How The US Navy Will Shoot Down The Onyx/Brahmos

I have always maintained that regardless of all the yada yada from India and Russia the Onyx/Brahmos can actually be shot down quite easily. This is a detailed explanation of how the US Navy will accomplish it

http://defencyclopedia.com/2014/12/27/explained-how-the-us-navy-can-shoot-down-the-deadly-brahmos-missile/


The main disadvantages of BrahMos are

Only 120 km range when using Lo-altitude sea-skimming profile

Not intelligent ( can’t take evasive measures on its own to avoid interceptor missiles and follows predetermined path)

So basically the Onyx/Brahmos can be shot down using

LONG RANGE SAM:

The US Navy uses the SM-2 as its standard long range SAM on its destroyers. It has a range of 90+ km and uses a semi-active homing radar seeker which means that the mechanically scanning illuminators on board the warships should provide them with guidance.


MEDIUM RANGE SAM:

Once the missiles are detected by the AWACS at 150+ km from the ship, the usual procedure would be to direct fighter jets from a nearby carrier towards the missile to shoot it down. The 50 km range Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) which is quad packed and hence large quantities are available. This is very useful as one cell packs 4 MR-SAM compared to 1 LR-SAM.


SHORT RANGE (POINT DEFENSE) SAM:

This is a relatively simple task for systems like the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) or Barak-1 which are designed to kill sea skimming supersonic missiles.

ANTI-MISSILE GUNS:

The Phalanx CIWS is a closed loop system, with the search-tracking radar and the 20 mm Gatling gun and ammunition combined into a self-sustained system. It has a max range of 3 km and an effective range of 1.5 km when dealing with low flying cruise missiles. If it faces a single BrahMos which has bypassed other missile defense layers, the radar of the Phalanx locks on to the BrahMos and unleashes a torrent of 20 mm depleted uranium projectiles which should shred the BrahMos easily.


LASER CIWS:

It is currently capable of shooting down slow aerial and surface targets, but with improvements, by the next decade, a laser CIWS would be widely deployed and would be capable of swatting multiple BrahMos missiles like flies.

You keep saying "easy" shot down this and that, fact is a supersonic missile is out of the range of maximum effective engagement range of any SAM and CIWS won't have much off effective range above 1km, it is a supersonic missile after all and CIWS miss with over 98% of their projectiles even the superior Kashtan has short effective range against supersonic missiles. The maximum range of SM-2 means nothing against supersonic missiles which indeed are intelligent and have evasive flight profile.

http://army.lv/ru/p-800/3065/764

Ра­ке­та вы­пол­не­на по нор­маль­ной аэ­ро­ди­на­ми­че­ской схе­ме с тра­пе­цие­вид­ным склад­ным кры­лом и опе­ре­ни­ем. Аэ­ро­ди­на­ми­ка пла­не­ра в со­че­та­нии с вы­со­кой тя­го­во­ору­жен­но­стью обес­пе­чи­ва­ет вы­со­кую ма­нёв­рен­ность (мак­си­маль­ный угол ата­ки - до 150 гра­ду­сов), по­зво­ляю­щую ра­ке­те вы­пол­нять эф­фек­тив­ные ма­нев­ры ук­ло­не­ния от средств ПРО про­тив­ни­ка.

The rocket is made by the normal aerodynamic scheme with trapezoidal folding wings and tail surfaces. Aerodynamics of the airframe, combined with high thrust provides high maneuverability (the maximum angle of attack - up to 150 degrees), allowing the missile to perform effective evasive maneuvers from the enemy SAM.

The maximum range is 300km.

обес­пе­чи­ва­ет­ся при по­лё­те по ком­би­ни­ро­ван­ной тра­ек­то­рии с мар­ше­вым уча­ст­ком на вы­со­те 14 км при ско­ро­сти, со­от­вет­ст­вую­щей М=2,5, с по­сле­дую­щим брею­щим по­ле­том на вы­со­те 10-15 м от вод­ной по­верх­но­сти при под­дер­жа­нии ско­ро­сти 600 м/с на по­след­них 40 км сбли­же­ния с це­лью.

is provided during the flight on the combined trajectory in mid-flight area at an altitude of 14 km at a speed corresponding to M=2.5, and with the subsequent shaving the flight at a height of 10-15 m from the water surface while maintaining the speed of 600 m/s for the last 40 km approach.

This evasive supersonic Anti ship Missile is not "easily" defeated.

How many they can shoot down at a time is the real question.

You sound like a US Naval Admiral justifying budgets for new carriers. The problem is not whether you can theoretically shoot down a missile. The problem is can you stop all the missiles launched from striking your high value targets. One missile strike on a service ship renders its electronics and systems unusable even if the ship survives. There is a cumulative effect as ships are struck in a task force. As far as Russia is concerned, you now have to add the element of nuclear warheads which makes the task of maintaining the combat efficiency of your task force exponentially more difficult. Even a near miss with a nuclear warhead is going to wreak havoc with electronic systems.

