets simultaneously or nearly so.  The situation was made worse by the fact that each defensive missile needed a dedicated illuminator radar for guidance and each ship had only two or three such illuminators.
 
The solution that the Navy envisioned was to develop a system that would allow multiple defensive missiles to be guided against multiple targets simultaneously.  Thus was born the concept that eventually led to Aegis. 
 
However, Aegis was not the only solution.  An alternative method using conventional radars was also devised, the New Threat Upgrade.
 
 
NTU
 
As the shortcomings of the initial Standard SM-1 missile and its guidance system became apparent, a series of upgrades were developed culminating in the SM-2 which would be paired with NTU along with two new radars, the SPS-49 and SPS-48 which would have replaced the common SPS-40 and SPS-55 sets then in use.  In fact, the SPS-48/49 combination is still in use on big deck amphibious ships such as the Wasp and America classes and the SPS-48 is standard on the San Antonio class.
 

SPS-48, -49 on Wasp Class

Other new NTU-related equipment included [2]:
 

• SPS-64 navigation radar
• SLQ-34 electronic warfare
• SRQ-4 data link for SH-60 helicopters
• SYS-2 Integrated Automatic Detection and Tracking (IADT) system
• SYR-1 telemetry receivers (missile in-flight position data)

 
All of these new pieces of equipment were to feed directly to the NTDS (Naval Tactical Data System) combat system, the combat management system equivalent to Aegis.
 
The main improvement offered by NTU was the ability to time-share the few SPG-51 illuminators so that multiple missiles could be controlled by a single illuminator.  In addition, the NTU ships Kidd and Scott demonstrated cooperative engagement capability (CEC) during tests in 1989 using Link 11.
 

SPG-51 Illuminator

As it happened, the NTU upgrades were applied to the 4-ship Kidd variant of the Spruance class, USS Mahon, and the Leahy class.  Elements of NTU were applied to USS Long Beach but it is unclear whether the entire, formal NTU upgrade was applied.  USS Texas, CGN-39, was retired in the midst of its NTU upgrade.  NTU would have made the Virginia class cruisers quite formidable. 
 
NTU, when it first came out, was generally considered superior to Aegis which would spend quite some time working out its bugs, as documented in ref[1].  See the side note at the end of this post for a more detailed description of Aegis’ early problems. 
 
In the event, the Cold War ended shortly after NTU came to fruition and the resulting budget restrictions led to fierce competition between NTU and Aegis for funding.  Recognizing the teething problems of Aegis and the fact that many believed NTU to be a viable (superior, at the time) and hugely cheaper alternative, the Navy decided to, literally, sink the entire Spruance class to eliminate the possibility of a Spruance-NTU fleet threatening Aegis funding.
 
 
NTU Alternate History
 
Where would NTU have gone in its subsequent development?  It is fascinating to contemplate the course of US naval history had NTU been the winner of the combat system ‘war’.
 
One can only imagine the altered path of ship development if the Virginia-NTU and Spruance-NTU had come to pass.  It is likely that the compromised Ticonderoga class (10 lbs of ship in a 5 lb can) would never have come about and the Burkes might have, initially, been designed as the pure AAW ships they always should have been.  This could have given us two focused ship classes: the ASW Spruances and the AAW Burkes instead of trying to make the Burkes a do-everything design.  One could imagine that, having specialized ASW and AAW destroyer classes, a true cruiser class, with an emphasis on offensive firepower, might have replaced the Virginia class instead of the badly compromised Ticonderogas.
 
As for NTU, itself, it is likely that, as radar development progressed, the conventional lattice radars would have given way to something akin to the TRS-3D/4D, rotating panels.  This would have been a hugely significant development in that it would have resulted in reduced size, reduced complexity, no alignment issues, reduced weight, reduced top-heaviness (stability) issues, and less utility demands in all subsequent ship designs.  Arguably, it would have produced more resilient radar setups by allowing multiple units, each providing 360 degree, and taking up far less external space and internal volume than Aegis flat panel arrays.  In short, the follow on ship classes would have been cheaper, simpler, and more combat resilient than what the Navy actually developed.
 
