New anti-ship missile remains on track for 2026 delivery

it will be a nasty surface combatant if what was said comes to pass and it gets 32 mk41 silos as well as 8 deck launched NSMs. It’s certainly will not be a patrol frigate ( in which case the RN would have played a blinder…turning a programme for cheap patrol frigates into a programme that delivers 6000 ton powerful ASuW surface combatant).

I think the RN have hired Obi Wan Kenobi. ‘The Force’ is with them. As my grandmother used to say ‘if they fell off the Co-op, they would land in the Divi(dend)’.

What good are NSM again a Russian frigate , they have half the range of Russian anti ship missiles so either they get fired of a chopper or they can’t get in range .

Range is really not the relevant factor…you can have a missile with a range of 200miles..but it’s pretty pointless…kill chain is all that matters and essentially for escorts that means with the radar horizon..ships cannot detect each other beyond around 20miles simple as and you have to find the target ( know it’s around ) exactly fix the target location, track the target so you know where it is going, select and fire the weapon, engage the target with the weapon then assess the damage or not…

simply put escorts do not fire at each other from hundreds of miles..they are incapable of doing so..unless they have another asset on site ( an air asset) doing the finding, fixing and tracking…and quite frankly if you have an air asset doing that you may as well just speed up the whole process and make it safer for the air asset by giving the air asst its own Antiship missiles that it can fire and run away..instead of having to loiter for many 10s of minutes giving information to the firing platform and then mid course direction to the missile..

make no mistake the Russian missile range is because the are all duel purpose land attack missiles…they will not be trying to find, fix, target and hit fast moving escorts from hundreds of miles away…

Thanks for the in depth info and taking the time to explain . We should really have anti ship capability in the air the now . So with what you have said and explained . Is that why the Royal Navy have run with out anti ship missiles on warships as there is slim chance they would be used ?

Basically yes…there have been a huge number of ships and navel vessels destroyed in war since 1945 and infact there are no recorded episodes of large surface combatants ever firing heavyweight anti ship missiles at each other..

this is a list of the engagement types that included kills or mission kills of navel vessels in order of numbers

1) air launched anti ship missiles and other air launched weapons..the RN on its own had killed or mission killed around 20 vessels in this way.

2) small boat ambushes..these are the most common use of sea based anti ship missiles..lots of cases in the Indian Pakistan wars, Arab Israel conflict an

3) land based area denial weapons…but these are mainly against merchants in enclosed seas ( the Middle East Sea lanes) which is why it’s third..the Black Sea conflict is now moving this along as Ukraine slowly decimates the Black Sea fleet with land based area denial weapons. If you only count attacks on naval vessels this drops down the listing.

4) submarine attacks using torpedoes..for contrast since 1945 just the RN has killed around 20 vessels using air launched weapons..only 3 ships have been sunk using submarine launched torpedoes.

5) escorts using heavyweights anti ship missiles..the US have fired harpoons a total of three times against Iranian small craft..for one kill..that’s it all of the engagements were within the radar horizon..

to be completely honest, I think the main reason the RN has purchased NSM is because its cheap and it’s given their escorts a land attack threat option that they have never had.

Interesting . It makes sense . To the guy taking an interest with limited knowledge. Would it not be dangerous for a war ship to get so close to launch an NSM missile for land attack ?. Also our strike group f35s are only currently using lasers guided bombs . So how would our strike group sink a ship ?

To be honest any ship has a bit of a risk when undertaking a strike on land.. land based navel strike aircraft have a significant range.. which is why the west tend to use SSNs unless they are picking on a nation with poor navel strike aircraft ( to be honest that’s most of the world).

as for the laser guided bomb..they will work and the pave way IV actually have quite a good range ( remember the RN lost AAW ships to an air launched missile with a range of around 22 miles and to iron bombs that were dropped on top of them )…but its profoundly critical that the RN and RAD get air launched Anti ship missiles operational.

Most of the worlds naval vessels will struggle to find fix and track an F35 before it could dump a laser guided bomb on them from 20 miles away.

Good explanation , you’d think they would buy some American anti ship missiles untill ours is developed and in service . It’s crazy . Whats your view on the carriers only having phalanx ? Should definitely have Camm considering we have very few escorts ? Is it really needed ?

The big issue is missiles are not plug and play..it takes a couple of years of work to integrate a missile onto a platform..There is an option for typhoon..as almost all of the integration work for Marte ER was done by the manufacturers of the missile.

