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Subject: Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?
jarkeld    10/27/2004 9:20:14 AM
Been thinking about this and it seems to me that there are very few ships that would be able to deal with a ballistic missile attack.

Given this it seems strange that most of antiship missile work seems to directed towards sea skimmers.
 
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RM-Nod    RE:Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?   10/27/2004 9:50:20 AM
Which ships couldn't deal with ballistic missiles? All those that can deal with sea skimming missiles that I know of can easily deal with ballistic as well.
 
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Yimmy    RE:Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?   10/27/2004 10:03:03 AM
The thing is, given that a ballistic missile with some sort of terminal guidance would be comming straight down onto the ship; a short range system such as Sea Wolf would not be particluarly effective, as some debri would still be very likely to smash into the ship..
 
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fullamongo    RE:Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?   10/27/2004 10:12:24 AM
What about all the problems they're having with developing an ABM system, specificaly, how do track and sucessfully engage a small object travelling at mach 6 which is continously shredding outer layers, confusing the radars. don't the UK's boomers have conventional warheads mounted on some of their missiles> the trident is supposed to be very accurate... Thinking about it though. they would have problems getting a direct hit on a moving target. but you could use it as a giant MPAT for talking out a ships radar... Expensive way of doing things tough. a stealth cruise missle wouls be cheaper to maintain.
 
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gf0012-aust    RE:Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?   10/27/2004 10:16:21 AM
I certainly would be feel more uncomfortable about intercepting a ballistic over a cruiser. The kinetic energy out of the ballistic would make an interceptors job considerably harder. certainly a CIWS would be useless even at the secondary intercept stage. - especially if the damn thing is running an armoured cap.
 
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RM-Nod    RE:Why arnt there more ballastic antiship missiles instead of sea skimmers?   10/27/2004 1:00:11 PM
The problem is though that hard to track and kill ballistic missiles are very high altitude; they are expensive and a bit big to mount on ships and obviously couldn't be put on an aircraft. So what you're left with is the lower max altitude missiles. A missile like the Sea Wolf was designed to knock these types of missiles out of the sky and does it quite well. There range on the Type 23 is around 10km more than enough to intercept a lower max altitude ballistic missile, the debris caused will spread out as it descends and is a lot less likely to hit the target ship, but this is only if it gets to its maximum altitudes and begins its decent; if its hit before this then it'll probably just fall into the sea anyway. The likely hood of a missile being big enough to produce much debris anyway is low since any worthwhile, economical missile would be fairly small. Also don't forget that if the missile does get into its final stage and is hit then it won't be able to guide itself anymore and the ship could probably just move out of the way of any debris.
 
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gf0012-aust    incoming - RM-Nod   10/27/2004 1:11:24 PM
not sure if I'd like to take a punt on that. those wacky fruitcakes in North Korea have apparently been trying to slot Scuds onto container ships. imagine 35 tonnes at ballistic re-entry using a decent guidance system. the kinetic energy alone would be enough to drive it through the hull. there are a lot of "ifs" in this. but any minute changes to re-entry and at the re-entry speed would be miniscule and just as likely to be able to do some damage to a large vessel. compound that with a warhead that is proximity "lit" and it doesn't need to strike metal. an air blast would make shreds of a top deck comms structure. as far fetched as it appears today - it's within the realms of possibility tomorrow. I still maintain that an AMM/ABM missile launched from a vessel will have very unattractive stats generated meeting a mach 15-20 ballistic platform coming in the other direction. Look at the stats for Goalkeeper and Phalanx as an indicator of what happens even on a best shot basis.
 
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Yimmy    RE:incoming - RM-Nod   10/27/2004 1:16:31 PM
Is it possible to incercept ballistic missles, such as the V2, with modern aircraft?
 
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french stratege    RE:incoming - RM-Nod   10/27/2004 3:29:14 PM
The problem is that heat of a ballistic missile at fast speed generate plasma over the head which prevent use of a radar or thermal guidance.More over it use its energy less efficently and weight more than anaerobie propulsion sea skimmers.However some solution can be found (slowing the warhead and removable protection for exmaple). Few country would invest in multiple antiship missiles models to have a ballistic model and a sea skimmer for example.The Russian have a design if I remember well.
 
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french stratege    Yimmy    10/27/2004 3:31:04 PM
It is possible to intercept a V2 on launch stage with an aircraft and BVR missiles.A V2 have similar caracteristic of a SCUD in fact while a little slower.
 
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fitz    RE:Yimmy    10/27/2004 6:53:31 PM
Why not a ballistic missile? A ballistic weapon would undoubtedly be much larger than a cruise missile. This would incur greater costs and greater ship impact (fewer weapons carried or bigger, more expensive ships). Time of flight would be greater, increasing target errors. Remember ships move and even with fast-reacting cruise missiles hits on ships over-the-horizon are the exception, not the rule. Launching of a ballistic weapon will give away the position of the firing ship. Cruise missiles have been adopted specifically to avoid that issue. And finally, cruise missiles have proved more than adequate. Why fix what isn't broken?
 
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