Minimum GP corvette or frigate

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Suppose a navy would want the cheapest viable general purpose warship design rather than an optimal one. Compromises have to be made, especially skipping on the capabilities that drive costs the most.

The warship would be a corvette (less than 2,000 tons) for use in coastal waters such as the Mediterranean or North Sea and a frigate (about 4,000 tons) with exact same military capabilities except for better seakeeping and more endurance (fuel, crew food and accommodations) for a longer cruise (examples Portugal-Azores-Canada, Portugal-Azores-Brazil, Japan-Philippines-Australia) with deployed towed sonar (extra drag) at 15 kts (not on straight course, for all-round detection performance).

 

French FDI frigate (a relatively small FFG) from its most flattering angle
symbol photo / photo: Naval Group

Here's my concept for this:

Sensors:

• multi-purpose 3D radar for detection of flying objects at weapon range + margin that allows the crew to make full use of that range (Sea Giraffe AMB with relatively very cheap Sea Giraffe 1X for support and as backup on a different mast). IFF interrogation.
• additional multispectral sensors for air & sea search, tracking, identification and ranging (two gimballed optronics heads including visual, UV, thermal, laser rangefinder)
• Towed sonar for sensing, direction-finding and identifying submarine noises, ship noises well beyond horizon, torpedoes. Much better capability against deep submarines than bow sonar.
• Bow sonar direction-finding and ranging submarines and torpedoes especially in shallow waters, mine avoidance. Secondary diver detection & repelling and ship detection & direction finding beyond the horizon capabilities. This is indispensable for shallow waters where the towed sonar doesn't work.
• Naval mine-confirming capability (the cheapest option would be a diver, but it's slow and depth-limited - the latter matters against rising mines)
• VTOL UAV with zoomable visual spectrum and thermal cameras, secure datalink for remote identification of ships and boats as well as SAR support. It might have some use for early warning against sea skimmer missiles.

If this sounds a bit much for a minimum GP warship, keep in mind I omitted a long-range air search radar and BMD radar capability.

Effectors/weapons:

• Very much chaff, multispectral smoke, pandarra fog and DRFM quadcopter decoy rapid launch capacity 
• Ability to deploy a towed and sometimes free-moving boat with active radar jammer to act as semispherical home-on-jam decoy
• Plenty capability to deploy anti-torpedo decoys, possibly including mine-decoys that damage the torpedo if it comes too close.
• A few (4 ~Aster 30/IRIS-T SLM minimum) medium range air defence missiles capable of minimum 15 km effective ceiling at distances that deter laser-guided bomb attacks, also capable of taking on subsonic and supersonic sea skimmers. This is more about repelling effect and reduction of enemy freedom of action rather than about actual destruction.
• Much more (28 ~ IRIS-T SL/Sea Ceptor minimum*) short range air defence missiles capable of taking on sea skimmers of subsonic and supersonic speed out to horizon distance. A Russian SSGN may launch 32 submarine-to-ship missiles. This requires a total 32 air defence missiles per frigate as outer defence layer assuming all RUS AShMs function properly, two escorts for a convoy and two interceptor missiles per incoming missile. Secondary capability against speedboats.
• A main gun capable of damaging ships, destroying boats and flying objects (minimum 76 mm)
• One or two secondary autocannon(s) with good depression and very wide arc of fire, mostly for defence against explosive boats in port, but also to be used to support the main gun (20...30 mm)
• Light anti-ship missiles (16 Sea Venom, for example**). Basically, the frigate should not be powerless even against an armed merchantman from WWI and it would be very weak against it if limited to a 76 mm gun and SAMs. Frigates are no major ASuW assets in naval warfare, but a GP frigate should have a modicum of ASuW capability as a hedge.
• Multicopter-delivered lightweight torpedoes, possibly also to be recovered by (another) multicopter). I don't fully trust this, but I chose this with the "minimum" mindset in mind. The quantity of lightweight torpedoes carried onboard depends on whether they are reusable (ideally rechargeable battery, this also helps a lot with affordable training). Call for reinforcement or support firepower in case of defeat of the multicopters by a hostile submarine
• Naval mine-removal capability (the cheapest option would be a diver, but it's again slow and depth-limited) 

I did not bring up kamikaze drones for defence against boats because that approach may be relatively slow (less than 50 m/s) and more importantly, boats could more easily shoot down propeller-driven drones with a typical 30...76 mm gun FAC gun than actual rocket-propelled missiles such as Sea Venom (about 290 m/s in a dive). Hypersonic missiles have advantages and disadvantages - I limit the defence aginst them to generous application of decoys and concealment (RF, visual and IR) and timely warning by sensors because hard kill defence is too improbable and expensive.

Other

• Prepared for getting replenished (fuel and food) at sea
• Helipad with beartrap, hangar for drones & one light SAR&liaison helicopter (H135***) with twin engines (FLIR, EFS inflatable winch, rappelling ropes and removable exterior benches in MH-6 style, possibly towed MAD, possibly two Sea Venom missiles or low frequency passive sonobuoys)
• One 7 meter RHIB
• SatCom and secure datalinks
• An ops room with hardware and software for ASuW/AAW/ASW, the peak performance requirement is the coordinated defence of a small convoy against 32 supersonic anti-ship missiles by two frigates including remote activation of chaff dispensers on the escorted ships. It also needs to be capable of initiating timely soft kill countermeasures when a BMD or hypersonic missile warning pops up.

This is different from my rather optimum-minded concept for a frigate in some ways, notably

• no long-range SAM (SM-6) to be used in cooperative engagement based on external sensors only
• much-reduced area air defence ambition in general
• much-weaker gun armament
• much less capable anti-ship missile armament against warships
• minimum size viable low frequency active (towed) sonar capability
• could possibly fit into a corvette-sized ship
• LWT**** to be deployed exclusively by cheap multicopters, no priority for the more expensive ASW missile approach.