The one drawback would have been reduced maximum range, however, given the close range encounters that I believe most likely to occur in modern combat, much of Aegis’ performance claims are have been rendered moot.  Remember that Aegis was developed to counter high altitude, massed bomber and missile attacks.  For that, maximum radar range was required and, thus, the development of Aegis was understandable.  However, that requirement was fairly quickly abandoned in favor of low level attacks and NTU would have been equal or superior in that case.  Further, as it turns out, current advances in radar technology have seen small, rotating flat panel radars with claims of range equaling or exceeding the Aegis SPY claims.  Whether any of those claims are accurate is, of course, unknown.
 
In short, Aegis imposed all manner of severe penalties on the Navy and subsequent ship designs.  NTU might well have avoided most/all of those.
 
 
Aegis Cost
 
One of the main disadvantages of Aegis was that it was hideously expensive for the time (still is!).  The CIMSEC report makes note of the high cost of Aegis development and fielding. 

… [Aegis] critics noted the cost of fielding Aegis was consuming much of the Navy’s budget for engineering development. At the same time, ADM Zumwalt was committed to replacing the Navy’s World War II-era surface escorts which were still in service. To make this escort replacement program affordable, ADM Zumwalt planned to asked Congress to fund a “high-low” mix of ships, which featured low capability, less expensive escorts for convoy protection and high capability, higher speed escorts for work with carriers. The projected high cost of Aegis made ADM Zumwalt’s task of obtaining funds for large numbers of both “high” and “low” capability ships just that much more difficult.
 
At that stage ADM Zumwalt considered cancelling the whole project. He was angry because there was no AAW development plan to integrate the various ongoing AAW projects, and he correctly anticipated that Congress would resist funding sufficient numbers of an expensive, nuclear-powered Aegis ship.[1]

USS Long Beach was considered for an AEGIS conversion but the $800M (then year dollars) cost was prohibitive.[1]
 
NTU, in comparison, used modifications of existing radars and required no great redesign of ships in order to accommodate it and certainly did not require that a new class of ship be built just to ‘hold’ it.
 
 
History’s Judgment
 
Some might argue that even if Aegis was not all it was claimed to be, initially (what is?), it has now developed into the most advanced radar-combat system in the world.  However, this is simply not true.  As mentioned, Aegis is degraded fleet wide and this is, apparently, a permanent condition.  The degree of degradation is unknown as is the actual capability of the system since it has never been tested under realistic conditions.[3]
 
Recent events have also demonstrated that Aegis’ claims far exceed its actual capabilities as the entire USS Mason incident demonstrated (see, “Yemen Missile Attacks”).  The Navy has claimed to have shot down some drones and missiles recently, related to the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but, again, no details have emerged.
 
History also notes that conventional, rotating radars have become quite advanced with manufacturers claiming performance equal to or exceeding Aegis.  Of course, manufacturer claims are invariably greatly exaggerated.  Still, to those who would suggest that all the pain and cost of Aegis at least led us to a point we could not have otherwise reached, I would point out that current hybrid, rotating panel radars prove we could have reached this same point without going the Aegis route.
 
 
Conclusion
 
This post is emphatically not a debate about which system, NTU or Aegis, was or would become the better system.  As it turns out, Aegis has never lived up to its full hype.  The system is so complex that it is perpetually degraded, fleet wide, as stated by the Navy.  Whether that degraded state is superior to what would have been a modernized NTU system is, as I stated, unknown and not the point of the post.  The point of the post is that Aegis imposed heavy costs and penalties on the Navy by eliminating an entire class of the best ASW destroyer the world has ever seen just to ensure that Aegis had no funding competition.  In addition, Aegis permanently altered the course of Navy ship design and force structure for the worse.  That is the true cost of Aegis.
 
Aegis also ushered in the continuing era of unworkably complex technology which now infests our ships.  Far too many ship systems are beyond the ability of Navy technicians to maintain and repair.  In short, the systems are not combat-resilient.  On paper – or when they have been exquisitely tweaked by Ph.D. manufacturer tech reps – the capabilities are impressive but in real life they fall well short.  For example, in the early years of Aegis, the systems were supported by on-board crews of manufacturer’s tech reps but, as time went by, the tech reps left and Aegis fell into a degraded state as documented in a past Proceedings article by an Aegis ship captain.
 
Even if one were to stipulate that Aegis would have been theoretically superior to NTU, the question has to be asked whether it is better to have a theoretically superior Aegis that is perpetually degraded and impossible to repair at sea or a theoretically lesser NTU that routinely works at 100% efficiency and effectiveness?
 
