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  • Originally posted by ropebag View Post
    The problem with relying on soft kill is that, well, you're relying on it.

    A Milan ATGW - and we're talking about 60's tech here, will cover 2,000m in 10 seconds. You'd have to be a pretty brave Minister of Defence to write 'soft kill automatic systems only' on the ops order for a ship hovering off the coast of Libya, Lebanon or whatever IS franchise infested hell-bent is next on the menu...
    The problem is that today there is neither soft or hard kill options on any NS vessel and no sensor system to give any warning. I would rather have a working soft-kill system rather than none at all!

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    • Originally posted by EUFighter View Post
      HMS Sheffield, she was the first RN warship lost in the conflict.
      Initially many concluded that the Exocet missile had exploded, however after much analysis it was concluded that the missile, having travelled
      some distance within the ship had not exploded but that the remaining propellant fuel had ignited setting off a chain of events, including an intense fire that was impossible to suppress due to loss of firefighting ability , principally mains water and the power to deliver it.
      In all six ships were casualties to Exocets and bombs. Some Exocets were successfully deflected by CHAFF.
      The Sheffield incident and the outcome was due to failure to DETECT, failure to ACT, failure to ENGAGE. It follows that lessons must be learned and NEVER underestimate an armed enemy.

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      • We need to cover the defensive gap in the after arcs of our P60's to deal with Fast Boat and other attacks. I favour a stabilised weapon, say 30mm with FCS. I would exam the possibility of trialing the system of the Piranha MRV, provided it has a stabilised gun . Strap the vehicle on the after deck, transversely if need be, and carry out a shoot to establish engagement ranges.

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        • Originally posted by ancientmariner View Post
          We need to cover the defensive gap in the after arcs of our P60's to deal with Fast Boat and other attacks. I favour a stabilised weapon, say 30mm with FCS. I would exam the possibility of trialing the system of the Piranha MRV, provided it has a stabilised gun . Strap the vehicle on the after deck, transversely if need be, and carry out a shoot to establish engagement ranges.
          Parking 1 or 2 Piranha MRV's on the afterdeck; seems the USMC are doing something similar.
          https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/new...ship-security/

          Still better would be following the Germans and replacing the Rhinos with MLG27s. While we are at it we could also stick a pair of Javelin on-board.
          Last edited by EUFighter; 14 January 2019, 18:05.

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          • Originally posted by ancientmariner View Post
            Initially many concluded that the Exocet missile had exploded, however after much analysis it was concluded that the missile, having travelled
            some distance within the ship had not exploded but that the remaining propellant fuel had ignited setting off a chain of events, including an intense fire that was impossible to suppress due to loss of firefighting ability , principally mains water and the power to deliver it.
            In all six ships were casualties to Exocets and bombs. Some Exocets were successfully deflected by CHAFF.
            The Sheffield incident and the outcome was due to failure to DETECT, failure to ACT, failure to ENGAGE. It follows that lessons must be learned and NEVER underestimate an armed enemy.
            If I remember correctly the ANA only had 4 operational Super Etendards and a similar number of AM-39 missiles to go on them. Also they operated in pairs firing off 2 missiles each time. There were reports that the 2 AM-39s that hit the Atlantic Conveyer had been deflected by decoys from the escort ships!
            The Glamorgan was hit by a MM-38 taken off one of the destroyers and strapped to a make-shift trailer, they fired two missile one which failed to get a lock while the one that did lock onto Glamorgan was detected. This despite the fact the Glamorgan was a generation older that the Shieffield and equipped with older systems. But seamanship seems to have saved the day as the sharp turn she made presented her stern and the damage was much less even though there was an explosion.

            I am not aware of anyother AM-39 or MM-38 launches and do remember there was a rather bad relationship between France and the UK at the time. The UK suspected that the French were still shipping Exocets to Argentina by third countries as the more action they saw the more sales they could expect!

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            • [QUOTE=EUFighter;465382]If I remember correctly the ANA only had 4 operational Super Etendards and a similar number of AM-39 missiles to go on them. Also they operated in pairs firing off 2 missiles each time. There were reports that the 2 AM-39s that hit the Atlantic Conveyer had been deflected by decoys from the escort ships!
              The Glamorgan was hit by a MM-38 taken off one of the destroyers and strapped to a make-shift trailer, they fired two missile one which failed to get a lock while the one that did lock onto Glamorgan was detected. This despite the fact the Glamorgan was a generation older that the Shieffield and equipped with older systems. But seamanship seems to have saved the day as the sharp turn she made presented her stern and the damage was much less even though there was an explosion.

