Anti-Ship Missiles Thread

GarryB wrote:Another advantage is that the target sub wont detect the torpedo launch and at torpedo running towards them for upwards of half an hour

So how do they decide whether to engage the enemy submarine with the Otvet or the 91R and 91ER?

Well... it depends. Managing to find a sub 50km away is not realistic (1vs1 scenario) most if the time. Maybe if you can find it with ka-27 but then it has its own torpedo to engage it.

When would you ever send a single ship to hunt for submarines?

Sea bed sonar arrays around Russian naval bases together with land based aircraft including MPAs as well as quite a range of ships will be part of the search, and any ship big enough to carry the UKSK vertical launch system that these ballistic rockets are launched from will also carry helicopters.

If a corvette is operating a helicopter that is searching the water around where the corvette is, why burden the helicopter with half a ton of torpedo when it can carry extra fuel and stay out longer and use more sonobuoys to find the sub?

The helicopter doesn't need to carry torpedoes, the ship can launch them easily enough.

Also, firing a torpedo is quite loud depending how they are launch. It can be detected by enemy sub if close enough. New ones fill the tube with water and turn on their engine so quite stealthy for that regard.

The older systems would be being phased out... the current standard would be the light Medvedka and the heavier Ovtet which are both vertically launched from ships... I rather doubt a sub would notice a launch, but even if they did what does that tell them?

A circle 50+km around that ship there could be any number of targets they might be launching something to attack... its first warning it is under attack will be a torpedo splashing into the water perhaps 1km away... maybe much less...

Same for the system in your video. It turns on its rocket engine in the water making huge noise that will be heard by any sornar hundreds km away.

So you are in a sub and 100km away you detect a rocket motor briefly fired under water... what do you do?

You have no idea it is coming for you... do you run, do you hide... no point releasing decoys and jamming yet... 3 minutes later there is a splash 500m in front of you and a torpedo turns on its active sonar and accelerates to 50 knots and is heading in your direction... no time to dodge it.

Finally for your last point, such torpedo are designed to splash the water, free fall in spiral and look for the target.

IF it lands close enough the sonar on the torpedo will be able to detect the sub without having to resort to active sonar...

Plus if you are lucky it might be a torpedo... in WWIII it might just be a nuclear depth charge to clear the area.

So how do they decide whether to engage the enemy submarine with the Otvet or the 91R and 91ER?

They all essentially use the same mini torpedo, the difference is the rocket booster that takes the torpedo to the target area... if they have 91R in their torpedo tubes they might not have any Ovtet in their UKSK launch tubes.

As far as the target is concerned it wont care what delivered that torpedo.

GarryB wrote:Can anyone read what is written on the side of the box that missile came in... I suspect it might be for me because for a solid decade I wanted one of those for Christmas but never found it under my tree...

I found bigger pictures. But I can barely read on the side of the box it came in...
Something like:

To:
Garry B.......
....... St.
..........
New Zeala...

HATO called is the SS-N-22 Sunburn and the Americans were hoping the Russians would hand them over when they ran a competition for a new anti ship missile.

They set specs for the new anti ship drone for the US Navy to test its air defences against in the hopes the Russians would sell this missile to them, and at the time the Russians certainly wanted the money for the contract and didn't really see the US or the west as the enemy any more, but they were clever enough to enter the smaller lighter Kh-31 for the competition instead and it won hands down and was called the MA-31.

McCain eventually stepped in and stopped the contract after the US had bought a few and tested it and realised the speed of the missile rendered Phalanx essentially useless. Its effective range and rate of fire simply did not make it likely it would stop the missile more often than not in normal circumstances.

The Kh-31 has a body made of titanium that the Americans couldn't make.

There is a Combat Approved video showing them making Kh-31s and the presenter climbs inside the forge for making the shell of the missile. In the comments a person from the US who works in the industry said their forges for working with Titanium parts are probably big enough to hold a coffee cup and a human would have no chance to climb inside them.

Didn't have the heart to say to him the forge they built to make the box structure for the swing wing mechanism for the Tu-160M is probably the size of a small New York Apartment...