Actually, I find the hit probability for these modern supersonic Russian missiles to be quite appalling. I'm talking about sunburn and Club right now. I know the hit rates weren't that great when tested by PLAN. Again, supersonic missiles are harder to intercept, but they also have less time to react to soft kill measures, so that normally results in lower hit rate.
they a a generation behind (until upgraded recently). As opposed P-800 Oniks/ yakhont family the latest of the lot, the P-270 Moskit was designed during 1970’s (The Klub has enough versions to even confuse the Russians, or atleast me), from what I have read online the whole world of active missile guidance have changed a lot in this decade, partly due to the advances in electronics, it is possible to fit tremendous amount of processing ability into a missile, a lot more than before. The yakhont was maneuverable enough to identify and acquire the target in the terminal guidance mode.
“The missile is capable of selecting an individual ship target from a group, even in a jamming environment.”
Source:
http://www.missilethreat.com/cruise/id.103/cruise_detail.asp
Which will require decent maneuvering ability.
The capability of the evolution of P-800 Oniks/ yakhont – that is PJ-10 BrahMos should be either equivalent or better, like the python-4 and python-5 series development the stress in the project was on the guidance and computing/processing capability of the missile- for land based and sea based target, although the optimized speed and variable path suggests some improvements have been made in other areas.
Not much information is available about the PJ-10 BrahMos, all the tests seem to be accurate (there have been quite a lot of them) including the ones conducted by the Indian Navy, until and unless a big conspiracy to sell a bulk of these missiles is underway or evidence is in hand it might be difficult to doubt these claims.
The real information on the specifics of guidance, active/passive radar guidance, ECCM, CCM will be kept firmly out of the public domain for good reason.
So beyond opinions nothing much can exist in the public domain.
Even if this missile (PJ-10 BrahMos) is able to perform up to the claimed standards in a battle scenario in a fire and forget mode, I still don’t think it will be very threatening at 120-300 km range, as it still falls with in an envelop of other hostile anti shipping cruise missiles, and there is no guaranty that the hostile ship will not be able to direct its missiles, this missile doesn’t satisfy the envisioned goals of the Indian Navy.
For a navy with limited goals it is an excellent platform.
What I am waiting for is the anticipated integration of the BrahMos navigation and guidance systems with high-speed data links that will be able to receive course-correction and terminal guidance cues from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and/or maritime and AEW aircraft/helicopters with synthetic aperture radar payloads and optical equipment, this work is underway at the BrahMos corp.
The capability of (specifically) launching a high endurance UAV with a SAR+optical payload from a naval vessel and using the data provided to accurately guide a anti shipping missile towards the target with the ability of using virtually any sensor available to do this will be a technological leap, especially in the future platforms with longer ranged anti shipping cruise missile that will come into service, for the land based version it will provide a pin point real time strike capability on unpredictable threats, which prove to be the most harmful in battle (for example a sudden deployment of enemy MBRL).
The future Indian Navy (which wants to be networked together on several platforms/levels) will really absorb this technology.
If the project can provide a movement towards this sort of fusion/integration, nothing like it. Otherwise it will be the next generation.
don't think it's that simple. You have to consider the type of sensors available, their refresh rate, scan rate, types of sensor fusion between search radar and FCR.
Well ok the refresh rate scan rate is there however a low flying threat will not be picked off till the FCR horizon, even if one fuses/integrates the main search radars sensors which are optimized to find a threat which is considerably larger in size than a missile (the missile will have some amount of work done on it to reduce the RCS), according to the following link
http://www.clashofarms.com/files/Smarter Radars for Hpn.pdf
For a band stand type radar optimized for surface search the detection range for a stealth ship will be 8NM, even if we add another very generous 10 NM for a much improved technology it comes out to 18 NM, and this is for a stealth ship, the threat here is a missile with some level of RCS reduction done on it.
The FCR of a SAM will be as an assumption - optimized to find such targets.
On the basis of this information
And a basic defense platform like the:
Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile, Nulka Decoy System, AN/SPG-62 Fire Control Radar.
Will face a lot of trouble.
As with the following link, in which a highly over qualified and paranoid Australian gentlemen explains the situation.
http://www.ausairpower.net/ascms.pdf
The article is from 2000 that is why I made the assumption that the SAM capability he explained will be basic in current terms.
However this assumption of mine rests heavily on the accuracy of the provided links, it is more than possible that I am adding 2 + B here (that will be different terms not meant for addition).
not sure, the future of naval warfare points to more and more stealthy designs coming out. The ability to find the targets and having seekers on your missiles that can pick up the targets is obviously critical.
Hmmm I agree.
The ships which have employed generous amount of radar reduction measures will still be very visible to the eye in the sky (optical and SAR), if they can accurately guide the missiles to with in a good enough the ship will not escape the missiles seekers which are made to withstand EW and other countermeasures (chaff/decoy systems) from a close in range, the SAM envelop will help, however the way UAVs are going they will not be easy pickings for the fire control radar of the SAM.
By the time these stealth ships are fielded in large numbers (which make early reconnaissance and targeting difficult) many nations will possess naval UCAV capable of denying search/track, something like the global hawk can already fly at very high altitudes.
Other nations will also employ/procure stealth ships, if the prize bracket is in any way relative to the stealth aircrafts, I doubt the amount of such ships will be exceptional.
Neither one is easy. Although the Russian anti-ship missiles don't seem to fly as low as some of the Western ones. Of course, the best thing to do is to put additional layer of defense (with Barak as one of the layers) to make things safer. But missiles is just one part of it, having the right set of sensors, combat system, CIWS and soft kill measures will be more important.
The problem is in hostile situations what will come at you, cannot be predicted, no one in the immediate neighborhood (including India) feels an obligation towards the United Nations Arms Register, even the CIWS and soft kill measures have to be coordinated with the whole FCR which at a higher saturation and speed of incoming threats will be really on the edge of their detection ranges, if the first detection is limited exclusively to the ships sensors.
As you said separate layers of defense systems, with each capable of handling the threat at optimal level should be perused, as it is the money going from the Indian tax payers pocket towards the next version of enhanced range BARAK weapon system, is no small amount and even if it went further up, it will be better to have a system that is more effective/optimized to deal with such threats.
The best solution always lays in denying any saturation attack.