              I am not aware of anyother AM-39 or MM-38 launches and do remember there was a rather bad relationship between France and the UK at the time. The UK suspected that the French were still shipping Exocets to Argentina by third countries as the more action they saw the more sales they could expect![/QUOTE.

              You are right. There is record of 3 AM-39's 1 x sheffield, and 2 x Atlantic Conveyor. 2 MM. 38's were taken off ARA SEGUI and adapted for shore launch, eventually hitting Glamorgan. Most other casualties were from bombs, some exploded, and at least one exploded while attempts were being made to defuse.

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              • Originally posted by EUFighter View Post
                There are several cases of Phalanx systems engaging the tow aircraft rather than the target during training!
                Agree entirely. Phalanx in particular, a weapons system designed for an end-of-days scenario in the Iceland gap, is entirely unsuited to any currently anticipated mission profile.

                Even the most capable CIWS systems is merely an expensive piece of ballast, if never armed, for fear that it might randomly vaporise a passing small craft.

                Is any suitable hard-kill system operable with a man in the loop, to produce fail-safe and fail-fire capability, in addition to automatic engagement?

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                • The Exocet that missed "Glamorgan" flew across the flight deck and failed to explode.....the "argonaut" suffered fires from Bofors ammunition splitting open and igniting; stored Seacats igniitng and a diesel fire caused by welding sparks, as a result of the passage of one 1000 lb bomb. The after action reports of the Falklands ships are worth reading, if only from the perspective of keeping wounded ships afloat. There is also a report from the captain of that Argentinian corvette, which appears to have undergone a perfect storm of fire from the Marines. Essentially, by the time it reached its destination, to effect cover for a landing party, it's 100mm main gun was unfit despite strenuous efforts to keep it working, purely from the harsh environment. It would fire once, then fail to reload, have to be cleared manually and then reset and reloaded, to try again. The other guns were firing but the Marines kept up a steady fire at the gunposts and wounded many of the crew that tried to man them. They found out that even GPMG rounds penetrated the superstructure, ricochetting around inside and knocking out electrical systems, comms, damage control, wounded people and prompting the ship to have to retreat. It would make you wonder how much protection do modern ships give to their crew.

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                  • Originally posted by GoneToTheCanner View Post
                    The Exocet that missed "Glamorgan" flew across the flight deck and failed to explode.....the "argonaut" suffered fires from Bofors ammunition splitting open and igniting; stored Seacats igniitng and a diesel fire caused by welding sparks, as a result of the passage of one 1000 lb bomb. The after action reports of the Falklands ships are worth reading, if only from the perspective of keeping wounded ships afloat. There is also a report from the captain of that Argentinian corvette, which appears to have undergone a perfect storm of fire from the Marines. Essentially, by the time it reached its destination, to effect cover for a landing party, it's 100mm main gun was unfit despite strenuous efforts to keep it working, purely from the harsh environment. It would fire once, then fail to reload, have to be cleared manually and then reset and reloaded, to try again. The other guns were firing but the Marines kept up a steady fire at the gunposts and wounded many of the crew that tried to man them. They found out that even GPMG rounds penetrated the superstructure, ricochetting around inside and knocking out electrical systems, comms, damage control, wounded people and prompting the ship to have to retreat. It would make you wonder how much protection do modern ships give to their crew.
                    Some can be seen here

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                    • Originally posted by The Usual Suspect View Post
                      Agree entirely. Phalanx in particular, a weapons system designed for an end-of-days scenario in the Iceland gap, is entirely unsuited to any currently anticipated mission profile.

                      Even the most capable CIWS systems is merely an expensive piece of ballast, if never armed, for fear that it might randomly vaporise a passing small craft.

