Talk:Cruise missile

Not sure how it fits in here, but Slashdot have a link to NYT story on a shipping container with four cruise missiles inside. Lift off the roof & launch. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/26/world/international-us-russia-weapon.html?_r=1 Sandy Harris 11:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It might be a good starting point for realities, strengths and limitations of cruise missiles. Novator, incidentally, is a respected design bureau, but to air-to-air missiles.

If I were sending a cruise missile against a shore target at a fixed location, GPS might be quite adequate, especially if it's in a relatively open area, or it has a WMD warhead that doesn't need precision. GPS is more problematic in built-up areas--ever tried to use it in a building? Most strategic strike cruise missiles use a combination of inertial and possibly GPS for the midcourse, and often terrain contour mapping radar. The more tactical ones use radar, infrared, or even low-light television for final acquisition.

The thing to remember about a carrier is that it is a moving and defended target. Here's the challenge: let's say you have a satellite photograph giving the carrier location 30 minutes before firing. GPS alone won't get you to the position you have to hit. In general, that means that the cruise missile needs to use active search radar for final acquisition, which also makes it electronically detectable. If it has a submarine or other platform doing close-in spotting, that helps for an ocean target -- although I recognize a carrier in port is an easier target.

So, it's not an impossible threat, plausible to fixed targets. For mobile targets, the problem becomes more complex; you aren't doing just fire and forget, but need to give the missile best position at launching, preferably known course, and then course updates. Three or four could sink a supertanker, but a supertanker doesn't have defenses. Note that newer satellites, as well as patrol aircraft, are designed to pick up the flame of the engine once a cruise missile is launched.

I'm NOT saying it's impossible, but it is important to put the thing in perspective. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:39, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

There's an old myth of the "suitcase bomb" that can trash a city and might not be detected as it is delivered. A ship with several of these containers aboard strikes me as that sort of threat writ large. Of course, US or Soviet subs and ICMBs have been able to threaten almost anyone for decades, but other nations' nukes, or chemical & biological weapons, aren't as scary as they might be because they cannot deliver them over long range. This looks like it puts worldwide delivery systems in almost anyone's reach, at least for a small strike. Sandy Harris 16:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Shall we collaborate on some text? Your point on the range issue is well taken, but, except for advanced cruise missiles with fixed targets, few have ranges beyond the tens to low hundreds of kilometers. The issue is not that they couldn't fly farther, but that a moving target might not be found.

Subs certainly have been a threat to carriers, and, while not often mentioned, are to ports -- especially with a suicide crew and a nuclear warhead. ICBMs don't threaten moving targets. Bombers have more of a challenge to penetrate a sophisticated air defense -- the Falklands War was a near-run thing, with marginal fleet air defense and only five Argentinean air-launched cruise missiles. Had the British had an airborne early warning radar, or if the Argentineans had a few more missiles, the war could have changed.

A carrier can steam at about 65 km/hr. What is the plausible engagement geometry for an anti-shipping cruise missile to engage it? The closer the cruise missile platform fires, the better its chance of being detected, but also the less opportunity for the defense to shoot down the missile. Given the carrier can maneuver, what is the uncertainty of the cruise missile that the ship changed direction? How large a warhead, or how much in the way of guidance, does it need to ensure taking out the carrier?

This isn't implausible for hitting supertankers, although they can take some rather large hits. So, is the carrier threat really the concern?

A cruise missile with a biological warhead is probably the thing that scares me most, but, again, against land-based targets. Bio warheads, as Aum Shinryo found and Saddam knew, are not as easy as they look. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)