I guess the point I was trying to make, is that we see a lot of these press releases from producing countries on things like the SS-N-27 and the Brhamos, stating that they are the end all to anti-ship missles, and we just don't know. I have little doubt that they are effective systems. The Russians have always produced some great weapons systems and India's defense industry is coming along. However, Russia - historically - has not produced weapons systems that are as advanced as those made by the west.
Ive been around defense since the '70s. It always been hard to gauge the effectiveness of Russian systems because "they" over-sell them", and we "over-sell" them, in order to get taxpayer money for the new gee-whizes of our industry. Add to that the Industrial/Military/Govt. feeling that the end justifies the means which means they also will downgrade a threat. Feeling as they do that they dont want to alarm the public, or even worse, put in danger the systems they have attached their careers to.
In other words there's a lot of horse manure flung around in this industry. We see many shades of grey and its hard to get a true picture.
I must admit that I am certainly no expert on the defense industry, however it seems to me that a country's ability to make sophisticated weapons systems on a large production scale is going to be related to the country's industrial base, experience in the defense industry, and economic structure.
Yes and no. Much depends on what systems they are applying their available resources to. The Russians have always been pretty good at stealing technology, making do with what they have and improvising, and absolutely applying their largest resources on systems they have identified as top priority to their defense. Ashm's have always been high on that list, as have launch platforms. In fact, you could call these missiles and their platforms THE Doctrine of their conventional naval forces.
Harpoon works. To my knowledge a harpoon has never missed its target (albiet in low intensity situations) with one exception and that was against an Iranian missle boat that had sunk so far that what was left of it above the water did not give the missle a target. We do not know it the Russian ASMs work, because they have not be used in combat.
Yes, Harpoon-ll is a very good missile. Best of all its far smaller then the Russian AshMs and we can both carry and shoot gobs of them on gobs of platforms. We have variations of Harpoon that have a much longer range, and, between all the variations they have about every guidance type system we own. In other words any country taking us on would be facing a arsenal of 6,000 Harpoons/Slam/Slam'ers that can be launched by almost every warship we own, by every carrier attack aircraft, and by B-52 versions.
The Harpoon-ll is so good we can tell it exactly where on the ship to hit. Its very good against ships in port or in littorals and since its RCS is far smaller then the big Russian missiles it can be a problem to spot. Best of all an enemy is going to get a few dozen heading their way. We could easily use hundreds against an enemy.
I know the Russians are making a version of this missile for their Kilo submarines but its far smaller with far less range. And the boat would still have the problem of penetrating a Carriers protective screen, with the whole shebang whizzing around at 25 knots, and getting within 30 or 40 clicks to fire it.
The longer range versions have the same problems other Russian missile platforms have always have. What good is a 300 KL range missile when a Yank submarine, super-Hornet, or surface ship is destroying your firing platform 500 KLs from the carrier? Besides, almost all the countries the Russians are selling these things to will never know where in hell the carriers are in the first place.
And a missile that only goes supersonic in its end game is going to have to get by protective assets while still in subsonic mode. And we aint stupid enough to put a super carrier into littoral waters so hazardous during war time. Thats why we have Bombers and Allies we can stage the USAF from.
So really this new gee-whiz missile is just a new chapter to an old game. We have been playing this game of chess a long time with the Russians and now with ESSM-SeaRam coming on line it will be their turn to move the pieces. Besides actually shooting down the AshM isn't the only way we have of defeating it. We have decoys, chaff clouds...ect Truth is we've been practicing against super-sonic missiles for awhiles.
And its not like a war with the USN would be a missile vs missile war. An enemy would have to take on the combined Intel/Targeting/Networkcentric/stealth/firepower assets of the entire US Military.
A threat? Yes! A reason to run around the table, screaming with your hair on fire, gulping Prozac? No!
)