The Emerging Zircon.

A-ha, now they finally state something closer to the truth about 3M22 Zircon. As TASS reports, not only Zircon will begin operational procurement in 2022, as opposed to 2023, but: 

дальность полета "Циркона" при работе по наземным целям составит порядка 1 500 км, по надводным - немного меньше.

Translation: the range of Zircon when "working" on land targets is 1500 kilometers, on surface targets--slightly less.  

Now recall this map:  

Look at the 1000 mile range curve and make your own conclusion. The acceleration of the final tests for Zircon is a good indication of both:

1. Maturity of technology;

2. Russia getting ready for possible change of the posture on the high seas. And elsewhere. 

Meanwhile Pentagon released a footage of Iranian ballistic missiles striking US base after the United States assassinated General Soleimani. 

Considering the fact that Trump chose an option of assassination, in blatant violation of the international law, the irresponsible act achieved exactly the opposite effect. Instead of intimidation of Iran, it illuminated US weakness militarily, exposing US forces operating in the region without any viable defense system capable to mitigate a missile strikes at US forces by any competent enemy. Iran turned out to be the one and demonstrated fully its capability to disrupt any military plans by the US, at Israel's behalf. Trump and his headless Secretary of the State Pompeo wanted to look "tough". They were made to look fools, which they are. In fact, Iran did, by means of limited demonstration, what I wrote about 4 years ago but in relation to Russia and Khmeimim base.

"Strategy".

About "strategy"--the term so abused in pop-media that people simply lost the meaning of strategy as means of attaining desired objective in general, and of the political objectives of a war in a military sense. Allow me to quote my poor dear self (I know, not the ethical thing to do). Here it is, from my piece from last year:

Size does matter and so does range and speed whenever anyone talks about weapons. It seems that there is a great deal of confusion which perpetuates itself in regards to a relatively small Russian military contingent in Syria. The most popular indicator of this confusion is a never ending discussion of a possible American attack on the Russian forces in Syria, primarily on the air base Khmeimim. Can such an attack, once one considers the size of forces US can deploy against Russians, succeed in “defeating” them? ... At issue here is not the fact that Russia is a nuclear superpower—everyone knows that. Even the most rabid American Russophobes know this and can grasp, however slightly, the concept of their poor dears turning into radioactive ash pretty fast if they do the unthinkable, such as attacking Russia proper with nuclear weapons. Syria, however, is a bit different—the escalation to a nuclear threshold could, indeed, be controlled by those who hold a decisive advantage conventionally.

This was written long before Vladimir Putin's speech on March 1 this year. Things changed drastically since then. Against the background of USS Harry Truman CBG doing its thing allegedly against IS targets in Syria, Russia, whose main objective in the area is not to allow the mess there go out of control and deter any suicidal desire to unleash wider conflict made her point today.  

  

Ten MIG-31 fighter jets fitted with Kinzhal air-launched missiles on test combat duty. 

"It is a cutting-edge weapon, namely a hypersonic long-range missile capable of overcoming air and missile defenses. It is invincible, having serious combat might and potential. The MIG-31 is its carrier as the jet is the most fitted for accelerating this missile to required speeds," he said. "In support that it is not something exotic, [I’ll say] today ten jets have gone on test combat duty and are ready for use depending on the situation," Borisov said.

This is a clear cut warning against doing anything stupid since Russia here does control escalation (God forbids) in a precisely conventional (that is non-nuclear)  way--any surface asset of any navy today is simply defenseless against single, not to speak of ten, hyper-sonic Kinzhals' salvo. It is one thing to demonstrate force, totally another--having counter-force capable of defeating any combination of demonstrator's forces. That is precisely the case here with Eastern Mediterranean and Russian bases in Syria. As long as the parties involved understand the strategic score, everything should be fine, otherwise we may be in line for a rather dramatic demonstration of the weapons which already completely redefined  naval warfare and nobody in their own mind wants this demonstration. My feel (hopefully correct) is that American side on a political level (the one which only matters in a decision making process) finally begins to get the "message" from people who do understand real ramifications and that is what was needed from the get go. Russia doesn't want to fight the US and her strategy works. With increasing number of hyper-sonic weapons of Kinzhal or Zircon capabilities being procured the outcome of purely conventional war in the Eastern Med is very easy to predict but I hate to even venture there. 

