Outranging The Sensor - Long Lance Torpedo

We’ve repeatedly noted that a weapon that outranges its targeting sensors is useless.  The current classic example is the much-hyped Chinese DF-21D ‘carrier killer’ anti-ship ballistic missile.  The missile has a range of around a thousand miles but there are no Chinese sensor systems capable of providing targeting data at that distance.  Thus, the missile is useless as a carrier killer.  The weapon outranges the sensor.

Let’s take a look at a historical example of this phenomenon, the Japanese WWII Type 93 Long Lance torpedo.  The torpedo had a range of up to 25 miles at slower speeds of around 35 kts and was capable of 14 miles at around 50 kts!  On paper, this weapon should have allowed the Japanese to stand well off from the US Navy ships and utterly wipe them out but it failed to do so.  Certainly, the torpedo did do serious damage but fell well short of being the weapon that it could have been because the Japanese had no sensors capable of detecting targets at ranges equal to the range of the weapon, especially in the up close, night battles that were typical of the fighting around Guadalcanal.

It was longer than 9 meters, could travel up to 20 miles at speeds up to 52 knots, and had a warhead in excess of 1000 lbs. This torpedo “out-sticked” (had a longer range) and outperformed the American Mark XV torpedo in all aspects. But, fortunately for the U.S. Navy, its range exceeded the range at which Japanese ships could detect their American prey. (1)

The reality was that most battles involving the use of Japanese torpedoes occurred at point blank ranges where the torpedo’s range advantage was completely negated.  This is not to downplay the torpedo’s lethality in any way.  It was a deadly weapon at any range.  However, it was not the long range threat that its capabilities indicated it could be.  If the Japanese had had effective long range radar, for example, to provide targeting data, the results could have been far worse for the US Navy than they were.

We see this phenomenon of weapons outranging sensors being played out repeatedly, today.

The Zumwalt’s 70-100 mile rocket propelled LRLAP munition (set aside the fact that it never performed to spec and cost too much) required fixed target coordinates and no one ever explained where those target coordinates were going to come from.

The Navy wants to equip its ships with the new, long range anti-ship cruise missile (LRASM) with a range two or three hundred miles but no way to consistently provide effective targeting.

And so on.

As with the Japanese torpedo, those weapons may still be effective at shorter ranges but that fails to take advantage of the full range capability of the weapons.

The lesson is obvious.  We need to devote as much or more effort to developing long range sensing as we do to developing long range weapons.  Further, the sensing needs to be something that is effective in high end combat, unlike the UAVs and P-8’s that the Navy seems to think will somehow provide targeting despite being easily detectable and non-survivable.

Sensors may not be as sexy as shiny new weapons but they’re far more important and the Navy has completely forgotten that.

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(1)USNI Proceedings, “Ten Seconds To Live Or Die”, Dec 2018,

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-12/ten-seconds-live-or-die

Offensive Aegis

As ComNavOps was reviewing some general naval history and pondering the Navy’s current force structure he couldn’t help but be reminded that the strength and backbone of the fleet (well, the surface fleet, anyway) is Aegis.  Any surface combatant that doesn’t start with the letters CVN (carrier) is an Aegis ship, either a Burke or a Tico.  I’m reminded that Aegis is a strictly defensive system.  True, that's not exactly headline news but thinking a bit further I realized that the entire might of the fleet was designed as a defensive force.  Now, by good fortune, VLS and Tomahawk have allowed the Aegis ships to project a bit of offensive firepower, as well, but it remains a fact that the Navy hasn't commissioned a purpose-built offensive platform since [not sure?].  If you care to look at it this way, the surface Navy consists of defensive Aegis platforms and carriers.

Still not earthshaking revelations.  Where's this going?  Well, it occurs to me that the Navy needs an offensive equivalent to Aegis.  I'm not just talking about a better anti-ship cruise missile than Harpoon or a bigger gun but a complete game-changing offensive system. 

Such a system should have several hundred mile to 1000+ mile weapons range.  The weapons should be stealthy, supersonic, and pack a punch with a range of weapons varying from one-hit, one-kill on the largest ships to Hellfire size weapons for small targets.

