I think most of us have realised by now that United States
Navy's doctrine on sea warfare is somewhat different from most of
the smaller Navies.
Different? I believe there are differences in doctrine , but i
dun see a difference in weapon confriguration in most of the allied
navies and the smaller navies which follow their
confriguration.
It is standard to have 8 SSM ( Harpoon/Exocet ) as their arm
confriguration for most of the European Navies , the Asian Navies
and the North American Navies. Did they not realise that their
doctrine are different from that of the USN or there is no need for
other confriguration??
The fact that aircraft carriers have longer strike range than
any type of Surface to Surface missiles pretty much convinced USN
that nothing today can beat having man-plaforms throwing lots of
guided munition and standoff weapons at you.
Under ur impression , are u trying to say that in the USN , the
Harpoon ain the primary naval Weapon?U must know that not ever
deployment of the USN involve carriers. So how are u going to argue
that their combatant dun rely on the Harpoon as their primary naval
spear?
One can argue that it is far easier to down an ASM than a guided
standoff munition like Popeye or JDAM.
JDAM? It is a unpowered bomb ( i dun think it is a stand off
weapon ) and i believe it is far easy to shoot down a JDAM then a
ASM. There had been reports that Sea wolf SAM can shoot down
artillery shells.
Thus, upgrading of Harpoon become less of an incentive.
Upgrading to Block 2B Harpoon also may not be viewed as
cost-effective.
The Harpoon Bk2 is answer to navies who cant afford seaborne
cruisemissiles. Therefor i see the Harpoon Bk2 a very good
industrial strategy which allow Boeing to secure more deals in the
market of Navies not using the Harpoon before and the market of
Navies who uses the Harpoon Bk1.
However, to Navies that have no carrier battle groups or even a
Helicopter carrier, having long range ASMs become viable solution,
especially one that can perform land attack as well.
I dun see most of the world doing that. Their answer to a lack
of air support is to use stealth as a mean to avoid detection and
therefore increase their lethal capability. U must know that if the
enemy cant detect u , how long ranged her ASM be , they can engage
u.
