re: New BrahMos Cruise Missile: Range 500kms
You are wrong Mr. to reject Brahmos just because of its higher detection range. And u r right if Brahmos & harpoon have the same speed. but the fact is Brahmos travels 4 times faster than Harpoon. Considering 20km detection range of harpoon and its 240m/s speed, the adversary will have about 83 sec to react. And considering 50km detection range and 2.8 mach speed, a Brahmos will give only 52 sec to react to the adversary. now u tell me which one is deadlier.
What if I tell you if I was in the ship, I would need lesser time to spoof Brahmos compared to Harpoon and that once spoofed the Harpoon has the time to correct its course to reinitiate its attack with the correct course while the Brahmos will just fall into the sea.
It is not about which one is deadlier, both are deadly, the point is which of them will get the work done. So, it depends on what the adversary can throw at the missile to defeat it. The fact is modern missile defence systems on ships can react in one to two seconds and a missile salvo can be away in the 3rd second. So, it makes no difference once the missile is detected.
Both missiles have advantages and disadvantages. It's not like one is better than the other.
Thanks for pointing it out. This is exactly I was going to say. Also, P2P can u please post how did u reach the conclusion about the range from where brahmos will be detected. Presently it seems like you have chosen diameter as the deciding factor(just guessing).
Beyond just that. It is not just range, but also altitude. Brahmos only drops down to sea skimming mode after the target is confirmed to be in the area.
Then, it's IR signature is not small either. Nor is the trailing exhaust plume than can be detected using IR detectors and the missile can be located using a radar.
Missiles like Brahmos can cruise at 5-15m, but Harpoon type missiles can cruise at 2m or 3m, so even that matters.
ASuW isn't about pointing a radar at the target and shooting the missile. You need to identify the target and then track and lock on to the target. This is best possible at shorter ranges, not longer ranges, that's because of the radar horizon.
If you check USN inventory, they use both, in a certain way. They use Harpoon as their primary weapon for ASuW. But they also have this SAM called SM-2 which has a secondary anti-shipping capability and has been used in war. It does not have a cruise missile trajectory but it flies at Mach 4 and has a 50Kg warhead which can do a lot of damage. Considering they carry a 100 missiles, they don't have much problems with ripple firing a bunch of them at the enemy.
In the future they are expected to carry both subsonic missiles and supersonic missiles for ASuW. We have a similar capability on ships too. Our ships carry a combination of supersonic Brahmos / subsonic+supersonic Klub and Sea Eagles on the ship helicopters.
Klub combines the capability of Brahmos with Harpoon. Only the terminal flight is supersonic and this gives the missile good range while being of a smaller size than Brahmos, thus smaller radar and IR signatures.
It is merely good to have all three types.