Re AAW missiles for carriers…it’s a bit more balanced as if you fire a silo based missile from a carrier you essentially have to stop air ops until you have cleared the deck of fod. So your better firing your missiles from an escort..

but the addition of 57mm or 40mm bofors would be a good addition to the carriers.

and that added land attack capability will also enhance the power of the CSG. which really consists of to a dozen f 35 b and a few tomahawks lobbed from a submarine the h.k CSG is a good PR opportunity but in reality is a bit of a paper tiger and exercise in vanity to show the world that the royal navy. is still a top tier one. which we all know is not true.

Well it is top tier in regards to being a blue water navy, in reality your list of blue water navies that can project power across the globe in order are:

1) USN
2) PLAN
3) RN
4) La Royale

with a couple of almost
5) Italian navy
6) Indian navy

Thats really it for top tier blue water navies..every other nation is essentially a regional navy..even the very large regional navies like japan.

and in reality the RN could now put a CBG that includes

a modern 70,000 ton carrier
an SSN
a couple of modern AAW destroyers
a coupe of top end ASW frigates ( the type 23s are old but they are still at the very top end of ASW frigates)
2 squadrons of 35bs

essentially that is a taskforce that only the US could really over match..china could probably match..but the quality of its key assets in SSNs and navel aviation would mean it would need massive overmatch in numbers.

For the moment from what I have read China’s available aircraft carriers cannot operate effectively outside of the inner island chain. Only when the Fujian is fully deployable will that true blue sea capability be achieved as a battle group.

Nope..they have sent a carrier battlegroup out around Guam. They have a regular clockwork set of surface action groups deploying into the India Ocean and out to the gulf. They send a surface group down to the antipodes on an annual basis and seem to be now sending a small group throughout the med, North Atlantic to Russia.

Would like some enlightenment here. Ukraine’s use of Neptune missiles to sink the Black Sea flagship. From what I remember of the direct explanation I read from those involved it went something like 1) they had information the ship was somewhere in the vicinity. 2) they obtained more explicit information about its relative position (don’t remember, or they didn’t detail how) but didn’t know if the ship was still there. 3) Decided to take a ‘punt’ using Neptune and fired them in the general direction hoping it’s onboard seekers, when activated and within range of suspected location would detect the target and home in 4) only knew they had indeed hit the target when radio chatter was calling for help etc. They did a similar operation early on when Russia was trying to do a seaborne landing east of Odessa which it thwarted though the details are fuzzy and there was suspicion that those early Neptunes had an internal fault even production sabotage was suspected, but either way they were enough of a threat to the landing ships to send them scuttling and the operation cancelled.

So my question is does this not suggest that beyond horizon targeting and actual strikes can be achieved even in relatively unsophisticated scenarios? Surely even if there are few examples of it succeeding it’s also true there have been few examples of sophisticated platforms/missiles being used to actually attempt it in actual conflict?

Indeed digressing a little the loss of the F-117 Nighthawk was done in a not dissimilar fashion, it only needs a modicum of carelessness or over confidence allied to innovative thinking for quite long range hits on not easy to hit targets to occur?

I think the point is Ukraine gambled very very hard on the fact the only thing out there would be an enemy vessel..and as you said they fired and hoped the RN would never ever do that, their ROE would never allow that. Fire a anti shipping missile into a sea lane and you always have a chance it’s own seeker will lock onto something…you just don’t know what that will be.

a fast moving spud thrown by a burley sailor could deal with a russian frigate. We’ve seen russian naval capabilities exposed in the Ukraine obsolete low quality equipment coupled with.pkor sailors and leadership the fear of the Russian 🐻 is nothing like many would have us believe.thejr army has been battered by the Ukrainian one, air superiority has never been established. our intelligence will know where the majority of it’s nuclear capacity is located and NATO. should only really be concerned about the underwater issues I’d expect NATO would mop up the russian submarine fleet quite quickly.

U.K. subs won’t as we have none at sea . Not one .

A 100kg missile travelling at Mach 3+ is the point..that’s far more energy dumped into a hull than a 8in AP shell. The 10kg warhead is gravy…and even so 10kgs of programmable warhead is a lot of damage..it does not take very much to mission kill a modern warship. A U.S. AAW cruiser was once mission killed by a single shrike missile.

The point seems to be that Sea Venom would be to NSM what CAMM is to ASTER.
I’d say the comparison would be better between NSM and FC/ASW, but I suppose it’s reasonable.

