The Ship Model Forum

Dave, on the previous page we discussed the gun system, which is 15.5cm.

The "wonder" shell goes 83 nautical miles. It is maneuverable and has terminal guidance.

Obviously, shells, bombardment missiles and cruise missiles have a purpose which overlap only to a certain degree.

As for high-mach cruise missiles, I wonder how vulnerable they will be to the next generation of ESM and surveillance systems, including vehicles which loiter in the stratosphere for days, sub-orbital sensor packages launched from the VLS platform, and of course, satellites.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

I think that is why the EMP weapons systems are looking more attractive every day. Whoever designs the first practical EMP weapon is going to transform the battlefield. The weaker power may even accept a general loss of it's own electronic capabilities in order to blind the much stronger power i.e. us.
There is so much we don't know about real world weapons systems. Only when they go into action will we have a clue how easy the supersonic cruise missle is to evade or shoot down. I sat in on a few exercises way back in the old days when we ran radar training programs with the anti ship missile as the problem. These we slow and higher flying 1970s Russian cruise missiles. But they still look fast coming in. I'de hate to see what a supersonic missile flying just off the surface looks like.
In the Falklands the Exocet was a potential war winner. But when you only got a handful, well, that makes it difficult. SOme were successful and others were fooled by simple Chaff Charges. There are no sure bets in war. The over confident are ripe for ugly surprises.

Bob B.

I recently read a paper regarding explosively formed EMPs. Evidently it is no longer necessary to have a nuclear explosion to generate a substantial EMP. I would guess the technology is now in the process of adaptation.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

EMP devices are used by police to disable cars. It would be somewhat shocking if those devices used nuclear explosion.




But the area EMP devices that can blanket a taskforce is still nuclear.

Can you provide a link?

At White Sands they have an EMP test stand. It produces an EMP over an area that seems to be about 15 meters, and it takes a huge electrical input to do so. What are the police using?

The EMP weapon I read about still used tons of lens-shaped plastique to compress a piezo-electric source

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

OK lets assume that this bombardment round is in effect a shell. Once fired and this has been mentioned several times on this thread the ship that fired the round has let its presence be known, assuming its not known already and as night follows day an SSM would follow just as quick. So this begs the question "What is the clear advantage of such a gun” when only a small number of rounds could be fired before the ship is taken out. The logic would be to get as far back as possible, use shipboard SSMs and retire. Here the SSMs have a better chance of finding their target and a better chance for the ships own survival The greater the range any incoming SSM has to travel the greater the time available to deploy counter measures. Many of the present generation of SSMs are equipped with ECCM to counter any electronic interference and any agile sea skimmer travelling at Mach 3 or 4 would be very difficult to deal with, assuming that the ships own sensors or any external sensors were able to pick it up through all the sea clutter. Sea Skimmers are and will remain very difficult to accurately detect. Distance is the best chance a ship has therefore no ship board gun can provide the range of an SSM . Land attack using any form of gun round is not cost effective as the level of vulnerability of the ship is raised as the distance between the intended target decreases. 83 nm is to close in real terms and only minutes of transit time for a Mach 3-4 SSM.
Dave Wooley

http://www.milnet.com/e-bomb.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jul/12/sciencenews.crime

[url]EMP car police[/url]

Chuck, that's all well and good, but a 15 meter, or even a 50 meter range is not that helpful for a military engagement, especially if the enemy has employed some degree of electronic hardening. If I can get any device into that proximity to the enemy, I ought to be able to sink or take him.

The explosively formed EMPs I have read about are on the same order as the one offered by a 1Mt fusion device, without any fission or blast effects. Such a weapon would swamp countermeasures for an entire task force if it was set off in proximity.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Regarding your first point - that depends on whether an EMP device can have a kill radius large than a conventional fragmentation warhead of the same size. If you can put a 15m radius EMP on the tip of a RAM, I would think it's lethality against incoming cruise missiles would increase. In addition a so called EMP is nothing more than microwave pulse made to sound more ominous. AS a result one could focus the EMP with an antenna just like one does in microwave relay stations that dot many mountain tops.

REgarding your second point, keep in mind that any electronic device that does not require an open air antenna can be completely and utterly insulated against any EMP. This would include any missile using IR guidance. It is also possible to harden electronic circuits that does incorporate antenna either by hardening the circuitry itself, and isolate the antenna circuitry and protecting the rest. Also keep in mind that there are techniques under development that would protect IC on even an unisolated and non-hardened piece of military equipment against EMP by creating a tempory cloud of ionized gas around the equipment. The cloud of ionized gas has the coincident benefit of making the equipment invisible to radar.




Regarding your second point, EMP is basically a microwave pulse that can be focused by a micro

I love the idea of enhanced guns aboard as much as anyone else, particularly railguns. But I don't see much chance of a classic Marine amphib landing anytime soon. I think the days of a naval land assault are over. Troop insertion will more likely come either by air ( en masse), or stealthy insertion of Special Forces teams by subs - or land assault from nearby friendly countries.

I don't doubt for a minute that once an area is secured you'll see tons of naval replenishment, but in terms of a first strike with landing craft hitting the beaches, those days IMHO are gone gone gone.

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Gerard>
Snohomish, WA USA
If you don't know the definition of erudite, you're not.