The Influence of History

Note the "62" on this image from the Navy.mil announcement - has sanity finally returned to USN hull numbers? With the recently announced selection of the Fincantieri offering for the United States Navy's (USN) FFG(X) program, we now have enough knowledge of what the future USS Constellation will look like to post a notional missile loadout page. Now, the Constellation-class remains very much a paper design and will not join the fleet until at least 2026, so this post is even more speculative than my other missile loadouts posts . However, the result of the FFG(X) program has several unique aspects to its armament that are worth discussing. We now know that the planned armament of the Constellation-class will consist of a 32-cell Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) forward, four quad canister launchers for the RGM-184 Naval Strike Missile (NSM) amidships, and a 21-cell box launcher for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) aft. This is a considerable quantity and v...

The recent United States Navy Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal has unleashed the usual flurry of articles analyzing and discussing its ramifications. However, while the vast majority of these have focused on the same details, particularly the proposed early retirement of USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) and the introduction of large unmanned surface vessels, I will instead point out various minor pieces of information that have caught my eye. Missiles The greatest change is that antiship missiles are indeed back with a vengeance. In FY20, the Navy is proposing to procure no fewer than 216 antiship missiles of 5 different types and has stated a desire for an overall inventory of over 2000 dedicated antiship missiles. This is quite obviously aimed at the rapidly growing Chinese Navy. However, by my rough estimation, this is actually enough weapons to sink every non-US warship in the word twice over. Tomahawk Tomahawk production is restarting after a lapsing for FY19. A total of 180 weapon...

The RIM-66 SM-2MR in its boost phase One of the less appreciated aspects of naval warfare is how the same weapon can have rather different capabilities depending on the combat system controlling it. The neglect of this point is somewhat remarkable given that the importance of combat systems was made obvious well over a hundred years ago with the introduction of centralized fire control. But this post is about the RIM-66/RIM-67/RIM-156 SM-2 - the mainstay of Western naval air defense. This missile has been integrated with a variety of combat systems including Aegis, Terrier, and Tartar, as well as several foreign systems, but it actually functions in rather different ways depending on which system is controlling it. As is widely known, SM-2 represented a massive advance over its predecessor (SM-1) because of its use of a programmable autopilot. This allowed SM-2 to fly a more efficient ballistic trajectory, almost doubling its range, as well as time share illuminators, allowing a...

USS Long Beach (CGN-9) was a truly one of a kind ship and not solely because she was the only ship of her class. Long Beach  holds many records including being the world's first purpose-built guided missile warship, the first nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the first ship to use missiles to shoot down an airplane in combat (she scored two MiG kills in Vietnam). She also has the dubious distinction of being the only US Navy surface combatant to be built without any guns (although two 5" mounts were later added). Finally, Long Beach was America's last cruiser, with all succeeding cruiser classes being originally designed as either frigates or destroyers and subsequently redesignated. The Original Armament Long Beach originally commissioned with a mixed battery of one twin Talos launcher (52 missiles), two twin Terrier launchers (one with 40 missiles and one with 80), and an eight-cell ASROC box launcher with twelve reloads. This gave her an impressive armament of 192 m...

Because of the highly speculative nature of this post, I thought it better to upload it separately from the factual description of the events. Link to the original post on the 2016 Attacks. What Missiles Did the Houthis Use? As far as I have been able to determine, the only antiship missiles present in Yemen before the civil war were the twelve C-801 missiles on the three Type 021 missile boats and the SS-N-2 Styx missiles on the Tarantul I and Osa II  missile boats. However, the Styx missile uses a corrosive liquid fuel and cannot be kept in a ready state, while the C-801 uses a far simpler solid rocket. Given the chaos in Yemen, I find it difficult to believe that Styx could remain operational. Further, C-801 weighs only a quarter as much as Styx, making it far easier transport the missiles and devise a ground launch system. The other option is that the missiles were imported after the conflict began. However, antiship missiles are large and expensive items and not the k...

Surprising observers around the world, in October 2016, the waters off Yemen saw some of the most intense missile combat in naval history. Not only did these missile attacks highlight the extreme risk to any warship operating close to shore, they validated modern missile defense systems and demonstrated that front-line warships are capable of defending themselves from even sizeable salvos of antiship missile through a combination of hard-kill and soft-kill countermeasures. Yemen - the events described all occurred in the Red Sea off the west coast Background to the Attacks After years of steadily worsening political crises, in 2015 Yemen collapsed into full-blown civil war between government forces and the Houthi tribes of the west. Shortly after the fighting broke out in March, a Saudi-led coalition of Middle-Eastern and African nations intervened on the side of the government. This coalition was supported by the United States and made wide use of weapons (such as F-15 Eagle fi...