The most important aspect of a game-changing offensive system, though, would have to lie in the sensor and fire control systems (SFC).  A system should have the ability to detect and classify targets at several hundred to thousand mile ranges.  The fire control should be capable of not just guiding the weapons but assigning individual targets once in the target area. 

The problem, of course, is that current technology can't provide that kind of performance from the weapons launching platform.  So, what about launching the sensor/fire control system along with (or ahead of) the weapons?  The Soviets were working towards this but I don't know how far along they got.  Basically, large missiles whose payload is sensors and fire control rather than a warhead.  Several of these would form a line-of-sight SFC network for the accompanying missiles.  By definition, this would involve a significant degree of autonomy.  Basically, waves of missiles capable of reasoned search, target classification, and intelligent weapons allocation.

I could imagine waves of SFC missiles with accompanying anti-ship missiles sweeping the East/South China Seas.  Maybe we have a use for the Mk57 launch cells?

To an extent, UAVs could do this except that no UAV has anywhere near the speed, range, and payload to be effective.

Going further, launching platforms, meaning the ships themselves, that can detect and target at the required distances would be nice.  From what I can gather, the old Spruance Outboard system was attempting to do exactly that by collating passive sensor information from multiple sensors on multiple platforms – and not just sea based, either.  Land and air based sensors can contribute just as readily as ships.  The concept is that each individual sensor’s information is woefully insufficient by itself for targeting but that the combination of information from the multitude of sensors can be assembled into a targeting quality picture.  Think of it as triangulation on a vast scale.  If that could be refined, that might provide the hugely over-the-horizon detection that's needed.  If you think about it, it’s not all that different in concept from the Co-operative Engagement Capability (CEC) that’s currently used for defensive anti-air warfare.

Well, enough rambling.  I don't know the specifics but I just know that we need an offensive system equivalent to what Aegis gave us defensively.

What do you think?  Anything to this or does ComNavOps need to up the dosages of his medications?

BVR - Is It Useful?

Phoenix missiles, AMRAAM, Harpoon, Standard SM-x.  As examples, what do these various weapons have in common?  They’re all long range missiles capable of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) engagements.  What else do they have in common?  Few have ever been used in BVR engagements except in rigorously controlled situations.  Why?  Because the US military is so reluctant to risk friendly, neutral, or civilian casualties that Rules of Engagement and actual practice generally dictate visual identification (VID) of targets or a level of BVR target certainty that is almost impossible to achieve and which, therefore, defaults back to VID.  Ironic, isn’t it, that for all our long range radar, IFF, passive sensing, ESM, and so on, we ultimately depend on VID for weapons release?

Before we go any further, let’s set aside the question of the wisdom or value of the ROEs and VID requirements.  There are good arguments for and against these requirements and they go beyond mere military aspects to include public relations, ethics, politics, etc.  The requirements are what they are so we’ll simply accept them for the sake of this discussion.



AIM-54 Phoenix - Unusable?



The VID requirement is why Phoenix has never achieved a kill and, to the best of my knowledge, only been launched in anger on one occasion.  It’s why Iraqi planes were largely able to make a successful mass exodus during Desert Storm.  And so on … 

Failure to follow VID has led to a few infamous incidents, notably the Vincennes and the recent firing on an apparent fishing boat by a Navy replenishment ship.

Given that VID is a near-requirement, one can’t help but wonder about the value of BVR weapons.  If you can’t use them as intended, what’s the point of having them?  Now, I’m not suggesting that we stop development of BVR weapons.  Of course, we need them for the all out war situations where BVR will(?) be allowed.  The VID requirements do, however, greatly diminish the value of BVR and, in practice during peacetime or limited conflicts, almost totally negate the use of BVR.

For example, if we had our own version of an intermediate range anti-ship ballistic missile (the Chinese “carrier-killer”) would we even use it knowing that there would be a risk, however small, of inadvertently targeting civilian or neutral shipping?

What is my point?  Well, to an extent, I don’t have one.  I simply note the difficulty in applying BVR combat and the resulting diminishment of overall combat capability when VID is required.  Beyond that, I’d suggest that future enhancement of combat capability would benefit more from BVR target identification capabilities than continued development of ever longer range weapons that we won’t allow ourselves to use.  Just something to think about as we read and assess future weapon systems.