Over Moscow

Just a small visual representation of the kill-zone with the range of 900 miles being covered with possible drop points for two Kinzhals with Mach=2+ capable Mig-31s launching from immediate readiness from some airfields in Crimea and Krasnodar. It would take roughly 10 minutes to reach a drop zone and then with Mach=10 Kinzhals with their speed of 2+ miles per second having about 900/2=450 seconds, or 7.5 minutes to reach targets in Eastern Med. In all--17-20 minutes to respond. I do not imply anything here--I merely wanted to demonstrate the order of magnitude of ranges and speeds involved. In any possible conflict I don't think that Kinzhals will attack CVN itself. Enough to "peel off" Aegis carrying destroyers and cruisers. That is basically what Borisov said today.   

Not Really A Surprise.

Hindustan Times reported this on January 20th : 

800-km range BrahMos missile to be tested this year

As the newspaper reports:

“The Sukhoi has a range of 3,600 km. Arming it with an 800-km range missile will increase its reach tremendously, and even more, considering the option of midair refuelling,” the official said.

The missile’s land and naval variants are already in service. At least two Su-30 squadrons with 20 planes each are likely to be equipped with the air-launch variant BrahMos missile, 500 kg lighter than the land/naval variants.

Two Su-30 jets have been modified by the Nasik division of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to carry the 2.5-tonne missile that flies at nearly three times the speed of sound.

BrahMos, being a derivative of Russia's P-800 Onyx missile, pretty much demonstrates an inexorable step of anti-shipping missile weapons' development, in which range and speed will continue to increase dramatically. Part of the answer to this development is, of course, in fuels and materials. With hyper-sonic Zircon 3M22 being already in IOC stage and having new, very high impulse, fuels developed for it, it is no surprise that very soon, if not already, we will see high supersonic weapons such as Onyx being capable to cover distances in 1000+ kilometer range and that changes naval warfare completely. Just to give an idea what it means to search and "secure" (in civilian lingo) the area of operations for, say, Carrier Battle Group, we may say that it will require a coverage of the area: 3.14 x 1000^2= 3 140 000 square kilometers, within which the salvo of such missiles can be launched by a single or combination of platforms. This is about the size of India and only if the launch is done by submarine or surface ship.

So, you get the idea. Modern space and over-the-horizon reconnaissance systems can provide real time picture of the surface and targeting pretty reliably. And then, of course, comes the issue of missile-carrying aircraft's ranges and that gets us altogether into the very remote sea and ocean zones. For India and her Armed Forces such a capability comes very handy if one considers that India views Indian Ocean as her internal lake and is not very happy with China being present there.  In related news, as Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov stated two days ago, Russia's Pacific Fleet will get all four modernized Project 949A Oscar-II SSGNs by 2021, with the first modernized one, Omsk, delivered this year, one year earlier than planned. Each of those subs will carry 72 3M14 and 3M54 Kalibr-family missiles and who knows what else--we may only speculate.

   

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't-II

Elmo Zumwalt, who probably, should he be still alive today, would hate to see what kind of ships' class was named after him, had some ideas about naval warfare which certainly did not and do not fit US Navy's preferences of, as either Hyman Rickover or Arleigh Burke (do not remember from the top of my head) stated, "the US Navy got used to traveling the first class". The "first class", of course, being large and expensive, or rather very expensive, combatants. There always existed this contradiction between Arleigh Burke's "we need numbers" and this very "traveling the first class". Indeed, it is very difficult to have both and especially so when the foundation of contemporary operational culture of US Navy is classic Nimitz, and upcoming Ford-classes CVNs who pack an immense punch against inferior nation and her fleet but also are immensely, in fact--outrageously, expensive. They are not only expensive in themselves, let alone with organic air wing on and under their decks, but they require a constant escort of several other very expensive and sophisticated AEGIS ships equipped with the  SPY-1D,  and its further modifications, radar. Of course, the issue of ASW of Carrier Battle Group follows not far behind. This is an antithesis to a US Navy's contemporary slogan of Distributed Lethality.  