Similarities that are different from mainstream:

• Not opting for expensive medium ASW helicopter that's not going to fly for more than 4-6 hrs/day (=not helping much with submarine detection 24/7 unless you have 4-6 helos in the convoy) and have questionable survivability in case the submarine deploys some air defences.
• Choosing early warning + soft kill as the only countermeasure to hypersonic missiles.
• two-tiered air defence missile layout for cost reasons (Aster 15/30 is at times two-tiered because Aster 15 has a shorter minimum interception distance than Aster 30, not for cost reasons)
• total rejection of a main gun calibre smaller than 76 mm

 

I am no proponent of European countries buying frigates, but I do see potential for well-rounded and viable frigates that might end up costing well less than 750M € including munitions, aviation component and other peripheral costs. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: RIM-116 RAM is ridiculously expensive and has inferior range. VL MICA is too expensive as well. Sea Ceptor still appears to cost more than IRIS-T SL and the latter proved itself against Kalibr missiles over Ukraine, so it's my first choice. Maybe the Korean K-SAAM is fine, but I don't know much about it.

**: Sea Venom has such a small warhead that it's rather a subsystem-damaging missile than a ship killer, but NSM is on the light end compared to most AShMs and a ship killer at most against corvette-sized targets itself. I'd prefer 16 Sea Venom over 4 NSM due to much lower total cost and much greater capability against a large quantity of small boats. As a downside, the Sea Venoms would merely target main gun, 3D radars, helicopter hangar (or helicopter on helipad), VLS and other missile launchers on a frigate or destroyer target rather than trying a bigger killing blow to ops centre, engine rooms or a horizontal impact towards VLS.

***: Regrettably, the H-6 family (8.03 m main rotor diameter) has only one engine, which is a bit risky over sea. The 10.2 m main rotor diameter of a H135 is small enough to store the single helicopter in a corvette's (typical corvette beam = 10...13 m) hangar without folding. The UAVs would be stored around the helicopter under its main rotor circle (helicopter fuselage width 2 m, Malloy T-600 LWT-carrying multicopter width 3.72 m, sensor UAV helicopter width less than 1.5 m). 

****: This may require the use of one of the lowest weight lightweight torpedoes. This would be for the normal 324 mm LWT diameter the Italian A244S Mod 4 (~254 kg) or the seemingly superior Indian TAL Shyena (220 kg). Most LWTs weigh more than 300 kg. 

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End the stupid little cold war!

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This stupid little cold war between Greece and Turkey has to end. It's not affordable to Greece to waste so much money on it year after year when super-cheap diplomacy is the alternative.

Greece is member of Lisbon Treaty, its article 42 is an alliance provision. An attack by Turkey means all EU members are obliged to defend Greece. Yes, even the Austrians Their opinion on this matter is irrelevant, for they ratified the treaty and are bound by it.

To end this stupid little cold war requires one major EU country to have not completely useless politicians in charge. The Greeks should propose the plan to elevate Article 42 Lisbon treaty to general knowledge, then the Turks commit a single provocation of any kind (such as airspace violation), then said not completely useless politicians react to it as they would react to an incursion by Iran into turkey: Send a couple fighters and a SAM battery. Dare the Turks to repeat the provocation and if they do, shoot down that aircraft or bomb that territorial waters-invading ship.

Gloves off, skipped gloves on - just as Turkey did with the Russians, shooting down a Russian jet that invaded Turkish airspace for a few seconds only.

They will understand and Europe will have its alliance lifted from paper tiger to living alliance. Greece can henceforth reduce its military spending to 1% GDP while being safer than on its status quo trajectory.

And now for something completely different:

Did I ever mention  that our politicians are completely useless pussies? 

 

related:

/2009/12/greek-fiscal-troubles-and-military.html

/2014/08/if-western-great-power-gaming-wasnt-so.html 

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2017/12/that-stupid-little-cold-war.html 

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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The real problem with defence against drones

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A blog post about the real drone problem is overdue because I do not see ANY indication that the real problem is part of the public discourse. As a consequence, there's severe misallocation of resources.

 

Imagine you're driving a vehicle through a typical European landscape. This is a VERY different landscape than military training grounds, by the way. There are trees, bushes, ditches close to roads, buildings, fields with tall (more than 30 cm high) crops, enough garages to hide a SUV-mobile company per village, there's scrap lying around.

You pass by one of the gazillion trees, it's still 50 m away. Your vehicle is equipped with all kinds of drone detection sensors imaginable such as visual spectrum optornics, NIR, MWIR, LWIR, mmW radar, acoustic, broadband frequency analysers. A quadcopter is accompanying your vehicle at 100 m altitude, it pattern recognises threats and a buddy of yours in the vehicle checks the reports. Suddenly, you're dead.

What happened? A drone that attached itself to the backside of a tree heard your vehicle approaching, swung its sensor and EFP around the tree stem and fired an EFP warhead at you. No hard kill APS stands a chance of stopping that. The overhead drone saw nothing. 

source https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382231382_Crash-perching_on_vertical_poles_with_a_hugging-wing_robot

What "C-UAS" defences could have protected you? Some 70 mm rocket with semi active laser seeker? Some 30 or 35 mm autocannon with radar and thermal imager fire control? Some laser? Some microwave beam weapon? No, not even the kind of defence that I argued for since 2017 -a CUAS RCWS with machinegun or at most a 20 mm autocannon- could have saved you.

A lot of passive and reactive protection would easily have stopped that EFP attack, of course.

EFP attack; a shaped charge with 110° or more opening angle

 

Now suppose it wasn't one tree, wasn't one drone and it wasn't using an EFP. It was a patch of woodland or some bushes or a plowed field with drones hiding under soil. There were 30 drones with Faraday cage protection against microwave attack. They rise suddenly, overwhelm the APS with a series of attacks and hit the top of your vehicle with 70+ mm (500+ mm RHAeq) tandem shaped charge warheads.

Again, you're dead. There were more than 20 penetrations because no vehicle can be protected against this with enough passive and reactive armour.

- - - - -

I believe I thought this through enough since 2017.

There's no line of sight defence against this.

We need to emphasise the thousands of years-old* concept of security effort

instead of staring at line of sight defences.

The traditional security effort would require to send men out, expose them to great risks to reduce the overall risk to the total force. That seems nonsensical now. We should send out drones as security effort, to search for, warn about and if possible neutralise hostile drones at a safe-enough distance.

Even a single car moving through hostile terrain would require a security ring around it, possibly at 200 to 2,000 m distance. Experiments will tell what the required radius is. Different terrain will require different security efforts and likely different sensors carried by the security force drones. So there would be a constant change of the security ring while that manned car is moving. The ring would become densified where needed, thinned out where that's acceptable, change of terrain from woodland to ploughed field would lead to a major change of what drones are scouting. The security force drones may even open and inspect buildings, weld shut manhole covers with thermite. The control software that controls the drones would report possible contacts, but it would also indicate the acceptable speed. It would need to be able to adapt to a change of route quickly. These security drones can look behind, under, into things. They can scan the ground - hostile drones may hide in loose soil such as mud and ploughed fields.