It is also important to note that the strengths of Aegis were long range, high resolution sensing which was a desirable characteristic when facing large, high flying Soviet bombers but today’s threats are sea-skimming missiles in short range (horizon) engagements for which NTU would have been well suited.
 
All things considered, it appears that NTU may well have been the better path.  Of course, hindsight is 20/20!
 
 
 
_________________________________
 
As a related side note, Aegis performed poorly in its early years.  For those interested in the early trials and tribulations, here is an excerpt from a CIMSEC report.[1] 

In 1983, the newspaper headline war heated up again. CG-47 was put through qualifications trials that April. That summer, Representative Denny Smith (R-Oregon), a frequent critic of high-cost military procurement programs, alleged that CG-47’s Aegis combat system had failed operational evaluation. His criticisms were echoed in the Senate by Gary Hart of Colorado, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. As Senator Hart told The Wall Street Journal, “Do we have a testing and reporting system that is fundamentally dishonest?” To head off speculation, the CNO acknowledged that there had indeed been software system failures in the April trials and he pledged further tests in September.
 
After the September 1983 tests, both Watkins and Secretary Lehman wrote to Representative Smith, assuring him (as Lehman did on 11 October) that “Aegis is the most carefully tested combat system ever built.” But Smith did not stop his criticism of Aegis. That winter, he found an ally in Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In February 1984, Grassley grilled Secretary Lehman and CNO Watkins on CG-47’s performance. The Navy Secretary accused Grassley of “grandstanding” and said that CG-47 was performing splendidly off the Lebanese coast in her first tour overseas. One week later, unnamed Pentagon and Congressional sources told The Washington Post that the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering had informed the Secretary of Defense that Aegis had serious design problems, and the Secretary of the Navy admitted to reporters that “actual missile kills … have not been that impressive.” At the same time, Secretary Lehman officially (and privately) directed PMS-400 to supervise “a fully challenging test series,” which it did with CG-47, April 23-29, 1984, near Puerto Rico.
 
ADM Watkins praised the results of the trials at a public press conference, and the May 1985 Naval Institute Proceedings carried a glowing description of the Aegis system and also praised the performance of CG-47 during the ship’s tour of duty off of the Lebanese coast the previous fall. A later issue of the same journal, however, carried a long letter from an officer who claimed that the ability of CG-47’s radar to monitor contacts against the backdrop of the Lebanese coast had been exaggerated. The ship had been approached by a light plane while patrolling near Beirut’s harbor, and, by his account, CG-47 never detected it. The question of Aegis’ operational performance was therefore left somewhat unresolved.[1]

 
________________________________

 
[1]CIMSEC, “The Politics of Developing The AEGIS Combat System, PT. 2”, Thomas C. Hone, Douglas V. Smith, and Roger C. Easton, Jr., 2-May-2023,
https://cimsec.org/the-politics-of-developing-the-aegis-combat-system-pt-2/
 
[2]Capt. Michael C. Potter, USNR, Electronic Greyhounds, The Spruance-Class Destroyers, Naval Institute Press, 1995, ISBN 1-55750-682-5, p.172-4
 
[3]Note that there were tests in Aegis’ very early development (after serious real world problems were revealed) that claimed to be extensive and realistic but the conditions of the tests are unknown and the Navy has a well earned reputation for lying about such matters.  Further, the tests were against very early missiles now multiple generations removed from today’s threats.  The testing has not been repeated against today’s threats.

Burke Flt III Delivered

The Navy has taken delivery of the first Flt III Burke destroyer, USS Jack H. Lucas, DDG-125.  Photos and concept drawings show that the ship’s entire close in defense consists of a single CIWS mounted aft of the rear stack, on top of the helo hangar.  That’s it.  One CIWS.  That’s either an extraordinary faith in the long and medium range AAW missiles or an incredible display of stupidity.  I’ll let you decide which.
 
There is also an open spot forward of the superstructure which I’m guessing is reserved for a laser of some sort.

USS Lucas DDG-125

Missile Attack Analysis

We’ve discussed the mechanics and timing of an anti-ship missile attack in various posts and comments.  It’s clear, however, that a lot of people don’t quite have a grasp of how short the window of time is for defensive efforts because I consistently see comments about the value of having a large number of VLS cells despite the fact that we’ve demonstrated, repeatedly, that a defending ship will be very fortunate to get off two salvoes (4 missiles total) per attack.  Well, it’s time to bring it home, graphically, with a second by second analysis of a theoretical attack and see what the implications are for our defenses.

