British 'virtuous circle' 1957 onwards?

[Rule of cool]

On the topic of missiles Britain acquired no fewer than 4 (& 1/2 or 5 depending on how you look at it) anti ship missiles: MARTel (TV & ARM), Exocet, Sub-Harpoon/Harpoon and Sea Eagle. Surely there's scope for the worlds 3rd most powerful navy with a big air force to come up with a world class anti-ship missile family for a reasonable price.

 

[zen]

Green Cheese (1950's)
Blue Slug (Anti-ship Seaslug)
Fairey Sea Skimmer
Vague studies early 60’s
RAN Womba (Anti-ship Ikara)
Fleetfoot
Anti-ship Sea Dart
Sea Eagle

 

[red admiral]

Back to a combination of wishful thinking and "if only the government had spent even more money"

 

[Hood]

One virtuous circle thing would be once the Swingfire enters service the Hawkswing variant for helicopter use should be adopted instead of the TOW. That's another example of Britain not pushing its own gear and introducing a second supply chain and support aystem instead.

Snag was, Hawkswing wasn't that good as it descended following launch and risked impacting the ground so the helicopter had to be higher and therefore less able to use terrain masking and potentially ending up as Shilka bait.
Would have needed some element of redesign to work as well as TOW.
To reduce supply chains, you could equally argue buy HOT instead as most of the Lynx are in West Germany anyway and could share Germany Army stocks.

 

[Hood]

On the topic of missiles Britain acquired no fewer than 4 (& 1/2 or 5 depending on how you look at it) anti ship missiles: MARTel (TV & ARM), Exocet, Sub-Harpoon/Harpoon and Sea Eagle. Surely there's scope for the worlds 3rd most powerful navy with a big air force to come up with a world class anti-ship missile family for a reasonable price.

Missing Sea Skua off that list though, so the tally is higher.

Sea Eagle comes out of Martel, so really is a bonus extra. I think more could have been done with the Martel series.
Buying Exocet MM.40 instead of Harpoon was an option, or not bothering to fit the Counties with Exocet and buying Harpoon off the bat.

 

[zen]

If we fund Anti-ship Martel which became Sea Eagle and considering much work was done on a submarine launched version. This really should have become the solution across the board.
Arguably the nuclear option should have been pursued.

Some of this could have been earlier.

The best earlier option seems to be Fairey's Sea Skimmer.
But....
But the most work done was Green Cheese earlier still and Blue Boar TV guided bomb.

Outside of this the Swedes fielded a modified drone from the French to become Europes first Anti-ship Missile.

Both the French and Italians pursued very competent Anti-ship Missile programs. Both were considered for the RN.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Ordering SACLOS-Vigilante in lieu of Milan would have been a good idea.

I would prefer Otomat instead of MM40.

 

[zen]

Otomat does meet the higher requirement of Fleetfoot, Exocet the lower.
Sea Killer was a lower end option as well.

 

[PMN1]

Green Cheese (1950's)
Blue Slug (Anti-ship Seaslug)
Fairey Sea Skimmer
Vague studies early 60’s
RAN Womba (Anti-ship Ikara)
Fleetfoot
Anti-ship Sea Dart
Sea Eagle

Fleetfoot?

 

[zen]

Fleetfoot

RN studies and requirements for Anti-ship Missiles. I'd have to check but during the 60's.

 

[Rule of cool]

we fund Anti-ship Martel which became Sea Eagle and considering much work was done on a submarine launched version. This really should have become the solution across the board.

I'm inclined to agree with this approach. If France and Germany can develop an active radar seeker in the early-mid 70s then surely Britain can too. Then is a matter of attaching it to a Martel, putting a booster and putting it in a tube.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Green Cheese (1950's)
Blue Slug (Anti-ship Seaslug)
Fairey Sea Skimmer
Vague studies early 60’s
RAN Womba (Anti-ship Ikara)
Fleetfoot
Anti-ship Sea Dart
Sea Eagle

For Blue Slug and antiship Sea Dart, how much of that was different from the SAMs?

I mean, Talos and Terrier (and Standard, later) had antiship modes designed in, and could use any missile in the magazine for antiship work. Plus, Talos proved to be a terrifying antiship missile between sheer speed and atomized fuel.

 

[Siberia]

CVA-01 is not a paper ship because long-lead items to the value of £3.5 million were on order by January 1966.

CVA-01 was never built, never went through trials to identify any weaknesses, and was never in operational service. Sounds like a fairly paper ship to me.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

For Blue Slug and antiship Sea Dart, how much of that was different from the SAMs?

I mean, Talos and Terrier (and Standard, later) had antiship modes designed in, and could use any missile in the magazine for antiship work. Plus, Talos proved to be a terrifying antiship missile between sheer speed and atomized fuel.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/british-long-range-shipborne-anti-ship-and-surface-missiles-1962-70.12273/#post-128403

The Blue Slug SSM was intended to allow giuided missile destroyers without carrier support to outrange large Soviet cruisers. Designed to use the same equipment as Sea Slug; i.e. same launcher and Type 901 beam-guidance radar, it has been described as being a Sea Slug without the main wings, carrying a Red Angel Warhead and a Red Dean seeker.

NavWeaps Forums-Sea-skimming Sea Dart.