Let history be your guide. What was the result of anti-ship missiles vs the British fleet in the Falklands ? USS Stark in the Persian Gulf ? Israeli corvette vs Hezbollah ?

If the brahmos has far see capability will steer in time.

calripson wrote:You sound like a US Naval Admiral justifying budgets for new carriers. The problem is not whether you can theoretically shoot down a missile. The problem is can you stop all the missiles launched from striking your high value targets. One missile strike on a service ship renders its electronics and systems unusable even if the ship survives. There is a cumulative effect as ships are struck in a task force. As far as Russia is concerned, you now have to add the element of nuclear warheads which makes the task of maintaining the combat efficiency of your task force exponentially more difficult. Even a near miss with a nuclear warhead is going to wreak havoc with electronic systems.

Let history be your guide. What was the result of anti-ship missiles vs the British fleet in the Falklands ? USS Stark in the Persian Gulf ? Israeli corvette vs Hezbollah ?

A warship that has 15 missiles on it will face not only the quantity of missiles but the quality also. So its very improbable to stop all at least half will break trought.

Lets think to reverse. From the same reasons american missiles can be shoot. Lets think at a gatling that have video calculating of missile trajectory. It can shoot ahead the missile on a interception course and fill the air whit exploding shells that will surround the missile. In this the probability to shoot a missile increase. In this performant radar and tehniques not matter. Huge gatlings that can shoot from 10 km would prevent shoots from above at 90°.

The phalanx is the most worthless CIWS in existence since it constantly deactivates itself even without ECM interference(the USS Stark's CIWS proved useless because of this) and it's bullets are too small to cause rapidly enough damage to armored russian ASMs. As for the aegis meanwhile it cannot be exactly know if it's even minimally effective because it never has been realistically tested since it's adoption in service and even if it were it can't track more than 5-6 missiles and intercept more than 3. This means a US carrier group can get it's carrier destroyed by a wave of a few dozen onixes or kalibrs and in the near future by less than a dozen zircons.

But by far the most idiotic thing in this article is the assumption that the US SAMs will never miss the incoming ASMs. IRL it will be extremely likely that a significant fraction of the incoming onyxes will repeatedly outmaneuver incoming SM-2s and others will only be damaged by the shrapnel due to being armored.

Supersonic ASMs are not worth the price. Huge IR sig and radar reflection from turbulent wake make it an easy target for modern ships defenses. Stealthy, subsonic is more effective, cheaper, stealthier in IR and RF by huge factors, can be carried in up to 8x quantity on aircraft (as opposed to one or 2 supersonics hung from bombers...a fighter can hold at most one).


Navy SM-6 Kills Cruise Missiles Deep Inland


Open the link and read Steve Forston , Charles Belle , James Jun comments. Your thoughts on their claims ?

max steel wrote:Supersonic ASMs are not worth the price. Huge IR sig and radar reflection from turbulent wake make it an easy target for modern ships defenses. Stealthy, subsonic is more effective, cheaper, stealthier in IR and RF by huge factors, can be carried in up to 8x quantity on aircraft (as opposed to one or 2 supersonics hung from bombers...a fighter can hold at most one).

Navy Lacks Plan to Defend Against `Sizzler' Missile (Update1)


BTW claims about Supersonic AShM's being bad, are similar to claims made about ERA, Autoloaders, Armata. Just look at Western media, they love to attack Russia's military cability, like T-14, in which is bad-mouthed to no end in Western media as being inferior to current Western tanks that are deployed...while simultaneously Western govts. (UK, Germany, France) are now forced to develop new MBT's to challenge T-14...Why would they waste money developing a new MBT if the current crop of Western MBT's are already better than the T-14 like the Western media likes to claim?

Sea-RAM has successfully engaged Mach 2.5, sea skimming targets multiple times. The SM-6 will be able to as well, just because it engaged a slow target IN THIS TEST, doesn't mean that it can't engage high speed low targets as well. That's why it's called "envelope stretching".


Coyote is a more difficult target to 'defend against' vs. Yakhont/Brahmos complex. ESSM, SM-6 and RIM-116 RAM are all able to intercept, and Russian Yakhont, while fast, is bigger and slower target in comparison to Coyote target missile. ESSM tests at SDTS resulted in successful intercept against sea skimming Vandal (going Mach 2+) making 10G horizontal weaving maneuvers.

Really, the notion that Yakhont (or Brahmos, again same thing) can just easily penetrate SM-2/ESSM screen without even a tough fight being put up against is totally laughable.