That's a LOT of effort for a single car. So mastering this AND having the ability to fend off a saturation attack of thousands of drones coming in one pulse (reminiscent of American carrier defence concepts of the late Cold War) is a huge effort. This leads to two conclusions:

1. A frontline with such a defence is much cheaper (and MUCH more reliably and more easily secured while static) than defending many individual areas all-round.
2. Any offensive movement in pincer-style or in form of a raid would have to be substantial. I estimate a brigade-sized effort may be debatable.

Conclusion #1 in particular would lead to a sizeable no man's land between human troops** and indeed between opposing high value hardware as well. The defender's advantage is slight when security drones fight security drones. Quality differences need to be substantial to matter much and even then they'd be unlikely to compensate for a factor three difference in production output. The party with the greater drone mass production capacity (and ability to supply the front with said drones) would win in a prolonged conflict. The peacetime inventories would matter for the first days, maybe weeks. The superior side could ruthlessly intensify the clash to quickly deplete the opposing drone forces. 

To be honest, I did not think all such consequences through yet. 

It's probably not necessary anyway, for it's rather unlikely that war happens when neither side has a qualitative edge or either side has a known qualitative or quantitative superiority that cannot be overcome. Defences could be shifted towards becoming impossible to occupy for long in such a case, preserving freedom only rather than freedom and civilian hardware.

Conclusion #2 is probably mostly relevant for the first days when a frontline is not fully established or if the inferior side wants to win by invading quickly. Another possible period of relevance is after the opposing party's drone forces were largely depleted, offering the opportunity to strike with a manoeuvre force without becoming overwhelmed.

 

The legacy arms industry wants to make the big buck with the kind fo hardware it understands: Big, expensive sensors and weapons; lasers, microwave weapons, autocannons, radars, big thermal imagers. This approach can sweep the sky between 100f t and 15,000 ft altitude just fine. It's not going to be enough. It's not even enough to protect against the fibreoptic FPV drones that laid in ambush next to roads in Ukraine months ago already. The focus on attention on above treetop line of sight C-UAS is badly misguided in regard to the battlefield. It's at most suitable to reduce the effect of strategic attacks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: See Xenophon

**: Compare the movie "Screamers" https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/01/screamers.html  

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Optimal AAA calibres in WW2 and today

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Here's a shipload of hindsight: The optimal anti-air artillery calibres of World War Two.

7.62...7.92 mm machineguns were rather ineffective. There were some aircraft with thin armour plating during WW1 already. Such armour plating provided good protection at as little as 300 m altitude, for the bullets quickly lost energy by climbing against gravity and drag. The use of twin or quad mountings didn't help much. 

12.7...13.2 mm machineguns were little better. Their effective range was around 500 m, but they had the target in range for so little time that they depended rather on lucky hits to achieve much. The use of quad mountings didn't help much. It's irritating that the Soviets nevertheless introduced 14.5 mm anti-air machineguns based on their anti-tank rifle calibre after WW2, including multiple barrel mounts. Their usefulness was mostly limited to anti-helicopter work and the slightly bigger 23 mm twin gun (a Cold War design) was vastly better.

A single Czechoslovakian 15 mm gun design was of marginal relevance. It was too much gun and mounting for the modest effectiveness of the calibre.

The first really effective AAA calibre was 20 mm. It's widely recognised as the smallest calibre for a useful high explosive round with a proper fuse. 20 mm weapons weighed about double what 12.7 mm weapons weighed during WW2, but their weight was still bearable. 20 mm quad mounts were very heavy, but it was possible to devise a 20 mm light AAA pack gun. The calibre was also very effective in ground support and against merely bulletproofed AFVs (most early WW2 tanks and late in WW2 still the scout vehicles and halftracks). This was the best calibre to equip infantry regiments or even infantry battalions, but this was hardly ever done. The result was that the infantry was largely without proper air defences, but at least the infantry was fairly good at using camouflage, concealment and cover. This happens to have been the reason why 20 mm would have been sufficient for an infantry AAA capability: Its up to 2 km effective range covered approx. the distance at which aviators could still spot infantry targets save for road marches and field fortifications on open fields.

There were some 25 and 28 mm AA guns in France, Japan, Soviet Union and the U.S., but they did not earn good reputations. Japanese 25 mm suffered from sluggish mountings and a ceiling that permitted very accurate level bombing against anchored or moored ships from a mere 7,000 ft altitude.

The next really convincing calibre was 30 mm. The German 30 mm HEIT (high explosive incendiary tracer) Minengeschosse were designed for a giant explosive charge with added incendiary side effect. One hit usually sufficed to shoot down a single engine aircraft. Even the rugged 4-engine B-17 was said to usually be doomed after four 30 mm HEIT hits. This was in part because of the huge blast effect an in part because the fuse was designed to explode just after penetrating the skin, so it would explode inside a wing or stabiliser. 30 mm wasn't only a sweet spot for its destructive power leap over 20 mm. It was also a sweet spot because the late WW2 Mk 103 showed that a huge rate of fire (for a light AAA at the time) and a high muzzle velocity was doable with this calibre without excessive weight of the whole system. The effective range was greater than 2 km in the AAA role with its muzzle velocity without needing a muzzle velocity at 900+ m/s, which would have worn out the barrel too quickly. So IMO a 3 cm AAA of about the Mk 103's weapon design (with a suitable mount) would have been the perfect light AAA for divisional air defence and SPAAGs. It would have reached higher than 2 cm guns, pushing the threats farther up to altitudes (8,000 ft and more) from where the rear elements of a division (esp. artillery positions) would be much less recognisable. Hardly any 3 cm AAA was used during WW2.

