UK's Royal Navy accepts missile-blasting missile as Gulf clouds gather A Royal Navy frigate is to sail to the Far East while carrying the newly accepted Sea Ceptor anti-missile missile system. Type 23 frigate HMS Argyll will sail to the Pacific Ocean later this year, defence secretary Gavin Williamson announced this morning. Argyll's sister ship, HMS Montrose, has just become the third RN warship …
I think some people like to randomly click downvote or occasionally lose glasses, or misread post or article. Sometimes I click even on wrong post or wrong option. There is no short lived "cancel vote" option like the edit. OTOH, some systems don't allow any grace period for edits.
There is no short lived "cancel vote" option like the edit.
Indeed. Meaning that if you accidentally up/downvote an article (or change your mind after a little thought) you can't cancel your vote to give it a neutral rating, you have to either leave it as-is or vote the opposite way. This is particularly galling if you up/downvoted an article then change your mind after reading a later article: the first article may not merit an opposite vote, merely an abstention.
Some systems, such as youtube, treat vote buttons as toggles. Click once and you upvote (or downvote); click twice and you revert to no vote. All three options of upvote, downvote, and abstain are always available.
No it was not.
We have not yet bought any from the two sellers which export them (Russia and India) and we have not managed to steal one from the third country claiming to have some - China.
So first of all no, it was not tested.
Second, you would be surprised how narrow the straights of Ormuz and several other Gulf chokepoints are. They are narrow enough to be fully within range of a low cost coastal missile launcher. So if the situation there get hot, all it takes for Iran would be to buy a couple of 9A52 Tornadoes or even worse - license them. An AA frigate will run out of munitions trying to counter a coastal salvo with one of these about half-way into the salvo. From there on it is a dead AA frigate.
Putting any single ship in range of a bigger/better shore battery
Oh, nobody disagreed with that. I was simply pointing out that no amount of weaponry short of making most of south-eastern Iran a glass lake can keep the straights of Ormuz open if they decide to close them. So the "advertised" use case is actually a load of bollocks. As usual - we do not expect anything less from the ex-fireplace salesman.
It hasn't been tested against supersonic threats....but....
The US produces the Coyote target which mimics supersonic threats. The UK has bought these. There are other options as well. The UK's Sea Dart missile for example is a supersonic ramjet and has been used for targets as have the US Talos and Terrier. They all had an secondary anti ship role where they were directed on a straight line to a target. Given their size they're actually harder targets...
Back in the day SeaWolf was trialled on intercepting 4.5 inch shells, which are a far harder tarrget than a Sunburn.
Actually, there is a target drone that's designed to simulate the likes of Sunburn and Brahmos
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/gqm163-ssst-a-tricky-coyote-to-match-wits-with-defenses-03155/
It's just rather expensive, so not used that often. We should also bear in mind that Sea Ceptor is derived from Asraam, which as an air to air missile is designed to intercept supersonic targets anyway...no comment on the difficulty of doing so a few metres above sea level!
Actually, there is a target drone that's designed to simulate the likes of Sunburn and Brahmos
Good catch. That is still not its designated target though - Sunburn/Brahmos class missile.
And the answer to that is still no. Not a single one of the UK/USA anti-missile weapons has had any testing against its proper potential adversaries.
So what do you want us to do ... start a war?
No. Go shopping. As one of the old Kosturica films said: "What cannot be bought with money can be bought with a lot a of money".
To be more specific - do not sabotage Russian weapon sales to NATO countries. It is actually in the western weapon's manufacturers FAVOR - we get to test stuff against their gear while they do not (or at the very least they get LESS information than we do).
However, instead of that what do we do - idiocies. Like the most recent one with S400 and Turkey.
It is actually in the western weapon's manufacturers FAVOR
How? Western weapons makers don't sell a single weapon on the basis of proven capability. They sell on the basis of economic nationalism, offset procurement, bribery, or simple lies. So there's no advantage to them of knowing the capabilities of Uncle Vlad's latest toys, whereas there will be a (perceived) loss of a sale. Indeed, if capability were in the slightest bit relevant, then the military would be able to choose their own weapons without the bungling incompetence, dishonesty and waste of civil servants and politicians. - all in some parallel universe, of course.
All that the Western weapons makers care about is selling more over-priced crap to gormless defence buyers. Actually, what they care about more is getting defence research contracts - no risk, guaranteed payment, and you don't even have to organise tricky stuff like design and manufacturing.
Of course, I would like us to conduct several tests as well, but....
Using the French Navy as targets? That didn't work out too well during WW2 (well - not for the French anyway..And it gave De Gaulle *even* more to complain about. Which led to Churchills famous comment about "the biggest cross I have to carry is the Cross of Lorraine".)
"Note the target is called the "Coyote"
Because if it was called "Road runner," they'd never catch it.
Beep, beep."
Err... while the Coyote never catches anything.