 

 

Assumptions:

 

Anti-ship Missile

 

Type = Chinese C-80x family

Speed = Mach 0.9 = (761.2 mph * 0.9 = 685 mph = 11.4 miles/min = 0.19 miles/sec)

 

Defense

CIWS, effective range = ¾ mile

ESSM, effective range = radar horizon; launch rate = 1 missile every two seconds from two separate VLS clusters for an overall launch rate of 1 missile per second.  ESSM missile speed = Mach 4 = (761.2 mph * 4 = 3,045 mph = 50.7 miles/min = 0.85 miles/sec)

 

Radar Detection Point - For a radar 18 m high (Burke arrays) and a target 5 m above sea level (sea skimming anti-ship cruise missile), calculations[1] give,

 

Radar Horizon = 10.9 miles = 9.44 nm

Radar Target Visibility = 16.6 miles = 14.4 nm

 

Note: the radar target visibility distance is slightly greater than the nominal radar horizon due to ducting of the radar waves.

 

 

Scenario

 

For simplification, this scenario involves a single Burke and a single attacking anti-ship missile of the type described above.  Further, this scenario assumes that the crew and sensor/weapon systems are exquisitely trained and poised for instant action – eyes glued to screens, no hesitation, instant decision, fingers resting on launch buttons.

 

The general sequence of events is

 

• Detect target
• React
• Launch defensive missiles
• Observe results
• Repeat until target is destroyed or ship is hit

 

It is necessary to understand the Navy’s typical engagement sequence which is shoot-shoot-look.  This means that two missiles are launched at a target and then the defending ship waits to see the results.  This waiting period allows the cluttered radar picture, which has been obscured by exploding missile debris, to clear as the debris from the intercept attempt falls clear and the actual target is reacquired, if it survived.

 

 

Event

 

Here, then, is the second by second analysis of an attack and defense.

 

 

Elapsed Time, sec	Missile Range, miles		Action
0	16.6		Missile crosses radar detection horizon
5	15.6		Operator verifies contact and reports detection
5-10	14.7		Command absorbs information
11-16	13.6		Engagement orders issued, targets assigned
16-19	13.0		Engagement enabled
20-21	12.6		2x ESSM missiles launched
22-24	12.0		Missiles tip over and acquire target
27	11.5		ESSM = 2.55 miles outbound from ship
30	10.9		ESSM = 5.1 miles outbound from ship
35	9.9		ESSM = 9.3 miles;  intercept explosions
36-40	9.0		Radar picture clearing
41	8.8		Re-engage
42-43	8.4		2x ESSM missiles launched
44-46	7.9		Missiles tip over and acquire target
50	7.1		ESSM = 2.55 miles outbound from ship
53	6.5		ESSM = 5.1 miles outbound from ship
54	6.3		ESSM = 5.95 miles;  intercept explosions
55-59	5.4		Radar picture clearing
60	5.2		Re-engage
61-62	4.8		2x ESSM missiles launched
63-65	4.2		Missiles tip over and acquire target
70	3.3		ESSM = 3.4 miles; intercept explosions
71-75	2.3		Radar picture clearing
76-86			CIWS/RAM engages for 11 seconds
87	0		Missile impacts ship

 

 

There it is, 87 seconds to defend against an attack.  That’s not much time and you can clearly see that there is only time for a theoretical maximum of three defensive engagement salvoes and the third is unlikely because it’s too close and would probably wind up within the missile’s non-engagement safety zone.  Also, the sequence is based on absurdly optimistic conditions of perfect, unhesitating response and speed of execution.  In addition, various time consuming steps were left out such as weapon system warm up time, external safety alarms and time to clear the decks of personnel, etc.  Perhaps the Aegis system, operating in full auto mode could approximate this kind of response time;  I have no idea.

 

Far more realistically, a ship would be lucky to get off a single salvo and two would be phenomenal. 

 

Thus, having ten thousand VLS cells and missiles would be utterly useless in any single engagement.  As we’ve demonstrated, a ship would be fortunate to get off 2-4 defensive missiles.  The remaining 9996 missiles are of no use.  This suggests that our ship design tendency toward ever larger VLS loads is pointless, at least from a defensive AAW perspective.  Using the cells for offensive cruise missile attacks is another story.