Next, there's the 37...40 mm group. These guns had vastly inferior rate of fire to 3 cm Mk 103, but the destructive power of late war HE-rich grenades left almost no chance to single engine aircraft with even only one hit and approached one-shot kill power against medium bombers. Moreover, they had increased reach than smaller calibres. The altitude of 10,000 ft was considered to be safe from them during WW2. Some of their fuse designs self-destructing at about that distance anyway, so greater theoretical ballistic ceilings didn't matter. This calibre was the best fit for naval guns. It pushed level bombers so high that they became too inaccurate even against anchored or moored individual ships. They made twin-engine skip and torpedo bombing inefficient or (if they got close) suicidal. It was a powerful-enough calibre for motor torpedo boats to fend off motor gun boats. The effective firepower against ground attack aircraft at short distances was certainly vastly inferior to the much higher practical rate of fire of 3 cm Mk 103, though. I'd like to add that the British 2 pounder went back to WW1 and this explains its poor muzzle velocity, which rendered it rather unimpressive against aircraft passing by. The 4 cm Bofors of the late 1920's was the best and earliest really good gun in this calibre and would still (even with 1980's munitions) be a very good AAA in face of the cheap cruise missiles used in the Russo-Ukrainian War.*

The 45...47 mm calibre group was a bust. The Soviets used it on ships, the Czechs had some developed, but these guns had a terrible rate of fire and marginal advantages over 4 cm.

The 50...57 mm group began with a German 50 mm gun meant to close a gap between 10,000 and 15,000 ft altitude at which 37 mm was ineffective and heavy AAA (88 mm) not yet effective-enough because of high angular speeds and rapid change of necessary time fuse settings. This was a sweet spot for level bombing during WW2 and also relevant over the Reich because of the poor service ceiling of the Short Stirling night bomber. Eventually, the 50 mm calibre proved to be too weak and Germany advanced to develop a 55 mm gun, but only completed prototypes. Its combination of calibre and muzzle velocity indicates that it would likely not have covered the 10,000 to 15,000 ft gap. 55 mm was considered to be capable of reliably one-hit kill even a 4engined bomber such as a B-17 or Lancaster.** A properly-developed 55 to 57 mm gun would have proved very useful for protecting railheads, railway stations, bridges and (against night bombers) cities during WW2. Basically, it would have been the perfect defence against light and medium bombers and heavy bombers used in typical medium bomber mission profiles (= level bombing mostly between 10,000 and 15,000 ft).

75...76.2 mm guns were often leftovers from the First World War, especially in France and the UK. Even the best guns in this calibre group lacked the ceiling to defend against American-style B-17/B-24 attacks due to the bombers' turbochargers permitting attack altitudes of about 27,000 ft. The calibre had such a low lethality with a time fused fragmentation shell that all the optical tracking, searchlight, radar rangefinding, computing and automated fuse-setting equipment of a heavy AAA battery would have been wasted on it. That is, unless one uses point detonation fuses and hopes for direct hits (then you need no automated fuse setters). There would still have been the ceiling issue, but the guns would have been deadly against large aircraft (medium bomber and bigger) within their reach at much lower expense than the next group. Everything changed for Western Allies' 76.2 mm AAA at about the end of WW2 when VT (proximity) fusing suddenly turned a 76.2 mm twin into a more effective counter-kamikaze defence than a quad-40 mm mount. 

85...90 mm guns were in another sweet spot that gave just enough ceiling (great ceiling if very high barrel wear was accepted) against almost every threat. The munition expenditure was terribly high per kill until late in war when Germany used impact fusing against large bombers*** and Americans created incomparably more expensive and sophisticated 90 mm proximity fuses that made the calibre effective against any target in range provided the fuse was not jammed and no ground features or waves triggered the fuses early. The calibre was used on some warships, but its usefulness against warships was limited to shooting illumination rounds at night. The shell was simply too weak against ships.

100...128 mm calibres were powerful with their fragmentation effect, but very expensive, bulky and heavy. The saving grace for this calibre group was the dual purpose potential; you could equip warships with these guns and plausibly use them both against aircraft and against any unarmoured ships at useful distances. Even 127 and 128 mm calibres were disappointing against unarmoured ships, but still accepted as barely good-enough for a naval DP gun. The Americans successfully used 127 mm guns as DP guns in the secondary artillery (against small ships and up to light cruisers) and tertiary artillery (heavy AAA) role, whereas Germany stuck with a 150 mm secondary and 105 mm tertiary/heavy AAA separation that yielded less guns for either role. The American 127 mm DP guns were unusually quick-loading and the first calibre to receive the new VT (radio proximity) fuses. Naval heavy AAA and DP guns were hardly worth their effort as AAA guns if not equipped with such VT fuses.

The Royal Navy used 133 mm (5.25 inch) guns as DP guns, but they were much less successful than the American 127 mm guns due to more sluggish mounts, smaller maximum elevation and lower rate of fire.

150 mm and bigger calibre heavy AAA and super-heavy AAA existed in marginal quantities with examples in Germany and in Japan. IMO such calibres should be limited to firing shrapnel rounds against incoming skip bombers and torpedo bombers from a super destroyer's or light cruiser's main guns (138...155 mm calibres, not real DP guns). These guns were so big, bulky and expensive that there was simply no realistic case for them being cost-efficient in a land-base AAA role. They were unsuitable for 85...90° maximum elevation naval turret mounting, so their AAA niche was a secondary capability of shooting at incoming aircraft within their elevation range (~30°) that was commonly provided for anti-ship fires. The USN introduced a class of light cruisers which had true 155 mm DP guns, but that proved to be inefficient and unsuccessful.

Surface-to-air missiles: Let's face it. The missile tech, guidance and fusing was simply not mature enough by WW2, but the experiments and the experience with the leap in aircraft speeds possible with turbojets showed that surface-to-air missiles would replace heavy AAA after WW2.

 

So all in all, I see for the WW2 period three different sweet spots for light AAA calibres (20, 30 and 37...40 mm), each dependent on tactical niches and two sweet spots for heavy AAA calibres (88...90 and mostly 127/128 mm with 100...105 mm being a very AAA-biased DP compromise), separated in land-based heavy AAA and naval heavy AAA/DP guns. Without hindsight, I'd likely have preferred 20 mm, 40 mm and 75 mm plus cruisers using their main batteries to shoot shrapnel at skip bombers and torpedo bombers at pre-set distances.

