Naval armaments

Modern warships have huge surface-to-air missile complements, usually in the dozens. But they have comparatively few anti-ship missiles, usually 8-16. Why is this? Considering the advancement in gun and missile CIWS, won't an attacking warship need to fire five, ten, fifteen anti-ship missiles at the enemy warship in order to get one through? Even the SAMs in the VLSes can target incoming anti-ship missiles, adding to the large advantage the defending ship has.

The Soviet strategy during the Cold War was to send hundreds of anti-ship missiles via air, sip, and submarine platforms at NATO warships and supply convoys in the North Atlantic. The Soviets seemed to believe a huge saturation attack was necessary to overwhelm NATO defenses. Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" describes this scenario. The Soviets launch hundreds of anti-ship missiles from strategic bombers like the Tu-22M and Tu-160 at an American CVBG. The CVBG escorts exhaust their own SAMs and watch helplessly as the remaining missiles hit an American carrier.

In conclusion, why do modern warships carry enormous quantities of SAMs and very few anti-ship missiles? Is it conceivable that in modern naval combat two warships could shoot down each other's missile and they're left to maneuver into range of their naval guns?

US warships were the first to mass produce air defense oriented warships, solely for the protection of the carrier battle-group. This is a product of different ideologies. The American ideology is to strike mainly by aircrafts, since radars for the ship-to-ship missiles aren't that effective at long distance, due to natural curvature of the earth. Sure the Soviet missiles have long range, but the guiding radar can't see the enemy at their designed range. USN want to attack around 400km (maybe nm, don't remember which) distance, before the two sides reach effective missile range of the Soviets. This is why the destroyers and cruisers are all named Aegis, which literally coincides with the name of the shield used by Zeus.

On the other hand, Soviets didn't have many carriers and the centre of their power projections were missile cruisers, which relies on overpowering the enemy with countless missiles.

With that said, all NATO standards and traditions are set by the US. If the USN focuses on air defense, its NATO servants will mimic it.

The plan of PLAN fielding aircraft carriers probably predates the first type 052. It is obvious that the battle-group consists much more than just the carrier, with peripherals being just as important as the core airstrip. It is no brainer why the Chinese experts began to develop USN style air defense destroyers, obviously for the future aircraft carriers.

IMO at least from the USN perspective the main platform for antishipping missions is the carrier-based fighter, which can deliver the same antiship missile much further than if launched from a surface vessel, because of higher altitude at launch, higher launch speed, and of course the fact that the fighter can penetrate an enemy defense screen much faster and more readily than a ship. It would shock me if the PLAN were ever able to get into a position to launch its YJ-83's against any USN ships, for example. These missiles allegedly have a range of only about 150km or so when surface-launched (but 250+ when launched from a plane). Against lesser foes like the ASEAN countries, this is much more easily accomplished.

Also, the numbers needed for a successful saturation attack against a capable adversary such as US, Japanese or Korean naval forces are probably in the several hundreds, if not over a thousand, so 8 missiles is not going to change the outcome of such an attack by much. Two or four fighters could carry the same exact load and do the job better and faster. I think this is the main advantage of CATOBAR carriers over STOBAR/STOVL carriers, the ability to easily launch dozens of fighters loaded with hundreds of antiship missiles.

OTOH if you have a ship with 128 cells like the Tico and Sejong the Great, you've got enough spare cells to load dozens of ASCM's or LACM's at your discretion, but these types of ships are few and far between.

As for the Russian Navy, ships like the Kirov and Slava pay a heavy price in deck surface and/or internal volume to load a paltry additional number of antiship missiles compared to an average warship, with little additional gain in ability to saturate an enemy's air defenses. The Sovremenny, supposedly an "antishipping" destroyer, carries only 8 Sunburns. IMO modern naval warfare has evolved to the point where ship-based antishipping is no longer viable against any but the least important naval players in the world.

Maybe they could also launch from submarines.

So is it fair to say the only reason to have huge SAM complements is to protect a carrier? Most countries don't operate carriers, and most of those that do have carriers that do not present a significant offensive threat. It seems like most countries should pack as many anti-ship and LACM into their ships and only have 8-16 SAMs plus CIWS.

Ships are very expensive platforms, so it makes sense to arm them with more defensive missile than offensive missiles. Otherwise, two equal battle fleets engaging will result in the complete destruction of both, given equal capabilities. Countries would rather have their ships survive to fight another day.

Mysterre said:

As for the Russian Navy, ships like the Kirov and Slava pay a heavy price in deck surface and/or internal volume to load a paltry additional number of antiship missiles compared to an average warship, with little additional gain in ability to saturate an enemy's air defenses. The Sovremenny, supposedly an "antishipping" destroyer, carries only 8 Sunburns. IMO modern naval warfare has evolved to the point where ship-based antishipping is no longer viable against any but the least important naval players in the world.

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For Kirov and Slava, (also OSCAR SSGN as well) their missiles (in the actually cold war gone hot scenario) would be tipped with 500kt nukes and only need to be launched at approximate position of the CVBG. One of the missile would pop-up to detect and select targets. Since they're nuke armed, only one missile is needed to get near the carrier to sink the entire CVBG. Of course, the entire goal to stop US effort to supply Europe and enable the SSBN to get into position to lunch their goods. (Of course there is an entire submarine warfare component that's ignored there) Aren't glad we aren't in that era anymore.

luhai said:

For Kirov and Slava, (also OSCAR SSGN as well) their missiles (in the actually cold war gone hot scenario) would be tipped with 500kt nukes and only need to be launched at approximate position of the CVBG. One of the missile would pop-up to detect and select targets. Since they're nuke armed, only one missile is needed to get near the carrier to sink the entire CVBG. Of course, the entire goal to stop US effort to supply Europe and enable the SSBN to get into position to lunch their goods. (Of course there is an entire submarine warfare component that's ignored there) Aren't glad we aren't in that era anymore.

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The blast radius of a nuclear weapon is on the order of a few km at the most. Most escort ships will be 20-30+ km away from the carrier when in formation. This means that a direct hit on any escort has no chance of affecting any other escort or the carrier itself. In other words, a nuclear-tipped missile has no greater chance to hit the carrier or an escort than a non-nuclear missile. The only difference is that a single hit will totally destroy the target, whereas normally it would probably require several dozen direct hits to take down a carrier. With respect to the Russian ships, these nuclear-tipped missiles would get shot down just like any other missile unless they were part of a massive saturation attack. Which again gets back to the whole issue of lack of significant missile numbers with Russian ships.

If missiles were capable of being multi-purpose, then having 96 missiles of the same time for anti-ship and anti-air work for example would allow for easier saturation fire against an opponent.

all the SAMs also have secondary anti-shipping modes. Also, USN relies on the f-18s to launch AShM. The Russian AShm were generally really large and had to be launched by surface ships and nuclear submarines.