Navy Developing New Anti-Ship Missile

Phil Ewing has a story on Navy Times regarding a new program to develop the next anti-ship missile, which sounds a bit like a smart ramjet missile.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research issued a $10 million contract to defense giant Lockheed Martin on June 30 to begin work on a “Long Range Anti-Ship Missile.” If the project moves forward, the Navy could begin buying an advanced, high-speed missile that would ride in cruisers’ and destroyers’ Mk 41 Vertical Launch System tubes.

In a statement, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker said the goal was to develop a weapon that can think and hunt without much help from its firing ship.

I particularly enjoyed, and agree completely, with the response by Norman Friedman.

U.S. commanders became wary of ship-launched anti-ship missiles in exercises in the 1980s, during which they missed or hit neutral ships about as often as they found their targets, naval weapons expert Norman Friedman said. The weapons suffered from the classic problem of needing good information about their targets.

Friedman said he was skeptical about the prospects for DARPA and ONR’s new missile. Although sensors have gotten better in the age of unmanned aerial vehicles and higher-tech satellites, the classic target-finding problem still remains, he said.

“There are constant efforts to make hypersonic missiles — you see claims about them — but they don’t seem to go anywhere.”

Scouting, Scouting, Scouting. My favorite paragraph in Wayne P. Hughes book Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat covers the problem perfectly.

It seems pedestrian to say that scouting has always been an important constant in war. Perhaps the way to put it is this: winners have outscouted the enemy in detection, in tracking, and in targeting. At sea better scouting - more important than maneuver, as much as weapon range, and oftentimes as much as anything else - has determined who would attack not merely effectively, but who would attack decisively first.

While I have no problems with the development of a new anti-ship weapon system, particularly considering this is a weapon system that doesn't seem to get much attention in the US Navy anymore; I still say the challenge for the US Navy is improving the capabilities in scouting. I could be wrong, but I don't see any evidence that delivering firepower is a problem for any service branch of the armed forces.

But developing effective maritime domain awareness of the battlefield... I see that as a major issue emerging in the 21st century, particularly with hybrid threats emerging that look and act exactly like the normal maritime traffic seen globally every day.