- - - - - 

Fast forward to today: 

Shahed 136-class cruise missiles can fly at 15,000 ft, above effective 40 mm gun ceiling. They are barely in reach of 57 mm guns. A modern 76.2 anti-aircraft gun based on the widely-employed naval gun and its munitions can easily reach Shahed 136 at 15,000 ft, but would struggle to reach and hit Shaheed 238 (more expensive, faster, higher, shorter-ranged) at their 30,000 ft service ceiling. Warships can self-defend against such cheap missiles even with small calibres (20...57 mm), but bigger calibres (76.2 up to 130 mm) are much more useful for protecting  escorted ships due to their greater effective range.

We need defences against flying munitions after land-based air defences obsessed about shooting at platforms (except in training) for generations. Something small calibre (up to 2 cm) makes sense for very short lines of sight (around treetop altitude), fairly compact autocannons can wipe clean the sky up to about 10000 ft. We need cheap guided missiles or the (unmanned) fighter approach to deal with higher-than-15,000 ft munitions without breaking the bank (which is what Germany did trying to defend against rugged bombers at 27,000 ft with 8.8, 10.5 and 12.8 cm guns).

A use of 155 mm (gun-)howitzers (which are equivalent to WW2 15 cm heavy anti-air artillery muzzle energy) for shooting down some munitions with special proximity-fused HE shells (normal PROX fuses won't work) should be possible, but this should be a mere secondary task for 155 mm guns.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*:  No better gun in the 37...40 mm calibre range was deployed after the Bofors other than its own evolution, the somewhat longer-barrelled 40 mm Bofors of the Cold War. 35 mm guns appeared around 1970 and excelled with much better rates of fire, but 40 mm remained the smallest calibre for proximity fusing until at least the 1970's. I don't know when 35 mm became viable for proximity fusing.

**: In the end, the Soviets brought a successful 57 mm gun into service soon after WW2. This gun has a much higher muzzle velocity than the German 55 mm prototypes. The Soviets quickly gave it radar and computer fire control and it's now again in wartime use in the Russo-Ukrainian War, presumably without the radar and computer fire control.  It's mostly used as artillery, but would no doubt prove highly effective against cruise missiles if equipped with functioning automatic fire control and proximity-fused munitions. The West uses a Swedish 57 mm gun in naval context.  

***:  Germany understood this very, very late in the war. All that fuse-setting equipment was wasted because 88 mm AAA was about triple as deadly against 4-engine bombers with impact fusing, 105 mm about double as deadly and the 128 mm calibre gained very little from it.

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Naval drones (USVs) in the news

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Naval "drones" and motherships appear to experience a political breakthrough in the UK, carrying the hope for an affordable navy. 

There are a couple problems with this, including an important one that I didn't mention back in 2009 and probably wasn't clear-enough about in 2018:

The fuel economy improves with size. It's almost impossible to build a boat-sized (shorter than about 60 m waterline) naval drone that could cruise across the Atlantic at 18 kts even without the drag of a towed sonar array.

So either the mothership is in large part a fuel replenishment ship (and then accordingly hardly looking like a destroyer any more) or a drone-enriched naval force would be rather short-legged, for European waters. The latter case raises the question why one wouldn't follow a land-based approach rather than a mothership-based one.

 

Another problem is the issue of fixed costs, and it doesn't go away by magically deleting the crew. Some surface boat drones would still need expensive equipment (expensive munitions, towed sonar or radar) to be of much use. This means it would be sensible to provide a modicum of survivability, regardless of crew size zero. This modicum of survivability includes soft kill defences, at least some autocannon, a tactical radar even for a sonar-centric USV and so on. In the end, this would be rather expensive. An analogy: Some mere flying drones such as Global Hawk ended up being obscenely expensive, close to manned combat aircraft or a FAC.

Truly cheap "drones" Could be little more than decoys, preferably drones that are being towed (by escorted transport ships) most of the time. They could launch infrared and radio frequency obscuration, feature cheap radio frequency jammers, trigger torpedoes and mines with their signatures. They could become freely-moving decoys during combat and be towed 99% of the time, solving the fuel issue. They would be an enrichment for a convoy, but not a replacement for a frigate or destroyer. Most importantly, they could be towed by a cargo ship rather than be tethered to some mother(war)ship.

 

I do insist on my two paths:  

1. A ship that deploys "USV" drones mostly as decoys and would rather resemble an LPD or helicopter cruiser than a FFG or DDG*
2. A self-defending convoy of armed merchantmen making use of modular naval equipment 

The alternative is to stay very traditional and have a GP frigate, BUT there's no way how NATO could compete with China in a naval arms race with such an approach. The Japanese might be able to pull that off, while the South Koreans better pay more attention to land power and air defence than a naval arms race.

 

(All this being said, a USV for picket duty (x-band radar and optronics) with the endurance (fuel) issue solved would be a valuable substitute for AEW in the quest to get early warning against sea-skimming threats.)

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: I just found where I mentioned the fuel issue of boats before:

"convoys at sea would want to cruise at 15...25 kts, and I doubt that many small drones could achieve the necessary endurance to accompany a convoy at such cruise speeds. They would need to be recovered and refuelled all the time" 

/2018/01/modern-warships-ii-asw.html

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SatNav warfare

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So a satellite was found to be jamming GPS even though that wasn't its apparent purpose. 

This is the most powerful counter to satellite navigation purposes that exists, as I already wrote in Twitter.

 

The problem isn't the very weak signal of such jammers; it's that they're overhead. The best method for filtering jamming signals out is to ignore the signals on satellite navigation frequencies that are coming from the ground. You can do this with multi-antenna setups if you can tolerate their size:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/03/27/ukrainian-lives-hang-on-a-deadly-electronic-warfare-arms-race/

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/new-chinese-crpa-antenna-found-on-russian-shahed/

It's similar to the HF direction finder HF/DF from WW2: A radio wave coming from the right takes longer to an antenna to the left than to the right. The time lag can be used to identify the direction with a passive receiver. That's how passive radio direction-finding works, including radar warning receivers.

A jammer that's overhead just like the real satellite navigation service satellite defeats this.

Moreover, you can bring hundreds or thousands of tiny and really cheap satellites into low earth orbit with one-time pad encrypted communication with base station and that communication can be limited to overflights of your territory only (and from below). This almost guarantees nobody is going to mess with your control over such a fleet of jamming satellites. The jamming could be limited to certain areas, albeit those would almost necessarily be hundreds of kilometres wide.