 

Now, consider the above scenario and timing from a more realistic perspective.  The radar/sensor operators are going to get momentary indications and will have to wait to try to firm up the possible detection.  The ‘command’ will hesitate, wanting confirmation, and will require some time to evaluate the situation.  Weapon operators will not have their fingers resting on launch buttons and will need some time to configure their systems, obtain weapon tracks, and prepare for launch.  Missiles, while not needing much time, still need a brief ‘warm up’ period.  And so on.  All of that adds time – time that is simply not available.  Hence, a ship would be lucky to get off a single defensive salvo.

 

 

Conclusion

 

Some of the conclusions from this scenario are:

 

• Detection beyond the horizon is critical, though very difficult;  UAV ‘screen’ to provide early warning?
• Auto mode is the preferred mode in combat
• Training is critical to minimize hesitation time
• The defensive action sequence needs to be shortened as much as possible and ‘command’ layers need to be eliminated, to the extent possible
• Desperately need a better radar that can maintain target contact in a debris filled sky so that missiles can be launched continuously without needing to wait for the ‘look’ portion of shoot-shoot-look.  Ideally, we want shoot-shoot-shoot-shoot-shoot …

 

 

________________________________

 

Disclaimer:  I have not participated in an actual missile defense exercise so I may well be wrong about some of the events or timing – although it’s hard to imagine I’m overestimating any times!  These are just my semi-informed best guesses.  If anyone has actual experience and cares to share it, I’d appreciate it.

 

This post is NOT intended nor purported to be an actual combat simulation.  It is simply an exercise in the approximate timing of some of the events in a missile defense scenario so as to provide a feel for the time frames involved.

  

 

________________________________

 

[1]https://www.translatorscafe.com/unit-converter/en-US/calculator/radar-horizon/?hr=10&ht=15&u=m

 

Defensive Weapon Fits

Before the Navy embarks on their insane fantasy of arming amphibious and logistic ships with anti-ship cruise missiles and sending them out alone (distributed lethality) to sink fleets of Chinese warships, perhaps it would be better to start by arming them with a useful AAW defensive weapons fit.

 

For example, a WWII attack transport (APA) such as the Haskell class (455 ft long, 15,000 ton displacement) mounted:

 

• 1x 5"/38 dual-purpose gun
• 1x quad 40 mm gun
• 4x twin 40 mm guns
• 10x 20 mm guns

 

That’s 16 mounts with a total of 23 gun barrels of various calibers!

 

 

Compare that to today’s larger San Antonio (LPD) class (684 ft long,  25,300 ton displacement):

 

• 2x Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launchers (2x21 missiles)

 

The San Antonio is 68% larger displacement and has only 2 defensive weapon mounts!

 

Well, what about the mammothly larger America class LHA?  Surely that has many more weapon mounts, right?  The America (LHA) class (844 ft long, 45,000 ton displacement) AAW defensive mounts are:

 

• 2x Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launchers (2x21 missiles)
• 2x Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile launchers (16 missiles)
• 2x CIWS

 

The America is 2x-3x larger than the Haskell and has only 6 weapon mounts.  I know that a direct comparison of weapons from two different eras is meaningless but the point is the weapon density on the Haskells puts current ship designs to shame.  We built warships in WWII; now, build nearly defenseless cruise ships.

 

Alright, those are amphibious ships.  What about combat ships?

 

The Baltimore class heavy cruiser is crudely analogous to today’s Burke and mounted:

 

• 6x twin 5"/38 dual-purpose gun
• 12x quad 40 mm gun
• 24x 20 mm guns

 

That’s 42 mounts with a total of 84 gun barrels of various calibers!

 

Compare that to the Burke Flt IIA class:

 

• 1x 32-cell VLS
• 1x 64-cell VLS
• 1x CIWS

 

That’s 3 mounts.

 

Now, before anyone gets all worked up, I know there’s no way to directly compare a WWII gun system to a modern multi-cell missile system.  They’re just two different animals.  The salient point is the mount density relative to the size of the ship.  Even this is an imperfect comparison because the size of the mounts vary widely.

 

While a direct comparison between WWII weapons and today’s weapons is pointless, the overarching conclusion is inescapable:  WWII ships were built with a significantly greater weapon density.  We have lost sight of what the role of a WARship is today and how to design one.  Our ships are deployment cruise ships with weapons added almost as an afterthought. 