Enter Elmo Zumwalt and his tenure as CNO (Chief Of Naval Operations) in early 1970s. As one of the truly great US Navy's historians, George Baer, wrote: "The colossal expense of each heavy nuclear-powered carrier (1.44 billion in 1977) and many years it would take to replace one if it was sunk, had become reasons for being more cautious about using such carriers on the offense. To be sure, carriers retained a much debated value as politically unencumbered strike bases, but their use increasingly depended on existing Sea Control and on the ability to defend them. Further more, Zumwalt's thinking went, the technologically complicated carrier (and the similarly sophisticated and expensive nuclear submarine) required Navy personnel to go early into intensive specialization. Officers and sailors were thus forced to adopt a narrow, operational focus to form "unions", particularist and exclusive communities within the Navy that closed minds and limited vision". ("One Hundred Years Of Sea Power, The US Navy 1890-1990". George W. Baer, pages 402-403). Needless to say, US naval aviators "union" is immensely powerful and influential. Yet, it is one of the major obstacles to US Navy's achieving even a slight departure from its manifest carrier-centrism towards true Distributed Lethality. 

Zumwalt understood this problem in late 1960s. As much as some still thought (and some still do) about naval warfare in WW II carrier paradigm, facing technological reality was inevitable: once the ranges of the anti-shipping missiles reached the vicinity of deck aviation's ranges, the game was up. Russians, initially, called their first crude Anti-Shipping Missiles (ASMs) an airplane-shell (samolet-snaryad), which pretty much summed it up. Initially crude and short-range, those ASMs still represented the threat to US Navy's assets which it never encountered before. Those assets could be hit from relatively afar not by real aircraft and required a very different approach to the defense of US Navy's most prized possessions--aircraft carriers. Here is a dilemma which US Navy faced: in good old times of naval gunnery (with the exception of tragic HMS Hood and Russian humiliation at Tsushima)  the exchange between two adversaries was pretty straight-forward--they pummeled each-other with relatively inexpensive (when compared to the cost of some battleship or cruiser) shells until one of them was either sunk or quit but it was quite often after dealing a lot of damage to the victor. So, all in all, the side that lost could at least claim a good fight, granted that often victors, indeed, did require either serious repairs or, altogether, a withdrawal from the operation for a very long periods of time. ASMs changed all that on 21 October 1967.  Then, of course, came Operation Trident with same good ol' P-15 Termites (NATO Styx) ASMs doing the trick on Pakistan's Navy ships and HQ in Karachi. The whole notion that several small 183-ton displacement ships carrying ASMs could wreck the havoc on the enemy came as a surprise to US Navy. Yet, US Navy still decided to stick to its carrier-centric template. USSR, on the other hand, continued to develop a whole line of ASMs, ranging from cumbersome P-6/P-35 (NATO Shaddock) to, later, first ever submarine launched ASMs P-70 Ametyst, later substituted with more advanced P-120 Malakhit (NATO SS-N-9 Siren). Here was a serious change in the paradigm. Consider this: the older, however powerful,  Shaddocks carried a ton of explosives to a distance of 450 km but they had one huge drawback since required Echo-class (Project 675) SSGNs to surface and remain surfaced for a significant periods of time to provide guidance to ASMs until they could be guided by TU-95RTz hanging near US Navy's CBGs. The chances of Echoes to survive this ordeal were, frankly, very modest. Once surfaced they could be relatively easy to detect, both visually and by radar, and to launch US Navy's first Harpoons, which, at that time were carried by P-3 Orion patrol (ASW) aircraft. Actually, this is how AGM-84 (also RGM and UGM) Harpoon came into existence, not least through efforts of Admiral Zumwalt, who headed  at that time the division of System Analysis. Here is what Zumwalt had to say:

 
As you can see, "carrier union" at that time was so confident (arrogant?) in the power of its wings that it didn't pay too much attention to some funny weapon such as ASM. Well, the reality, however, was not that bright. Here was a weapon which for a tiny fraction of cost of its carrier could badly damage or eliminate altogether US Navy's most prized and most expensive possession--an aircraft carrier. Here is a simple math: 

 The case of Echoes SSGNs. 