- - - - -

There are alternatives to GPS. eLORAN is viable, but given up on. New advanced inertial measurement tech approaches satellite navigation accuracy, but is still low in technological readiness level. Large fleets of low earth orbit satellites such as Starlink's fleet can substitute for satellite navigation and at least match the jammers in signal strength, but legacy fleets may depend on satellite navigation themselves and legacy fleets don't use the frequencies that legacy satellite navigation receivers depend on.

 - - - - -

So what can be done about the jamming by satellite if we cannot cheaply or quickly replace legacy satellite navigation?

We can shoot down satellites, but that causes much debris in orbit and it costs millions per shot while the jammer may be a cheap cubesat. 

We should technically be able to defeat at least low earth orbit jammer satellites with high-powered lasers. We need the satellite tracking and passive radio frequency direction finding to discern which space object is jamming, track it, wait for an opportunity where no other non-hostile satellite would be affected and destroy it. The required power would necessitate quite large lasers and it would only be possible with clear sky - which is rare over Central Europe in wintertime, but the orbit would also lead over Australia's outback, Djibouti, Greek mountains, Spain's inland and Alps mountains. The problem is the required power of many megawatts. We'd likely have to combine a cluster of multiple lasers on one target to at least gain the laser ablation effect. A space-based weapon would be very expensive, centralised and thus be targeted itself. A Spanish or Australian site would be fairly safe, especially if protected by decoys, chaff projection in case of IRBM/SLBM attack and satellite navigation jamming itself. The same ground-based lasers could be used to deal with hostile earth observation satellites and even deal warning shots to non-hostile earth observation satellites of companies or governments that relay the data to hostiles. Another problem remains; satellite and generally space object tracking radars are big, expensive, stationary (other than those on ships) and could be targets to conventional-tipped IRBM/SLBM attacks if no others.

https://x.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/2063629144626225220?s=20

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A 'carry at all times' helmet for support troops in army divisions

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I hope you muted the video in time. Anyway, I showed this thing from 2022 because I remember having asked ballistic helmet manufacturers on Eurosatory 2018 why they don't provide a proper helmet for support troops.

Those hardly ever wear their helmets - on the head even more rarely than otherwise. Wartime videos shows that such military personnel does not even bother to keep helmets close by. So they simply wouldn't have ANY ballistic protection in the event of a surprise attack with things that fragment.

A compromise helmet that's carried on the body at all times (when awake) and sacrifices some quality to achieve this would be a great leap forward.

This mirrors what I wrote about 500 gram escape hoods to survive first 20 minutes of a chemical attack until you reached the bulkier & heavier 'proper' NBC mask and a PDW designed to be carried at all times (when awake).

A soft design would be even more comfortable than that origami thing and without gaps, but the trauma issue probably excludes soft armour from head protection until someone finds a non-newtonian fluid that's really suitable for body armour and affordable. 

A helmet that would be worn at all times would need to be lightweight and less bulky. A reduction of the protection rating from NIJ level IIIA even down to equivalent of PASGT 'flak vests' (less than NIJ level I, 15-20 layers aramid/kevlar) would be acceptable, or a reduction of coverage (as that origami thing would have; maybe -20% coverage). 80% weak protection would still stop 80% (by area) of 80% (most fragments are weak) of all fragments of an ordinary Russian HE grenade that a low cut thick adamantium armour helmet would stop.

NIJ level IIIA helmet shells aren't made of thick adamantium armour, they may stop only 90% of fragments (depends on the shell/mortar bomb and distance / also the rims are weak), so it's overall a reduction of protection from about 0.9 to about 0.64. The realistic comparison for a support troops ballistic helmet would be to no helmet at all, though - and that's an improvement from 0.00 to about 0.64.

Such a support forces 'carry at all times' (on the back, belly, on upper legs maybe?) helmet coupled with a 'wear at all times' flak vest (20 layers aramid, most times not closed, sufficient ventilation) would be a huge improvement for the protection of support troops within divisions in the field. A full performance mil spec helmet and (over-)vest could still be at the motor vehicle or camp bed.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Navies and trade

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Long-time readers may remember I'm a bit of a sceptic regarding naval power. In part because ship-killing can be done by land-based aircraft, in part because small navies historically simply didn't accomplish their missions. Warfare at sea was kind of a winner-takes-it-all thing, so a small navy was all-too often a waste of resources. Think of the utterly useless Polish, Danish and Dutch navies in WW2, for example.

 

Big (dominant) navies justify their existence (and budget) in large part with the claim that they protect maritime trade (and wartime transportation). I blogged about that in ancient times myself.

I see three distinct ways how a navy would do that:

1) Break a close blockade. No modern cruisers would enact a close blockade on ports. That fell out of fashion with the late 19th century torpedo. Close blockade by luring submarines or by offensive minelaying is a thing, but to counter this doesn't require warships. Boats, drones, helicopters, seabed sensor stations and defensive mines would suffice.

2) Break a 'blue water' distant blockade. This is mostly about escorts for convoys and I blogged a lot about it. 

3) Force open straits.

 

#1 is possible without a proper navy, but hardly any country is well-prepared to do it. None is efficiently prepared to do it. 

#2 is something that absolutely no navy is prepared to do at large scale. No navy - not even USN or PLAN - has enough escorts for this, especially not in addition to securing the own coastal waters. The Western allies built hundreds of oceangoing escorts in WW2 to counter the German submarine threat.* NATO lost the necessary numbers of escorts sometime around 1970 when the late WW2 destroyers that were retained and modernised to counter hundreds of Soviet fast diesel-electric submarines were decommissioned or rendered inoperable. Ever since, the counter to Soviet submarines was a cordoning them, especially in the 'GIUK gap', Baltic sea, English Channel and Bosphorus. The USN admitted it wouldn't even be able to provide escorts for its own strategic sealift ships (which as so fast that a proper ASW escort would be near-impossible anyway due to fuel consumption fo destroyers at that speed and the speed limit of towed variable depth sonars).

#3 is something that really only the USN had a credible claim to be able to do against a well-armed opposition. We learned that for all practical purposes, even they can neither do it against Iranians nor against the Houthis.

 

So it's about time we understand three things:

• Most navies are too small to accomplish wartime missions and are not credible in peacetime. They're a waste of resources.
• 'Blue water' maritime trade cannot be secured against well-armed opposition prepared to disrupt it unless we create giant escort navies. 
• The USN is a horribly overbudgeted land attack force and not much else.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyer_escorts_of_the_United_States_Navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower-class_corvette

 
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Suddenly so much love for cruise missiles

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Suddenly lots of people talk about Europe needing cruise missiles to deter Russians.

