Arleigh Burke vs Ticonderoga

[Werner]

I think it's more reasonable to say that the development and fielding of PAAMS is a political and parochial effort on the part of the a few EU partners, who have managed to spend a bundle of money to develop a principal system roughly comparable to Evolved Sea Sparrow ("ESSM").

[Seasick]

You guys are splitting hairs.

Aegis and the standard missile are very powerful. But Werner PAAMS is not junk.

The Sampsom radar, Aster-15, and Aster-30 are a good medium range AAW system. As far as anti-balistic missile systems are concerned I think Rummy convinced WBush that he could do anything.

[Werner]

I didn't say PAAMS was junk. I did say it's at the beginning of it's life cycle. Standard Missile/�gis is a mature, proven system which has just received upgrades to meet future threats.

As far as the SM-3's ABM functionality, "Rummy" didn't have to do any convincing. The missile has a long string of test kills. The last one was fired from a Japanese destroyer.

[Majek]

Thanks to all of you for very exhaustive information.
So, it looks like Ticonderoga is still a superior combat ship despite being older and having some shortcomings in its design.
Although, as I wrote before, I like AB's design more. In the words of a complete layman - Ticondroga reminds me of a well equipped fortress on the sea while Burkes give me the impression of naval fighter planes.

[MartinL]

The aigis/sm sysem is obviousley a very mature system and the pamms/aster system is new and not without problems which the royal navy have complained about. the adding of a solid booster stage for the aster 30 has prodused unexpected stability problems at launch to mension one, and of course the aster doesnt provide an anti ship option but as an anti missile missile it excels.
i would feel safer behind a pamms syste than an aegis system against a multi supersonic missile attack, The astra has an active autodirector so can cope with a missile without needing an illuminator, were the sm2 is semi active. the astra has lateral thrusters so can pull 60g direct hit kill which the sm2 comes nowere close( sorry cant remember exact sm2 figures at mo ) that is asters ace its manouverabilaty.

[Werner]

SM-2 is not a typical SARH missile. It is launched into a basket where it becomes self-guiding. The SPY radar will visit the missile as needed and uplink course corrections. Meanwhile, the missile essentially flies in strapdown mode.

The SM-2/�gis was designed to fly in a 60 target a minute environment. It can upload to six missiles at a time. I doubt PAAMS can do that. The system quite simply was designed to totally defeat saturation attacks at any altitude from the deck to space in the band from 200Km to 2Km. Period.

[chuck]

The system quite simply was designed to totally defeat saturation attacks at any altitude from the deck to space in the band from 200Km to 2Km. Period.

We don't know exactly what the caveats are for each performance capability claimed in the various rousing but mutually conflicting patriotic brochure. I doubt many of the fine prints will ever be revealed truthfully to us unless their effects in a real war makes evening news. All that can be said is Aegis/SM-series has a impressive looking spec sheet, and actually matching all of what has been claimed therein would be challenging, for both Aegis and rival. That does not disprove the possibility that an alternative system could not in fact be far superior to Aegis in actual combat without matching most of capabilities claimed for Aegis.

The statement about what Aegis was designed to do is meaningless. It might acquire some meaning if those who would launch saturation attacks against it were also to certify that their attacks were quite simply designed to be totally defeated by Aegis. Even in that case the designer of the attack might overlook something and end up accidentally penetrate Aegis anyway. I suspect the European system wasn't quite simply designed to be totally inferior to Aegis either.

[Werner]

The point I was trying to make is the system was designed in response to a saturation attack from a Backfire regiment. That was the benchmark: 40-60 AS-4 Kitchen missiles in a simultaneous attack from many points on the compass.

[MartinL]

SM-2 is not a typical SARH missile. It is launched into a basket where it becomes self-guiding. The SPY radar will visit the missile as needed and uplink course corrections. Meanwhile, the missile essentially flies in strapdown mode.

The SM-2/�gis was designed to fly in a 60 target a minute environment. It can upload to six missiles at a time. I doubt PAAMS can do that. The system quite simply was designed to totally defeat saturation attacks at any altitude from the deck to space in the band from 200Km to 2Km. Period.

pamms and its component radar sampson are stated to be able to track and engage 10s of dozens of simultaniouse targets ?? (vage i know) with a launch capacity of 8 missiles every 10 seconds ??

this is stated by BAE

[chuck]

The point I was trying to make is the system was designed in response to a saturation attack from a Backfire regiment. That was the benchmark: 40-60 AS-4 Kitchen missiles in a simultaneous attack from many points on the compass.

The Benchmark for Phoenix AWG-9 system also sounded extremely impressive on paper - 6 simulatanous engagements and 24 simulatanous tracks. Additional publicity halo was also added to it with claims of "intention to defeat Soviet saturation attack". The Soviets were certainly impressed, and berated themselves for not being able to quite match the performance in the Mig-31. The Soviet system could only engage 4 targets at once. But it turns out that the practical performance of the Soviet system was in fact superior and far more flexible. The Soviet system was able to engage 4 targets at the same time on widely different bearings, each heading in an arbitrary course, and was able to pass attacks from one Mig-31 to another as needed, where as AWG-9 could only engage more than a couple of target at a time if they are all on very similar bearings, and all continue along more or less parallel tracks during most of the attack, and the attacking aircraft must control the entire attack from start to finish, with its nose pointed in the general direction of the enemy the whole time.

