News Story: New Army Long-Range Missile Might Kill Ships, Too - LRPF

MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile
System) [Image: Wiki Commons]

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

“Outranged and outgunned” by Russian and Chinese missiles, the US Army wants a new long-range artillery rocket of its own. The nascent Long-Range Precision Fires program could do much more than replace the 25-year-old ATACMS missile, however. LRPF could become a linchpin of what the Army is calling Multi-Domain Battle, extending ground-based artillery’s reach not only to unprecedented ranges — hitting distant targets once reserved for airstrikes — but out to sea.

Why does the Army need to do this? Since 1991, when the Soviet Union fell and ATACMS entered service, the Army has largely neglected the artillery, so much so that one group of disgruntled officers called it a “dead branch walking.” Ground troops relied on the Air Force and Navy to dominate their own domains, prevent enemy airstrikes, and provide firepower on demand. But Russia, China, and even lesser powers like Iran have invested heavily in long-range, land-based anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to keep the US Air Force and Navy at bay. That means Army forces may have to bring their own in-house heavy firepower to the fight — not only to support its own units on land, but to help out the other services in the air and sea.

That’s where Multi-Domain Battle comes in. Against a high-tech foe with so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial defenses, where US fighters risk being shot down, the best way to take out an enemy airbase, missile battery or command post may be with a long-range land-based missile of one’s own. Likewise, when fighting an A2/AD adversary over a relatively narrow waterway — the Baltic and Black Seas in Europe, the East and South China Seas in Asia — the best way to destroy the enemy fleet may be from unsinkable missile bases on the land.

Read the full story at BreakingDefense

News Story: Australia shows interest in LRASM anti-ship missile

Australia is one of a small number of nations that have shown interest in the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) being developed for the US Navy and US Air Force, Lockheed Martin has revealed.

The LRASM is a development of the JASSM-ER, the extended range variant of the AGM-158 JASSM stand-off missile in service on the RAAF’s F/A-18A ‘classic’ Hornets. It is being developed by Lockheed Martin under a cooperative program for the US Air Force and Navy that will see the stealthy missile fielded on the B-1B bomber in 2018 and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet from 2019.

“We are encouraging the Navy to respond to international interest in this system. Australia is one country that has expressed some interest, the UK has expressed some interest, Canada has expressed some interest,” Frank St John, vice president tactical missiles/combat manoeuvre systems at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control business unit, told Australian media on Tuesday.

“I expect that within some period of time the US Navy will have an export policy on [LRASM] and [we] can start talking seriously about how we integrate it on other platforms.”

Read the full story at ADBR

Think Tank: Filling the gap - Anti-ship missiles and the Royal Australian Navy

Christopher Cowan

On 4 February, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the US Navy had developed a new anti-ship missile (ASM)—the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6). But that ‘new’ missile isn’t as new as it might seem. The SM-6 has been in limited service with the US Navy as its most capable long range anti-air and anti-missile weapons system since 2013. The SM-6 is estimated to have a range of over 200 nautical miles (370km) and flies at Mach 3.5, giving it the ability to hit an adversary at a long range with little to no warning from defensive radars.

That news comes at a welcome time for many around the world lamenting the US Navy’s lack of a long-range ASM capability. Since retiring the anti-ship variant of the venerable AGM-65 Tomahawk in 1994, the US Navy has been in want of a long range supersonic ASM and has relied upon the slower and shorter ranged RGM-84 Harpoon and SM-2 (the SM-6’s predecessor which had a limited anti-ship capability) missiles to satisfy its surface-to-surface requirements. However, the US Navy isn’t the only state with this capability gap. Years of disinterest in surface warfare, caused by a lack of credible adversaries, have left many western navies (including Australia) far behind the likes of China and Russia in the development of those types of missiles.

News Story: Pacific Command chief urges new capabilities as tensions mount with China

Admiral Harry Harris (Image: Wikipedia)

By David Larter, Navy Times

China is building military capabilities in the South China Sea that are escalating the tense standoff in the region, the head of U.S. Pacific Command told lawmakers Tuesday.

"In my opinion China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea," said PACOM head Adm. Harry Harris, in a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "You’d have to believe in a flat earth to believe otherwise."

The harsh assessment from the military's top commander in the Pacific comes on the heals of a wave of reports of increasing Chinese capabilities on disputed islands. Last week, satellite images showed China had installed a surface-to-air missile battery on the Paracel Islands near Vietnam. And on Monday, reports surfaced that China is installing a high-tech air search radar that may be capable of detecting U.S. stealth aircraft on one of its man-made islands in the Spratly Islands.

Harris said he needed the U.S. Navy to invest in next-generation anti-surface missiles to counter potential rivals like China who are rapidly building their capabilities, saying the Navy was still using the same weapons it has had since he was a junior officer.

Read the full story at DefenseNews

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