Editorial: Look to Japan to Solve the Navy’s ASM Crisis

XASM-3 (Image: Wiki Commons)

By Ben Rimland

The U.S. Navy’s traditional blue-water advantage in the Asia-Pacific is at risk. Japan can help.

With the venerable RGM-84 Harpoon growing rather long in the tooth, the U.S. Navy has begun searching in earnest for a new and cutting-edge anti-ship missile (ASM) in both air and ship-launched varieties. Unsurprisingly, the Navy has looked to further evolutions of two legacy weapons systems, the Tomahawk and Harpoon, to replace its fleet of 1980s-vintage weapons.

Of course, weapons procurement – especially for the world’s greatest maritime superpower – does not occur in a vacuum. While the Navy has distressingly neglected to construct new warships with organic Harpoon capability since 1999, China, Russia, and other adversaries have begun fielding advanced supersonic, long-ranged ASM like the SSN-27A Sizzler, the YJ-18, and other such weapons. America’s longtime technological and quantitative edge in wielding a “big stick” in the Asia-Pacific, then, is eroding at supersonic speeds.

Much has been written about the development of Lockheed’s Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) and the possibility of fielding a competition between it and a next-generation Tomahawk modified for maritime attack. The Navy can and should encourage the development of these weapons, which maintain sophisticated capabilities like highly independent inertial navigation, data interlink, and in the case of the LRASM, a stealthy design for operation in an A2/AD environment. Their long range makes each choice, along with the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile, good options for increasing the range of U.S. ASM capability.

What these missiles have in survivability and range, however, they lack in speed. Compared to the Chinese and Russian missiles, the LRASM and Tomahawk are only capable of subsonic operation. This is precisely why the Navy should, in addition to procuring the LRASM/Tomahawk, move to collaborate with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the developers of the XASM-3.

Read the full story at The Diplomat