NSM ship launched . Who we firing them at as it’s half the range of Russian and Chinese anti ship missiles so can’t get in range

My presumption would be I guess Europe being what it is geographically there are many scenarios where land masses restrict effective range so it’s better than nothing. The other question is how good those Russian missiles are at a given range particularly at longer ranges, targeting and all taken into consideration. They have far longer air to air ranged missiles, have for decades than even Meteor but it’s been considered the gold standard because amongst other things its terminal stage lethality. Not saying I know the answers to all this I am just pondering as I say, but ultimate range is surely only one if important factor and some capability especially as it’s a gap filler is better than nothing and if nothing else will enforce your enemy to expend its missiles at longer range reducing their potential effectiveness and giving your own defences a better chance of interception.

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Pretty sure that was his point

£330k well at least it cheaper than a top of the range Dialysis machine ,as we used too say when firing of Ikara or Sea Dart VFM . Oh how the WEO would stare at us God I miss High sea firings ( just be sarky SB ) But just hope the up coming first Labour budget this autumn , takes into account the geopolitical state of the world and any future threats that may arise ” seek peace prepare for war” .

Munitions need to be expended periodically both to check they work as advertised as well as to get the crew used to the sonics and feel so they know what is going on blind.

That’s why High Seas firing was a such a kick ,we just loved seeing the look on the WEOs face everything went as it should in accordance with the BRs a cheer would go round through Ops room or 909s .Then someone would say “wow there goes another Dialysis machine ” .It was just someone making a correlation between the cost of a missile and the cost of a Dialysis m.achine . One takes life one keeps life. That’s all I was saying I did quite a few HSF it kept us on the ball ,so if anything we’re too go wrong it was seen and sorted , thank god we did ,82 op Corporate

Although it’s range puts it in radar horizon range engagements, ER and MR would definitely allow for engagements beyond the radar horizon.

Depends on mast height?

Yes and also “Not so much” if you consider mast hight for radar on escorts they range from 20 meters for a Burke to 40 meters for a type 45..now I don’t know the exact radar mast high of a type 31 but 30meters is probably a good bet.

let’s say you had a very small surface target with a hight above water of only 2 meters ( so a autonomous vessel loaded with explosives )

that 20 meter radar has a radar horizon of just over 18kms with a max possible if your lucky detection of around 24km due to refraction.
your assumed type 31 radar at 30meters would have a horizon of 22km With a max if your lucky detection at 28km

your silly high T45 mast gives you just over 26km radar horizon and a if your lucky detection out to 30km

so that 25Km published range sits just right for the radar horizon of a frigate being ambushed by a load of smaller vessels.

when you are looking at two larger combatants looking for each other and assuming the mast will be hard to detect your looking at radar horizons of around 25km and a max if your lucky detection out to 35-40kms

I would encourage you to think that the full range of a CAMM against a slower target is a great deal more than the published!

The published range is conservative and will allow for fast manoeuvring against a supersonic target.

True, but it’s a 100kg mach3 missile, so powered burn is not going to be long…if your talking sea skimming trying to keep the launch low visibility..but I suspect they will also have a push it up to high altitude and let it glide down mode..which would probably extend the range a fair bit, if you don’t mind everyone seeing the launch, but then if the escort is radiating it’s probably not worried about broadcasting the launch so much…

All in all I don’t think people appreciate how much ASuW punch a Mach 3+ 100kg missile delivers..especially in the numbers that will be carried by the frigates…when it comes to energy delivered, speed does make a difference..and missile bodies always dump all their energy into a ships hull if they hit and on smaller targets a 10kg blast frag means a hit is not needed. They are an ideal anti missile boat anti autonomous vessel weapon if your small ship flight is not available..and even for larger surface combatants it would not take that many for a mission kill and a massive handful for any integrated air defence system to handle.

Because of the way CAMM launches any decent radar will paint it as it ejects quite high before the main motor fires.

All our frigates and destroyers use LPI radars so that isn’t really the issue.

Anything going Mach3 makes a big kinetic hole. 10kg of modern HE is a lot particularly as multi fuzing has improved to be dynamic. So the blast will go exactly where it isn’t wanted.

The main radars used for missile direction are not LPI.

The days of there being separate missile direction radars are in the past?

The missile is sent to a location determined by the radar, EO, Sat Feed, Elint….the radar doesn’t even have to be involved. All you need is a track, location, velocity, vector etc.

Though the radars in the nose of the missile are not usually LPI as they only switch on when the missile is getting close to target.

Geez I love your posts, informative and simple to understand.

…and I think that is the true effectiveness and potential of the CAAM platform, growth and options that is effectively under UK control in the way that Aster is not. Goes well beyond simply comparing the out and out capability of a single Aster 15 missile to a standard CAAM missile.

National capacity and control is more important than a lot of people think to be honest..