Let's look at what this implies.

• It certainly implies that deep strike is important (and has deterrence value).
• It also implies that Europeans without the U.S. don't have enough deep strike capability.
• It also implies to add those cruise missiles remedies that deep strike capability deficit.

This is not wholly nonsense, but there's a really, really big 4th implication:

• It implies that these people understand there's another way of doing strategic air war (or specifically deep strikes) than the American way of (strategic air) war.

That's something I've been trying to convey, for I saw very little awareness for this. 

 

To build a very expensive, very big air force with lots of specialised aircraft for a doctrine that requires very intricately-synchronised strike packages is not the only way how you can blow up an oil refinery 1,000 km deep in the enemy's rear area.

You can also simply send a missile that he doesn't intercept (maybe because he only intercepts the other missiles in the air at the same time or maybe because it's too difficult to intercept or maybe you launched when he's not ready to defend).

I'm waiting for more such insight breakthroughs by establishment types. Maybe they'll at some point recognise that our focus on the standing army is ill-advised compared to a focus on wartime strength (reserves!)? Maybe they'll understand that ships are targets and submarines can hardly sink anything that you cannot sink by land-based aircraft? Maybe they'll understand that generals, admirals and experts are very often in disagreement, which proves that they're not always correct? Maybe they might recognise that Russia is not about to invade NATO simply because mobilised Russia is badly outnumbered by a demobilised NATO minus Americans and the Russian armed forces are crap level forces comparable to Iraq 1990 at most?

 

related:

/2009/11/tacair-of-future.html 

/2010/07/first-week-of-peer-vs-peer-air-war.html 

/2016/01/air-force-strike-packages-and-peer-wars.html

/2018/03/luftwaffe-f-35-or-typhoon-for-airground.html 

/2024/05/reviewing-my-theses-on-air-power-in.html 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A general purpose frigate for small powers

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I wrote a blog post series about navy escorts in 2018 that IMO stood up to the test of time. Its conclusion/recommendation in the end is a tad radical and importantly, something that naval bureaucracies won't like and some of them cannot afford. So I thought maybe I should revisit the topic and have a look at a frigate concept. Bear in mind I'm no specialised navy buff, but also bear in mind that so far all specialised navy buffs I discussed against failed to counter my arguments with arguments and resorted to logical fallacies instead.

 

Let's start with assumptions: A class of 4 ships for a small navy, serving primarily as oceanic escorts and secondarily as maritime blockade enforcers.

So overall size and mobility would be close to an improved Mogami class frigate. 

Japanese Mogami frigate, full load 5,500 tons

 

ASW (also see /2018/01/modern-warships-ii-asw.html) 

A  towed active/passive low frequency active sonar system (let's say CAPTAS-4) serves as main search sensor against submarines.

The sonar will detect many contacts, many of them false. All contacts close to the route of the ship/convoy will require investigation, while more distant ones require investigation only if they appear to move. Maps of known wrecks and seabed rocks don't help much, for submarines could still lie in ambush right next to them. (Some routes may be protected against this by deploying anti-submarine mines close to wrecks.)

The investigation of a contact can be done by a cheap (not gold plated*) helicopter or by a drone (with better range than possible with today's batteries alone). The minimum is two helicopters if you don't prefer drones, else one helicopter. 

Both helo or drone could tow a magnetic anomaly detector in an attempt to pin down the exact location of the contact, but they could drop a miniature torpedo at the location ordered by the frigate even without a MAD confirmation. This torpedo would barely be dangerous enough to a submarine to provoke a detectable reaction. A miniature torpedo that fails to explode on the contact returns to the surface, floats and may be recovered, returned and its batteries recharged. The same could be done with small miniature torpedo/drone with side-looking sonar in the same format, but without warhead.

The helicopter and drone may also drop (and recover) active sonobuoys and serve as a radio relay for the communication between sonobuoys and frigate. No ASW computing or ASW decision-making onboard the helo.

A confirmed threat submarine contact on the other hand leads to a salvo of three anti-submarine missiles with each one lightweight torpedo as payload (minimum 10 in VLS) and evasive movement by the convoy. An accurate triangular impact pattern creates a no-escape zone for the attacked submarine and allows for a little inaccuracy of the detection. Coastal ASW could include the use of land-based anti-submarine missiles.

Survivability against torpedo attack would mostly be pursued via the usual means, possibly including miniature torpedoes for interception of heavyweight torpedoes (hard kill). The sonar would be very loud and the frigate has to escort loud and fast transport ships, so very costly measures for being very silent at low speeds are not justifiable.

To not use a hull-mounted ASW sonar may prove limiting in shallow waters, but those would be coastal waters and should usually be secured by other forces.

AAW: (also see /2018/02/modern-warships-iii-aaw.html)

A rotating inclined 3D AESA multifunction radar as the main sensor, datalink, two gimballed optronics sensor sets, passive detection and direction-finding of radar emissions are a good basic sensor suite. A smaller and cheaper rotating inclined 3D AESA multifunction radar (~Giraffe 1X) should serve as backup radar. I argue against expensive long range air search radars (American-style) because their range is even worse than that of a smaller rotating 3D radar's against seaskimming threats (bigger radar = mounted lower for better metacentric height). Distant high altitude threats can be detected by airborne radar (AEW) as well, which we need to improve detection distance against seaskimmers anyway. The main 3D AESA radar does need to be able to look up about 85° and does need to be able to detect incoming ballistic missiles, though.

An aerial drone may serve as a detection range extension against the seaskimmer threat, either free-flying or tethered (even towed). One should not expect much performance from the lightweight sensor suite and power supply of an affordable vertical landing drone design, though. 

The longest-ranged air defence missile should be a VLS-launched SM-6 equivalent, present in small quantity (~8) more as a deterrent and anti-ship missile than for actual destruction of many aircraft or missiles.

Next, lock-on-after-launch area air defence missiles capable of both defending against platforms launching glide bombs (far, high, onboard countermeasures and capable of running at Mach 1+) or seaskimmer rockets (the classic Super Étendard+Exocet combo and some supersonic anti-ship rockets would have the launching aircraft below 200 ft altitude, subsonic and briefly at less than 30 nm distance) and against seaskimmer missiles with turbfan (range well over 50 nm) is needed. This would preferably be a quad-packed (in VLS) equivalent to ESSM Block II; possibly IRIS-T SLX or CAMM MR. Minimum 20 missiles.