As was already stated, after the launch Echoes remained a sitting ducks for approximately half-an-hour, providing guidance to their missiles. Obviously the time varied with the distance of salvo or how close (or far) was one of the TU-95RTz. And here we can do some pretty simple modelling for, let's say, the range of salvo by Shaddocks of about 300 kilometers. This is by no means to make actual calculations but to merely give a very simplified impression of what went into considerations at the dawn of serious ASMs. The truth was that with Echoes the task of defending a CBG was a twofold:

a) to conduct a real ASW search of the area where submerged Echo or multiple Echoes could be;
b) to shoot down incoming Shaddocks and to detect and destroy surfaced Echo(es) in order to prevent either a second salvo of 4 Shaddocks or prevent a first 4 missile salvo altogether.   

If to consider the range of salvo to be 300 kilometers and to mentally freeze sailing CBG we get the circle with the radius of r=300 kilometers. Let's use good ole area of the circle formula and calculate what area should CBG's escorts and aviation cover (conduct search) to detect Echos. 
 

Not a small task, if to consider that this search area is about half the size of France. For now we we'll omit all those Detection Probabilities and Operational Sweeps but we, certainly, can easily calculate the time it is required for a single aircraft with, say, MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detector) which is a corroborative but extremely important search sensor for submerged subs. To properly detect a sub, a patrol aircraft with MAD has to be pretty low (hundreds of meters) and with the range of MAD, say, R=2 kilometers we can easily calculate Sweep Width (W), which is:

                      W=2R=2 x 2 = 4 kilometers

Now it is time to calculate Sweep Rate (R) which is R=WV, where V is a speed of a patrol aircraft. Let's say that this aircraft has a speed near surface V=250 kilometers per hour. It will be a bumpy ride, but then again--patrol aviation lacks this glamour of fighter jets, yet it is this aviation which often carries out the most important mission.  So, the Sweep Rate (R) for this patrol aircraft will be: 

             R=WV= 4 x 240 = 960 square kilometers per hour

Here, using the formula of the time for search per specific area, we get:   

294 hours--not a pretty picture, to put it mildly, but, of course, in real life the issue is addressed by the increase of the number of patrol aircraft operating both from carrier and from nearest bases, organic to CBG attack subs also conduct their own sweeps, as well as the surface ships, thus increasing Sweep Rate dramatically. But this is as far as the submerged Echoes go. Once on the surface to launch this ever important Sweep Width (W), grows tremendously for patrol aviation since it can detect Echoes by visual and radar means. Radar changes equation and here we are talking Sweep Widths jumping into many tens of kilometers. Consider the range of patrol aircraft radar when detecting a surfaced Echo at the range of 50 kilometers, suddenly the equation changes for R, since on higher elevations patrol aircraft fly faster, say 400 kilometers per hour, and see much further:

    R=WV= 100 x 400 = 40,000 square kilometers per hour 

This is a totally different game. But it also shows what a dramatic, revolutionary really, change came about when first Ametysts, and, later, P-120 Malakhits started to be launched by new Project 670 (Charlie-class) SSGNs from the submerged position--this changed the game completely, but especially so when P-700 Granit (SS-N-21 Shipwreck) came online in early 1980s. Their operational range was 600+ kilometers and that made a Search Area a whopping 1,130,400 square kilometers. Even for mighty US Navy's CBGs of 1980s this was not an easy task, to put it mildly. But that is what makes Zumwalt such a remarkable naval thinker, he foresaw the coming of missile paradigm in 1960s and he knew, that the real fight for Sea Control, especially closer to the Soviet Navy's bases was impossible within old WWII carrier paradigm. Elmo Zumwalt was not "distastefully arrogant"....  


For those who want to get acquainted in general with some ASW and Search Theory issues, a superb presentation of a renown Professor Alan Washburn of Operations Research Department of US Naval Postgraduate School can be of help.   


To be continued....