                      Is any suitable hard-kill system operable with a man in the loop, to produce fail-safe and fail-fire capability, in addition to automatic engagement?
                      If ships have a total Defence System and wish to achieve Quick Reaction Combat Capability, then individual ships need a Self Defence System made up of Air Search Radar--Surface search Radar--Electronic Warfare System--Identification Friend or Foe--RAM--CIWS-Decoy launch Systems. There is very little space for human intervention with subsonic threats, and none with positive Mach numbers. Human analysis of total picture has to be informed by the IFF and Defense communication inputs, mistakes can be made, but the main effort should be to remove threats before weapons are released at own ship.Stand alone systems require too much human intervention and can only deal with single threats. The Self Defence System is designed to provide an integrated response from detect to engage and from soft kill, to hard kill. The typical sequence is --Target detection/Tracking--Target Identification--Electronic countermeasures--Active hard kill action.
                      On P31 when carrying out full Trials on the Aerial Target being towed by a Beech Baron we had good lock-on and positive results throughout.
                      Finally all ships in Fleet configuration need to integrate systems for full dimensional Defence.

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                      • We can put everything in three priority stages;

                        Priority one: Sensors
                        No matter is the ship is to be fitted with hard or soft kill devices it first needs to detect any attack. This means a air search radar, some form of ESM, possible LWR and a CMS to fuse all the data together into a complete tactical picture. At the most basic level this would increase the combat capabilty of the vessel and as a minimum give the vessel a chance to tackle erasive maneuvers. The latter might not save the ship from being hit but would give it a better chance of surviving.

                        Priority two: Soft-kill
                        These will always be part of the mix but due to their cost effectiveness they are always going to have a place. These can be either active or passive devices based upon the nature of the threat. They range from siimple chaff, flares to complex decoy systems and IR masking.

                        Priority three: Hard kill
                        This is were serious money is involved, a single Mk15 Phalanx cost $15m and to effectively cover a ship of the P60 class 2 would be needed. But the question would be what type of system gun or missile unless you are Russian as then there is the massive Kashtan-M and Pantsir-M systems with both! While guns have had the lead there seems to be a move to more missile based systems. The RN will relie on CAMM while the USN is more and more moving to variants of the RAM. Meanwhile Israel will mount a version of their Iron Dome system on their new corvettes. But cost of missiles is a factor a single RAM costs nearly $1m and the standard launcher has 21, normally 2 launchers per ship! The Israeli missile in the Iron Dome is cheaper due to quantity being manufactured, cost $0.1m.
                        But we can see the gun based systems make a come back. Today we have shells like the DART and AHEAD which are design for CIWS and as electronics become more compact we may seen smaller and cheaper systems come on the market. The latest version of the Rheinmetall MLG the Sea-Snake has a variant with a 30mm ABM cannon. If that can be programmed for CIWS then the cost could come down.

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                        • A new system from MBDA as an all in one system with 2 ready Mistral missiles and 4 reloads with 2 crew on the mount:
                          MBDA is presenting the SPIMM (Self-Protection Integrated Mistral Module), an all-in-one air defence module based on the SIMBAD-RC system and designed to equip ships of all types

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                          • Originally posted by Sparky42 View Post
                            A new system from MBDA as an all in one system with 2 ready Mistral missiles and 4 reloads with 2 crew on the mount:
                            http://www.navyrecognition.com/index...the-spimm.html
                            There is possibility to have a depot store of such systems( say 3), outfit suitable ships with positioned plug-in points. Then equip ships per mission or for specified training shoots. It could be a fixed system for MRV. Ships would still need decoy systems to maximise defence and close the stern arcs with an auto 30mm gun system.

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                            • Another bit from NavDEX from Rhienmetall in regards to counter measures systems including a system for ships without detection capability:

                              Developed especially for vessels without organic shipboard reconnaissance systems, Rheinmetall’s MASS_ISS with Integrated Sensor Suite is a standalone system with an integrated sensor suite. Forming an integral part of the MASS_ISS system complex, the REKa-50, which stands for “Rheinmetall ESM Ka-Band”, assures reliable detection and effective engagement of threats in the millimetre wave radar frequency range. Moreover, Rheinmetall is a one-stop-shop supplier here, producing the decoy systems, the decoy munitions as well as providing and integrating the sensors. The number of launchers is scalable. All of them are linked together and controlled by Rheinmetall’s firing algorithms

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                              • Originally posted by Sparky42 View Post
                                Another bit from NavDEX from Rhienmetall in regards to counter measures systems including a system for ships without detection capability:
                                http://www.navyrecognition.com/index...es-system.html
                                HMS QE is going into dock for a major upgrade, including CIWS to include 2 x Phalanx 20mm and a 30mm system.Hopefully our ship(s) will get 360 deg. coverage.

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