Third, a cheaper version of that missile for line of sight employment only with a cheap semi-active radar seeker (target illumination by the multifunction radar) equivalent to ESSM Block I would be advisable, but this is unnecessary if the previously mentioned LOAL missile uses a cheap-enough seeker (IRIS-T SLX?). Another minimum 20 missiles.

Finally, despite the stellar record of RIM-116 against test and training targets I prefer two 76 mm guns as close-in weapon systems for versatility and munition cost reasons. The forward gun should have much more ready munition than the usual 76 mm gun mount (rather ~200 than ~80) to be able to fight of saturation attacks of cheap cruise missiles ("drones").

Drones with DRFM active radar decoy tech (~3DDS, towed drones) as well as chaff and multispectral smoke should protect not only the frigate, but in containerised solutions also the protected transport ships (remote-controlled by the escorting frigates). The combination of radar and optronics for sensors and IR and radar countermeasures permits to deploy radar countermeasures against radar-using threats while shooting them with optronics-based fire control for guns and lock-on-after-launch missiles and deploying infrared countermeasures against IR-using threats while shooting them with radar-based fire control for guns and any missiles. The combination of both sensors and uncertainty would lead to either relying on datalink for LOAL missile employment or maintaining a line of sight for the shipboard optronics sensors. Dual sensor threats can be countered with multispectral smoke and chaff combined only once the hard kill munitions ran out. The frigate is an escort and has to protect other ships, not just survive itself.

BMD (also see /2018/02/modern-warships-vi-other-topics.html)

A BMD hard kill requirement leads to multi-billion-Euro cruiser-sized ships and their interceptor missiles (you'd probably use 3 per incoming missile!) are terribly expensive. It's very difficult to withstand saturation attacks due to the quantity, size and cost of interceptor missiles needed. Overall, hard kill BMD does not seem justifiable to me, especially for small budget navies.

Thus I propose to rely on soft kill for all aeroballistic/quasiballistic/hypersonic missile threats that cannot satisfactorily be defended against with the normal hard kill air defences.** Timely detection by the already mentioned rotating 3D AESA radar and warning via datalink and use of the aforementioned soft kill (decoy, multispectral smoke, chaff) capabilities against the threat from above are needed. Radar-detectable wake and waves should be reduced by becoming very slow, turning enough and finally stopping in time for the very brief period of the attack. One might also deploy chaff and offboard radar jammers to interfere with wake and wave detection by ballistic missiles.

BMDs have degraded sensing due to their high speed, they have extremely little time for sensing and they have (unlike seaskimmers) no chance to search a new target if they flew through a chaff cloud mistaken for the target. Soft kill has a good track record against non-ballistic anti-ship missiles, it's even more promising against ballistic ones. I would not trust onboard radar jamming due to the issue of home-on-jam guidance.

ASuW (also see /2018/02/modern-warships-iv-asuw.html)

The main ship killers in a war shouldn't be frigates, for ship killing should be the job of land-based air power and possibly submarines. The exception would be boats showing up in coastal waters and auxiliary cruiser commerce raiders on high seas.

The longest-range SAMs (SM-6 class) and the guns would have some utility against ship targets, but additional ship attack missiles make sense.

A 127 mm gun could substitute for the forward 76 mm gun for more ASuW capability at the expense of more weight. 

Land attack would be a secondary ability, but low priority for an escort. Eight NSMs should easily fit the bill regarding ASuW and land attack and could be deployed from their usual non-VLS launchers. 

Mine countermeasures (also see /2018/02/modern-warships-vi-other-topics.html) 

Naval mines are not much of a threat on the high seas and coastal naval mine threats should be handled by coastal forces. A hull-mounted mine avoidance sonar and divers suffice for the frigate (you need the divers anyway), especially if it has the side-looking sonar drone for the submarine contact confirmation, for it would also be a minehunting drone. Minehunting beyond self-protection should be done with containerised land-based assets that can be mounted on a(n escorted) container ship as well.

 

You may have counted and come up with a minimum of 28 VLS + 8 NSM launchers. I consider 16 Mk 41 VLS as insufficient. You need more firepower to justify the expenses of a modern warship. 32 Mk 41 VLS is fine for a frigate IMO. The shortcut of avoiding the 10 VLS for anti-submarine missiles leads to a dependence on helicopters for ASW, which may not come close to being survivable enough. Additional VLS may be located on escorted ships in containerised launchers, under control by frigates via datalink. 

 

I say a small power that cannot resist having a miniature navy of conventional warships should go for four general purpose frigates of about 6,000 tons at full load. Containerized minehunting, exogeneous AEW, land-based airpower, availability of submarines (or at least underwater drones) for ASW sparring, land-based replenishment and much else would be required in addition to the frigates. To only buy frigates without affording all else that it takes for them to be effective would be a waste of public funds.

I am opposed to buying 1+ billion Euro warships and strongly opposed to buying the excessively expensive hard kill BMD tech.

Likewise, I am strongly opposed to corvettes that are lacking in AAW and ASW, focusing on ASuW (which is best done by platforms other than ships). Corvettes are a waste of money.***

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

edit: Kusha M3 might be the SM-6 equivalent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Kusha

https://idrw.org/kusha-m3-variant-drdos-400km-hypersonic-interceptor-slenderizes-at-1673-kg-outpacing-russian-rival-in-compact-design/

edit 28 April '26: Some additions for clarity in the AAW part.

 

*: Not a true ASW helicopter as we've seen them for decades, for these are horribly expensive and not survivable enough against possible use of air defences by submarines. Think of a MD500 equipped for finding/identifying/boarding ships in day and night (radar, flir, ropes, winch), capable of towing a MAD, carrying a 100 kg torpedo/drone and six ~16 kg sonobuoys. Beartrap, inflatable floats and at least partially folding rotor for naval use.

**: Very short ranged anti-ship ballistic missiles are rather similar to diving supersonic anti-ship missiles and could be defended against with the nomral area air defence SAMs if their developers paid a little attention to this scenario.

***: See also /2018/11/fixed-and-variable-costs.html and /2014/02/corvettes-and-air-defence.html

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