Peŕrier Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:14 pm
No, they are not real "fire and forget", because of the radar horizon.
Still they open up several options:
They could engage a sea skimming target beyond radar horizon if it was picked up by another ship's radar long enough to estimate course and speed.
They could engage a terminal phase sea skimming target beyond the radar horizon, estimating course and speed on the tracking performed before the target dived to a sea skimming flight.
They could engage an evading target leaving the detection area of the ship's radar, particularly interesting because enabling engagements against aerial launching platforms that after launch bank sharply to evade enemy's reaction, or against aerial launching platforms that perform just a short pop up to track their target and launch a missile, to rapidly dive again under radar horizon.
While operating just within radar horizon, they relieve massively ship's guidance radars, leaving them free to track any single target for only a short time every N tents of seconds
and multiplying both maximum number of target actively tracked and number of missiles launched against those targets, each active guidance missile requiring only a short series of midrange updates until its own radar track the target and perform the final phase of the engagement.