Naval armaments

This whole situations sound like the best shield vs the best spear. I have often heard that modern Ashm have hit probably of over 98%, and it can do some fancy moves etc... same thing can be said for the AA VLS system, good detection and range out to over 200km etc...

Until a true large scale full saturation attack happens, who know for sure?

While we are on this topic, just how many incoming missiles can an aegis system can track, engage and guide AA missiles all at same time?

jackliu said:

While we are on this topic, just how many incoming missiles can an aegis system can track, engage and guide AA missiles all at same time?

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If you know the answer to this million dollar question, you either work in the industry or belong in prison.

My own personal guess is somewhere north of 2,000 tracks (if you assume the maximum tracking capability of the E-2C is covered by that of the Aegis system itself), with a presumably lesser number of these tracks being fire control quality. The limits of Aegis/CEC is defined probably not by the number of trackable targets in a real world scenario but by the total number of air defense missiles in the fleet, especially if engagement of an incoming saturation attack begins at the maximum range of the SM-2 (170km?). Fighters on CAP duty could potentially be picking off some missiles before that. SM-6 supposedly has a range of 240km, but I would not be surprised if its actual range is more like 400km. At those ranges the E-2C would be tasked with engaging incoming missiles, of which it could attack a few dozen at a time.

any single strike by a subsonic anti-ship missile is unlikely to sink a ship. Even multiple is unlikely to sink a large warship. They would achieve soft kill though. By far the most likely way of hard killing a ship is through torpedoes.

As for AB's engagement capability, I believe they can provide guidance against 18 targets at the same time. This is for one ship. Of course, it can track more aerial targets than that.

Polmar and Friedman both claim, in their respective books (naval institute guide to naval weapon systems and Ships of US navy) that SPY array (refering to the first version from the late 80s) that each of the four spy-1 arrays has 8 transmitters and that each array can provide midcourse guidance for 8 missiles. That would mean, in theory, 16 missiles guided at one time toward one quadrant or up to 32 missiles guided in various quadrants. They do both add that there are other bottlenecks in fire control system which put the realistic number to about 20 guided missiles at the same time. Again, as this was the earlier version of the system, it is plausible that today's versions have a different FCS, enabling it to take advantage of the hardware of the array and fully utilise 16/32 guided missiles.

Coincidentally, the same author (friedman) talks about Thales' APAR system and says: "Each of the four arrays is devided into four independant quadrants, each of which has its own waveform generator and two missile guidance waveform generators (for both the missile uplink and terminal illumination). The array can, therefor, control the simultaneous engagement of up to four targets, managing up to eight missiles." That would mean two arrays can guide 16 missiles towards one quadrant or four arrays could guide 32 missiles at the same time. Since APAR illuminates targets on its own, unlike SPY, targets hit at the same time would be 8 in one quadrant or 16 altogether.

Totoro said:

Polmar and Friedman both claim, in their respective books (naval institute guide to naval weapon systems and Ships of US navy) that SPY array (refering to the first version from the late 80s) that each of the four spy-1 arrays has 8 transmitters and that each array can provide midcourse guidance for 8 missiles. That would mean, in theory, 16 missiles guided at one time toward one quadrant or up to 32 missiles guided in various quadrants. They do both add that there are other bottlenecks in fire control system which put the realistic number to about 20 guided missiles at the same time. Again, as this was the earlier version of the system, it is plausible that today's versions have a different FCS, enabling it to take advantage of the hardware of the array and fully utilise 16/32 guided missiles.

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The upper limit of guidance is unknown. I would guess far more than 16/32 if the number was ~20 in the 80's.

Totoro said:

Coincidentally, the same author (friedman) talks about Thales' APAR system and says: "Each of the four arrays is devided into four independant quadrants, each of which has its own waveform generator and two missile guidance waveform generators (for both the missile uplink and terminal illumination). The array can, therefor, control the simultaneous engagement of up to four targets, managing up to eight missiles." That would mean two arrays can guide 16 missiles towards one quadrant or four arrays could guide 32 missiles at the same time. Since APAR illuminates targets on its own, unlike SPY, targets hit at the same time would be 8 in one quadrant or 16 altogether.

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APAR or any other X-band AESA should not be compared to Aegis-equipped warships. The computing power is not the same since SPY-1 does not ever guide its missiles from launch until interception but rather provides midcourse updates only. In the terminal phase the limiting factor is how long the SPG-62 FCR needs to illuminate its target before slewing to the next one and how fast it can do so.

Don't know why people bother with this type of thread you just get one guy quoting some source that says my magic missile will sink your ship and some other guy saying with my magic counter system that won't happen.

Since the USN has in excess of 60+ Burkes and another 20+ Ticos all AEGIS enabled and loaded to the gills with surface to air missiles, the fact that a couple of Burkes would have more Standard missiles than most airforces have strike planes. Given the alleged capabilities of the AEGIS system in these times of austerity either the US Navy is just building ships and loading them up with missiles for the sake of it, there's another 10+ Burkes planned, (hey its your tax dollars or rather debt you owe to the Chinese!) or maybe they expect some of them to be lost if a war heats up, you know just a thought maybe the US Navy has adults running the show who realise that sheets of heavier than water metal plate wrapping tons of high explosives and volatile liquids might under conditions of concussive shock, sink! The other alternative is that the US Military needs to fight attacking aliens off Hawaii or was that just a movie? I think US Admirals with their heads screwed on is the likelier bet!

hkbc said:

Don't know why people bother with this type of thread you just get one guy quoting some source that says my magic missile will sink your ship and some other guy saying with my magic counter system that won't happen.

Since the USN has in excess of 60+ Burkes and another 20+ Ticos all AEGIS enabled and loaded to the gills with surface to air missiles, the fact that a couple of Burkes would have more Standard missiles than most airforces have strike planes. Given the alleged capabilities of the AEGIS system in these times of austerity either the US Navy is just building ships and loading them up with missiles for the sake of it, there's another 10+ Burkes planned, (hey its your tax dollars or rather debt you owe to the Chinese!) or maybe they expect some of them to be lost if a war heats up, you know just a thought maybe the US Navy has adults running the show who realise that sheets of heavier than water metal plate wrapping tons of high explosives and volatile liquids might under conditions of concussive shock, sink! The other alternative is that the US Military needs to fight attacking aliens off Hawaii or was that just a movie? I think US Admirals with their heads screwed on is the likelier bet!

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So far there was historically always a fierce competition for top dog status among naval powers because it allows to win wars by better SLOC access. An enemy with a significant SLOC control and denial capability can have enough human network access to run up to dangerous levels under wartime conditions. The overwhelming US naval force does make perfect sense.
Surface ships are excellent transport platforms, much cheaper than underwater vessels, but they do require defenses as an object and a group. With these you can actually gather intelligence and control a body of water. The subsurface is good for denial and denying enemy attempts at denial, plus increasingly as a surprise missile attack platform.
The combat salvo model makes it clear that numbers count if there's no massive imbalance of other capabilities, so the question is rather why don't they pack more on the ships.