In 1969 Hawker Siddley Dynamics (HSD) proposed an anti-ship sea-skimming variant in which the ramjet sustainer would have been fuelled with Shelldyne

www.tapatalk.com

In 1969 Hawker Siddley Dynamics (HSD) proposed an anti-ship sea-skimming variant in which the ramjet sustainer would have been fuelled with Shelldyne instead of kerosene. As Shelldyne was denser it would have given the missile a significantly greater range, approximately 37km (the same range as the missile in the conventional 'up and over' trajectory) as opposed to 24km. The missile would have used the same CW radio altimeter as proposed for Seaslug; this altimeter was fitted to the Phantoms built for the FAA. It was intended to fit a semi-armour-piercing warhead immediately behind the nosecone, and move the electronics back into the space normally used by the radio fuze.

 

[Scott Kenny]

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/british-long-range-shipborne-anti-ship-and-surface-missiles-1962-70.12273/#post-128403

NavWeaps Forums-Sea-skimming Sea Dart.

In 1969 Hawker Siddley Dynamics (HSD) proposed an anti-ship sea-skimming variant in which the ramjet sustainer would have been fuelled with Shelldyne

www.tapatalk.com

Thank you.

So, completely different missiles, then, and not an alternate mode of using the AA missiles. Unfortunate. Having an alternate mode for the AA missiles is much preferable for magazine capacity reasons.

 

[starviking]

Thank you.

So, completely different missiles, then, and not an alternate mode of using the AA missiles. Unfortunate. Having an alternate mode for the AA missiles is much preferable for magazine capacity reasons.

I guess it depends on operational choices.

Use of an altimeter, and the talk about Shelldyne matching the up-and-over range suggests a sea-skimmer.

Did the dual-purpose USN missiles have a sea-skimming capability? Or were they just fired to a higher altitude on a path to the target ship?

 

[zen]

Did the dual-purpose USN missiles have a sea-skimming capability? Or were they just fired to a higher altitude on a path to the target ship?

Ballistic I think.
There was even a Terrier based INS missile called Taurus offered.

Only Harpoon changed this.

 

[A Tentative Fleet Plan]

Taurus was a land-attack missile.

 

[Scott Kenny]

I guess it depends on operational choices.

Use of an altimeter, and the talk about Shelldyne matching the up-and-over range suggests a sea-skimmer.

Did the dual-purpose USN missiles have a sea-skimming capability? Or were they just fired to a higher altitude on a path to the target ship?

Talos was definitely ballistic-ish. Flying at a high altitude and then diving down almost vertically onto the target ship.

Not sure about the others, but I'd suspect the same high altitude flight path.

 

[Rule of cool]

Talos was definitely ballistic-ish. Flying at a high altitude and then diving down almost vertically onto the target ship.

Pretty terrifying if you're on the target ship I'd think.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Pretty terrifying if you're on the target ship I'd think.

50% heavier airframe (~3300lbs versus 1900) with ~50% more explosive (215ish lbs versus 150**), and impacting at nearly twice the speed of a 16" HE shell (Mach 3 terminal dive, ~1000m/s versus impacting at ~500m/s). A single Talos hit would probably kill any ship cruiser or smaller, split the ship in half.

** Officially, Talos has a 465lb continuous-rod warhead, but that's including the weight of the rods. Okieboat says that there was about 215lbs of boom in a Talos.

 

[Rule of cool]

I've watched a YouTube video about the USA USSR naval standoff associated with the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It talks about the Talos armed USS Little Rock being the most powerful surface combatant, and that sounds about right given the Talos weapons effects.

 

[BlackBat242]

I've watched a YouTube video about the USA USSR naval standoff associated with the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It talks about the Talos armed USS Little Rock being the most powerful surface combatant, and that sounds about right given the Talos weapons effects.

Don't forget the 3x6"/47 guns (one triple turret) and the 2x5"/38 (one twin mount).

 

[Rule of cool]

Don't forget the 3x6"/47 guns (one triple turret) and the 2x5"/38 (one twin mount).

The Independence, escorted by Little Rock, was being shadowed by a Kynda class cruiser while the FDR was being shadowed by a Sverdlov class cruiser.

BTW the British playing a part in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war to its own benefit is what I envisage to be the benefit of a British virtuous circle. Perhaps the RN has a naval Task Force in the Med, certainly TSR2s and multi-role Lightnings in Cyprus to threaten intervention and Belfasts and VC10s to conduct an airlift. Additionally more Lightning and other equipment exports in the Mid East (maybe Iran, Iraq and Jordan) gives Britain to embargo or support to advance its interests.

 

[Purpletrouble]

The US is starting to find itself in the same jam for building warships as the UK was in the 60s.
CVNs are built in smaller numbers over longer times. Maintaining more than about ten modern carriers may be difficult.
Escorts too are now down to one high end (CGX) and one low end (FFG).
One class of SSN and one SSBN cant be built in the numbers of the Cold War.
Managing shipyards will be challenging.

Exactly,

The LCS is basically the high speed Type 19 alongside the AB (aka Type 82). Only the US were daft enough to build it and ignored even more historical evidence since that if you want high speed for surveillance and attack in the littoral, use something that has rotors.

The US isnt in our exact position as it isnt facing the existential carrier decision and did build LCS plus lots of AB - but relatively so the parallels are very marked.