Star Wars at Sea

Something for the Iranians to think about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/navy-deploying-laser-weapon-prototype-in-persian-gulf.html?_r=0

be sure and catch the video, at least the first part.

http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/04/08/world/100000002160542/us-navy-laser-weapon-demonstration.html?ref=world

One thing learned in the Falklands war was that the vulnerability could not be tolerated.

The Sheffield got hit by an Exocet just after turning off its defenses for a satellite transmission.

The Welsh Guards got torched aboard their transport ship because the ships were sitting ducks while shore batteries were still being set up and time had been wasted arguing about assigned landing spot versus the closest one.

Atlantic Conveyer with its thousands of tons of supplies and a dozen helicopters was lost because an Exocet was distracted by the chaff cloud of a naval vessel but easily reacquired a large civilian container ship.

With so many autonomous standoff weapons and so many hand held one shot -one kill throwaway weapons, the only protection is a permanent electronic cloud at close range and sure shot targeting at longer range.

The original Star Wars was a hoax designed to induce the Russians to spend based on all those four phase contracts we were giving out to hit a bullet with a bullet. Our "test" was rigged and its success was really simply a press release that caused the Kremlin to crank up the spending. Then along came some people who said 'Why not'? With weapons creep and technological changes its becoming more and more possible to have area defense arrays. The first shot success rate of US forces being tested on RPGs is woefully low, but in most of the world various rag tag militias are composed of men who have been intimately familiar with an RPG since the age of twelve. The weapon is cheaper than the soldier and that soldier is far more skilled with it than any of our troops.

Quote: odiousgambit

Something for the Iranians to think about.

A phalanx system is difficult to beat. The problem is that there are no shortage of weapons that do a lot of damage from a greater range if they hit a missile correctly, but with several missiles coming in and a very short reaction time, these systems tend to have lower overall effectiveness at dozens of times the cost.

The problem with the USS Start in 1987 is the phalanx was locked down, so the Exocets hit the ship without any defense at all.
The pilot fired the first Exocet missile from a range of 22.5 nautical miles, and the second from 15.5 nautical miles. The second one exploded.

Quote: Pacomartin

A phalanx system is difficult to beat. The problem is that there are no shortage of weapons that do a lot of damage from a greater range if they hit a missile correctly, but with several missiles coming in and a very short reaction time, these systems tend to have lower overall effectiveness at dozens of times the cost.

The problem with the USS Start in 1987 is the phalanx was locked down, so the Exocets hit the ship without any defense at all.
The pilot fired the first Exocet missile from a range of 22.5 nautical miles, and the second from 15.5 nautical miles. The second one exploded.

Phalanx fires 3,000 - 4,500 rounds per minute. The initial store of ammunition in each gun is gone in 15 - 20 seconds.

Everyone knows a Phalanx is toast when outflanked... Oh, wait! That's just the Greek phalanx. Sorry.

Quote: Ayecarumba

Phalanx fires 3,000 - 4,500 rounds per minute. The initial store of ammunition in each gun is gone in 15 - 20 seconds.

Agreed.
Type of Fire: 3,000 rounds per minute - Later models: 4,500 rounds/min (starting 1988 production, Pneumatic Gun Drive)
Magazine Capacity: 989 rounds - Later models: 1,550 rounds

The Exocet missiles fired on the USS Stark were probably in the air for 1.5 and 2 minutes. While it doesn't last very long you put up a wall of metal which covers a pretty wide dispersal area. It is very much a "last chance" weapon.

By it's fundamental nature, no one wants to completely rely on the phalanx. It would be like parachuting out of a plane and not pulling the ripcord because you have an automatic activation device. But I am saying it is difficult to detect and lock onto a missile in 90 seconds with a more sophisticated weapon like a laser or rail gun.

All shipboard weapon systems have to discriminate between flock of seabirds, incoming jet fighter, incoming exocet, incoming decoy, incoming debris or incoming wave spray.

Rate of fire per minute is often meaningless because weapon is not designed to be fired for more than a few seconds as a last "minute" defense of sending up lead or depleted uranium to hit incoming warhead.