So although the AWG-9 claimed better spec sheet performance (With the choice of specs items highlighted to accentuated the impression), the Russian system turned out to be more likely to succeed in the combat environment.(portions of specification that makes this apparent was not highlighted or underlined, except when asking for budget for a new system) I clearly remember the smug article in defense publication that intoned with mindless complacency "F-14 is still the King of interceptors, especially against multiple targets" long after the detailed difference in the capability of F-14 and Mig-31 has become known in the late 1980s.

What a weapon is designed to do doesn't mean a whole lot about how good it actually will be in doing it. The different is further enlarged when detailed description of the designed purpose is filtered through the censors, and is then further dumbed down for semi-propaganda purpose.

[Werner]

Chuck, unless you have something that says the �gis doesn't perform as advertised, .... Please!

[chuck]

What I have to say is the superiority of Aegis is not as assured as it would take to make me try to dominate any conversation with tales of its alleged superiority.

Given what we know, the position that Aegis might actually under perform rivals in real combat situation is a perfectly viable one that I will not fault any one for taking. It makes no difference that in my opinion that position is not necessarily the most probable one.

We can each outline what we think we know, and concede that the things which we know we don't know are already more than enough to stop us from putting any meaningful "period" at the end of our positions. We are not even talking about all those things that we don't know that we don't know, to borrow Mr. Rumsfled's famous syntax.

[Werner]

Given what we know, the position that Aegis might actually under perform rivals in real combat situation ....

Given that you don't know sh*t about what's been tried with Port Royal or Princeton off Kauai since 1990, when the PMRF had actual Russian weapons to try in real world situations against these systems...

I suggest your next post calling the �gis an under-performing system have footnotes or references. This idle speculation against the specified performance is idiotic.

[chuck]

Given what we know, the position that Aegis might actually under perform rivals in real combat situation ....

Given that you don't know sh*t about ...

Thank you, the same to you.

[chuck]

I suggest your next post calling the �gis an under-performing system have footnotes or references. This idle speculation against the specified performance is idiotic.

Actually, I didn't speculate or call Aegis anything. I merely refuse to be accept the efforts of someone who seems emotionally involved in trying to force everyone to accept the overarching extrapolations that he made from very few data points.

[Werner]

Given that you don't know sh*t about ...

Thank you, the same to you.

For cryin' out loud. Your statement about Phoenix is useless. Why not complain that �gis won't work because of Pearl Harbor?

Try to stay on point. I don't know which is more irritating: your constant digs against me or your aimless digressions. Neither has any value in the present discussion.

[chuck]

My point is Aegis looks better on paper to me, but not enough is likely known by any of us about the likely combat environment and actual performance of either system to make protracted "Me Better, You No Good" argument worthwhile.

[Werner]

And the fact that a half-dozen other navies have purchased �gis is just an indication of disingenuous politics and not of the relative merits of the system?

All I ever said on this thread is �gis is a proven system with a track record, which has been in service for 2 decades and has been upgraded several times. The earlier marks (3T, Tartar-D, SM-1) were much less effective, and in some cases worthless. Nevertheless, this series shot down dozens of MiGs at up to 100 miles range over Vietnam, several Iranian aircraft in Desert Storm, and many, many test vehicles including over a dozen ICBMS. In the 1990s the Navy conducted several full-up tests of a saturation attack against �gis cruisers at the PMRF in Kauai. We can take it as read that these tests concluded the system was satisfactory. The PAAMS is at the beginning of a costly development cycle and has not been proven except on the drawing board.

[chuck]

The PAAMS is at the beginning of a costly development cycle and has not been proven except on the drawing board.

Which makes it all the harder to argue in thin air that PAAMS won't be better in at least some key areas than a system some of whose components dates back nearly 50 years.

Track record is one indicator, but not the indicator, especially since the combat track record that exists were not obtained under anything like high intensity combat environment in which its high performance is touted, and experimental track record is additionally always open to suspicions about experiment design. So far there is no "The indicator" that is know to the any of us. Best we can say is Aegis on paper sets a high bar for PAAMS to jump over.

[Werner]

Well, I would agree on the semantics of the argument, but it appears at least the long-range version of PAAMS has experienced unanticipated aerodynamic faults, and therefore the missile system is limited to 30km (essentially point-defense) intercepts.

It appears that developing a SAM is kind of a "black art", where trial-and-error is at least as important as computer-aided design and simulation.

BTW, if the SM-2 had failed meeting it's benchmarks, there would be a more intense program of development. The SM-6 program puts the AIM-120 seeker on the SM-2ER missile body, which means to me they are satisfied with the booster and the long range guidance/mid range correction components of �gis.