Maybe the MOD should rather get a some of those Acme Holes to make anything fall into.
He did once - youtube - Coyote catches Road Runner
Maybe the MOD should rather get a some of those Acme Holes to make anything fall into.
They already have one, at Abbey Wood, near Bristol. People, talent, ideas, equipment, money, entire defence budgets (not to mention thousands of morons) have been poured into it. Only the morons have emerged.
Physicists have theorised that the "immunity" of morons is a self defence mechanism, because too many peabrained civil servants in the same place could create a singularity due to their combined denseness.
too many peabrained civil servants in the same place could create a singularity due to their combined denseness.
I suspect that you've come across one of the little-known theraputic uses of MoD tea[1]. Stops the stupid from congealing into critcal mass..
[1] Because, being the last resort of failed senior officers, nothing else would be drunk. After all, coffee is an invention of those dastardly French[2]..
[2] Yes, yes, it comes from places much warmer than France. But it was the French who popularised those new-fangled 'coffee houses' in the 18th century..
hypersonic missiles are fast but also have harder times striking targets. I would imagine a mach 10 low level missile will not be the most manoeuvering thing and wouldnt take much to knock off course. a cloud of "stuff" in its path wouldnt do the control surfaces much good and the path of the missile wouldnt be any harder to calculate. The deviation of a slower missile leaves a much longer target correction time.
Or of course a Mach 10 hypersonic missile?
That one is still mostly an advert.
I would be more worried about the non-export "hunting pack" mode of all Russian anti-ship missiles starting from the ancient Basalt, going to Granit and the more resent Onix/Sunburn.
So in addition to "has it been fired at a supersonic sea skimming target" there is the question of "has it been fired at a group of those trying to take out a target cooperatively".
That one is a definitive confirmed and documented NO.
We get 1% of our energy supplies from Russia. I'm a little bit embarrassed for you ...
In the narrowest sense you're right. But thanks to years of government policy tieing our gas and electricity grids to European ones "because its a good idea and will lower prices",. And there's the minor problem that the EU is totally dependant upon Russian gas in winter, and if that stopped our gas supplies would dry up too (we're a net importer) and the costs of electricity and gas would go through the roof.
There's been several instances where all of the EU has come within days of running out gas in cold winter periods. Even Germany who have massive gas storage reserves. The UK (with essentially no gas storage) would get hit hardest and probably first, even if not a single molecule of Russian gas had been used in the UK.
And what the hell are they burning to make so much soot?
Whatever they are, most likely they will not be next time it is out at sea. It is in dry dock for a full refurb of the power unit and one of the options is to use one of the next gen small reactors instead. Same as most of their fleet by the way. They have a total of 2 active large displacement capital ships in the North Fleet, 1 in the Pacific and zero in the Baltic and Black sea fleets. Everything else is in for repairs.
By the way hat's off to El Reg that it did not take the bait and try to reproduce the Fear-The-Bear spin which our best beloved ex-fireplace salesman put when presenting the news to the other media. It is not supported by facts at present. In 3-4 years time when they refurb the fleet - maybe. But not before then.
What's Russia got to do with any of this?
If you want to do Russia instead of doing a good old "Danzig is ours" show on somewhat sitting-duck Iran with those RN boats, you have got other trouble coming.
A couple of Kalibrs into the side would fix this up good and it's off to the showers.
" replaced by the Type 26 and the Type 31e, the former dedicated to escorting the new aircraft carriers "
Will these new ships have no weapons to perfectly accompany the aircraftless carriers?
Are we going to realise to late these missiles can't be fired from the new ships due a design issue and we need to spend 10x the price on some soon to be almost nearly ready, but not quite yet, flawed US system?
Are we going to realise to late these missiles can't be fired from the new ships due a design issue
I'm confident they can be fired, but as Voland's notes above, the missile hasn't been tested against a realistic target, and the control system+missiles haven't been tried against multiple targets (nor I might add whilst subject to combat conditions and attempted ECM).
I suspect that the inevitable "doh! didn't think of that" issue will be that by the time we have the T26 & 31, Sea Ceptor will be outmoded for the likely threats. Another decade of development of anti-ship missiles should produce some really bang-whizz stuff (because its supersonic, you hear the bang first, y'see). Or it may turn out that a decade of additional development make other technologies make anti-ship missiles less relevant - for example supercavitation torpedoes.
Will these new ships have no weapons to perfectly accompany the aircraftless carriers?
No, no, of course not. They'll have some very, very advanced weapons systems that the MoD have paid huge amounts of money for! After all, BAe wouldn't sell duff stuff to the MoD, would it?
Which, of course, won't actually work. Or require advance permission from the US to use, permission to be applied for about 6 months before use, in triplicate, written on the backs of cheques for embarassingly large sums of money.
Oh - and any rumour that the new ships will require pedalo stations below water in order to move are purely unfounded.
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