 

Rather than get caught up in a meaningless attempt to directly compare defensive weapon fits of WWII and now, let’s instead take a look the defensive weapon fits of our current surface ships compared to what we’ve learned from this blog about defensive requirements, all the while bearing in mind the mount density lesson from WWII. 

 

 

	Has a	Should Have
Nimitz
ESSM/Sea Sparrow	2	4
RAM/SeaRAM	2	7
CIWS	2	8
Ford
ESSM/Sea Sparrow	2	4
RAM/SeaRAM	2	7
CIWS	3	8
Zumwalt b
ESSM	? mounts, ?20? cells	? mounts, 20 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	0	8
Ticonderoga
ESSM	2 mounts, ?30? cells	4 mounts, 30 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	2	8
Burke, Flt IIA
ESSM	2 mounts, ?24? cells	4 mounts, 24 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	1	8
LCS
ESSM	0	1 mount, 8 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	1	2
CIWS	0	4

 

 

^a The phrase ‘mounts’ refers to the number of VLS missile clusters.  Each cluster is a single missile mount and represents a single point of failure in the event of an enemy hit.  A single cluster, no matter how large, can be destroyed by a single hit.  It stands to reason that more mounts, spread out over the length of the ship, are less susceptible to damage.  This is simple dispersal of risk.  A Burke can only absorb two hits on its unarmored VLS clusters before being rendered BOTH OFFENSIVELY AND DEFENSIVELY INEFFECTIVE!  Two hits!

 

Compare this to a WWII cruiser/battleship with three heavily armored main mounts and several armored secondary mounts as well as dozens of defensive mounts, all scattered along the length and width of the ship.

 

^b For the Zumwalt, the concept of missile clusters doesn’t really apply since the unarmored VLS cells are dispersed around the periphery of the ship.  This is both good and bad since any single hit has a very high chance of destroying some VLS cells but, on the other hand, the number of cells affected by a single hit is limited.  Also, placing the VLS cells on the periphery of the ship almost assures that a hit will destroy several of the cells as opposed to placing the cells in a more centerline position.

 

 

There are, undoubtedly, going to be some people who look at the ‘Should Have’ column of the table and complain that the numbers are far too high, that the numbers simply aren’t realistic for modern ships.  These people are laboring under a constraining paradigm that they don’t even recognize as such.  I would remind those people of two things:

 

1.     WWII ships had a much greater density of defensive weapons.

2.     The cost – in money and ship’s space – for these extra weapons is miniscule compared to the construction cost of a new ship to replace the sunken ship – lost due to the penny wise, pound foolish lack of a some extra defensive weapons.

 

 

Some might also suggest that modern weapons, being more accurate, are not needed in large numbers like inaccurate WWII 5”/40mm/20mm AA fits.  On the face of it, this is appealing.  However, there are a couple of problems with this line of thought:

 

1.     No one knows that modern AAW weapons are actually more accurate.  In fact, the entire history of modern defensive systems strongly indicates otherwise.  The best, most successful set of data I can think of is the British in the Falklands and they only managed to achieve around a 25% success rate and even that rate was skewed by many of the targets being non-maneuvering, defenseless drones, for all practical purposes.

2.     In WWII, attacking aircraft generally attacked individual ships singly or in spaced out intervals despite their attempts to conduct simultaneous attacks.  Modern naval theory suggests the use of massed, simultaneous missile attacks.  So, even if one accepts the belief that modern defensive weapons have a higher accuracy, the massed attacks will require as many defensive weapons as possible to deal with the much greater numbers of simultaneous attacking missiles.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The rot of peace has eroded our design practices for WARships.  We’ve come to emphasize habitability for our glorified cruise ships rather than emphasizing weapons, armor, and sensors for combat. 

 

Our lax peacetime mentality has led us to believe that our ships will never take a hit and, therefore, our ship design philosophy has all but abandoned defensive AAW weapons.  The poster child for this is the Zumwalt with no AAW defensive weapons at all !!!!!

 

In a peer war, ALL ships will be subject to aerial attack.  Our WWII fathers knew this and armed even the logistic and amphibious ships accordingly.  We need to relearn those lessons and begin arming our ships for war, not for leisurely peacetime cruises.

 

Before we can even begin to contemplate idiotic ideas like distributed lethality, we need to arm our ships so that they at least have some chance of defending themselves.