Lastly, the 'stealth' characteristics on Brahmos is just marketing bs. It seems weapons developers nowadays will call anything under a 1m^2 RCS as "stealth", when in reality, there is no difference in RCS between Yakhont and Brahmos. By this statue, Tomahawk would arithmetically qualify as extremely invisible stealth missile.

mag the article you shared is from 2007 and usa made sm-6 in 2009 .

Ugh, Max....

First things first, "stealth" means nothing in regards to AShM's, at all. Sea-skimmers will not be detected by ship until they cross over the horizon, and "stealth" or not, they will ALWAYS be detected afterwards. Even aircraft radar systems can detect a 0.01 m2 target out to 90 or so km, the massive systems onboard ships are far more capable, and typically run at lower frequencies.

What a surprise, a missile incepted something in a controlled test. Combat would be completely different, with no knowledge of an attack, and multiple missiles striking at once.

Supersonic AShM's are practically immune to CIWS systems, have a better chance of surviving a AD attack, and have more energy behind them. The rather small warhead on Sea-RAM would have a hard time doing much to a missile with large amounts of energy behind it, AND late Soviet/Russian AShM's have basic armoring as well.

And who knows how well an AD missile would perform engaging a target only a few meters over the sea.

Cant help mike , I am always interested in Naval Scenario .

What I posted above are not my comments i just copy pasted best pro-us comments to know what is the truth behind it are they true or what they are saying is refutable. Thats why I asked you all to share your thoughts.


What about coyote and russian bal coastal missiles can they be intercepted ? Bal uses kh-35 klub i guess.

max steel wrote:Cant help mike , I am always interested in Naval Scenario .

What I posted above are not my comments i just copy pasted best pro-us comments to know what is the truth  behind it are they true or what they are saying is refutable. Thats why I asked you all to share your thoughts.

What about coyote and russian bal coastal missiles can they be intercepted ? Bal uses kh-35 klub i guess.

Oh, that explains everything. 

Sorry for the mistake. 

Bal would be an easy intercept; it is somewhat large, and very slow, AShM. Supposedly it can jam defense systems but I find that hard to believe.

Hard to believe what ? That it can be intercepted or it can jam the enemy defense ? I was watching Crimea's video and in the video it was claimed that bastion coastal missiles can shoot usa ddg. They figured out on radar that donald cook was approaching towards crimea bring it in tomahawk range but bastion already got a lock on donald cook and when donald cook realized it steered back in reverse towards romania with full speed.

The LRASM; the US's latest anti-ship cruise missile - is really just another way of trying to accomplish what the Soviets/Russians have tried to do with their own ASMs; namely to minimize the enemy's reaction time and the window of opportunity for engaging the missile.

It's just that the Americans are attempting to do with stealth, while the Russians have attempted to do this with speed.

The Russian missile will be detected earlier than the American missile, but it will cover that distance quicker than the American missile. Thus on balance the enemy may well have a similar reaction time in both cases.

It's still too early to tell but overall I think the Russian approach holds more advantages. For two main reasons:
a). It will be easier and cheaper in the future to increase missile speed than it will to make it drastically more stealthy (Russia is already working on a hypersonic missile)
b). Speed affords other advantages that stealth does not (less time for enemy CIWS to do their work, greater kinetic energy at impact and also making it harder to break the missile apart at close ranges)

flamming_python wrote:The LRASM; the US's latest anti-ship cruise missile - is really just another way of trying to accomplish what the Soviets/Russians have tried to do with their own ASMs; namely to minimize the enemy's reaction time and the window of opportunity for engaging the missile.

It's just that the Americans are attempting to do with stealth, while the Russians have attempted to do this with speed.

The Russian missile will be detected earlier than the American missile, but it will cover that distance quicker than the American missile. Thus on balance the enemy may well have a similar reaction time in both cases.

It's still too early to tell but overall I think the Russian approach holds more advantages. For two main reasons:
a). It will be easier and cheaper in the future to increase missile speed than it will to make it drastically more stealthy (Russia is already working on a hypersonic missile)
b). Speed affords other advantages that stealth does not (less time for enemy CIWS to do their work, greater kinetic energy at impact and also making it harder to break the missile apart at close ranges)

LRASM isnt a problem for russian naval defenses i guess ? They made it to challenge china's navy who follows same ussr policy of sea denial . LRASM-B the supersonic project was terminated . Though LRASM-A has low RCS . I hope Russia has worked more on its sensor tech to improve the efficiency of interception .

flamming_python wrote:The Russian missile will be detected earlier than the American missile, but it will cover that distance quicker than the American missile. Thus on balance the enemy may well have a similar reaction time in both cases.

It's all about the horizon, my friend. No matter how some people will make it seem, the LRASM or or any supersonic AShM would be detected and identified.