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Royal Navy Giving Up Anti-Ship Missiles, Will Rely On Cannons For Naval Combat (telegraph.co.uk)
cold fjord writes: It will soon be a bit more difficult for Britain's Royal Navy to rule the waves as it gives up anti-ship missiles as a result of budget cuts. That will force the Royal Navy to go "old school" and rely upon naval gunfire for ship-to-ship combat. Cannon fire as the primary means of ship-to-ship combat has been largely obsolete since the 1950s following the invention of guided missiles in World War 2. Prior to that, cannon fire had been the primary means of naval combat for hundreds of years. Although the Royal Navy ranged up to 16" guns on battleships, the largest gun currently in active service is a 4.5" gun. That will leave the Royal Navy unable to engage targets beyond approximately 17 miles / 27 km, whereas Harpoon missiles provide an 80 mile / 130 m range. The loss of anti-ship missile capability will begin in 2018 and may last for 10 years for warships, and 2 years for helicopters. The Sun quotes a naval insider who said: "It's like Nelson saying, 'don't worry, I don't need canons, we've got muskets.'" The loss of missile capability heaps more misfortune upon a naval force that recently has seen its available frontline combat force drop to an unprecedented 24 warships.
Is anyone seriously planning on attacking British warships with something besides rafts full of IEDs? What's the likelihood that Brits would be involved in a Naval engagement that didn't also involve the American Navy, a force that is nearly cartoonish compared to every other fleet on the planet? Is there some expectation that they'll be front-line in a shooting war beside an American carrier group?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
One of the reasons Anti Ship missiles suck is due to time of flight and no discrimination systems to filter out what will effectively become a potential target once the platform reaches its designated area and begins its search pattern.
Every target has what's known as an AOU or " Area of Uncertainty ". This is typically designated as a circle around the targets last known position. The size of the AOU is based on:
Length of time since target update
Platform that generated update
Target Speed / heading / etc
The more time that passes, the larger the potential area said target can be in and the larger the circle grows.
Now assume you get really good positioning data on your target. Initial AOU size will vary based on what platform provided the data, but assume it's a solid hit.
Ignoring the fact we'll never shoot just one missile and that it would take forever to coordinate a dozen shots across multiple ships, let's say we just send one off from a few hundred miles out.
So not including super and hypersonic systems, most cruise missiles are subsonic so figure maybe half an hour flight time to reach the target area.
That AOU is going to grow considerably in half an hour and if other ships are in the area, those AOU's can start to overlap. Meaning you can have more than just your target in the search area when the radar goes active and begins looking for something to kill.
Bad news if you happen to be floating in the general area and are big enough to generate a radar return.
Now picture this scenario in a cramped space like the Persian Gulf where hundreds of ships and their gigantic overlapping AOU's make targeting anything a downright pita.
The newer platforms may be more intelligent ( LRASM is supposed to be ) but Gulf War era tech certainly was not. No mid flight updates. Once flying, the weapon was on its own.
Source: Ex Tomahawk Blk II/III TWCS Fire Control type
Providing money when you go to war is too late. It takes months to secure missiles and integrate them with modern warships (which will probably be on the bottom by then).
History repeats.
People forget this due to the reversal afterwards, but one of the cost savings of the incoming Thatcher government in the UK was to scrap and sell all the aircraft carriers leaving a gap of some time with no aircraft carriers before HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal (R07) were completed. The Argentinians took note and occupied the Falkland Islands expecting to be safe from a toothless Royal Navy.
They acted too quickly because while the sale of the HMS Invincible in February 1982 to Australia had gone through the aircraft carrier was still in the UK in April when the war broke out. The other operational carrier, HMS Hermes, was going to be scrapped some time in 1982 due to a decision made in 1981 but was still intact in April. The Argentinians got a bit of a shock in facing two aircraft carriers instead of the zero they expected. The carriers HMS Triumph and HMS Ark Royal (R09) had already been recently scrapped under the Thatcher government Navy reduction plan, but they were quite old ships anyway.