Compass Points - Cruise Swarms
The Power of Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles
Compass Points - Cruise Swarms
The Power of Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles
June 28, 2024
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For some missions, it is best to have advanced long range missiles. The US continues to make rapid advances in drone and missile technology. Yet somehow, the Marine Corps seems stuck on the outdated plan to place small Marine units with short, slow missiles on Pacific islands. What is the future for drones and missiles? Just one example, the Navy is spending hundreds of millions on a future hypersonic boost-glide missile called the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missile which will have much longer range and survivability against enemy defenses. The CPS is a weapon of the future but right now the Navy has the updated Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).
The Navy's NAVAIR explains the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM)
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The Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) is a defined near-term solution for the Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare air-launch capability gap that will provide flexible, long-range, advanced, anti-surface capability against high-threat maritime targets.
The weapon reduces dependency on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, network links, and GPS navigation in electronic warfare environments. Semi-autonomous guidance algorithms will allow it to use less-precise target cueing data to pinpoint specific targets in the contested domain.
-- NAVAIR
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While swarms of small inexpensive kamikaze drones are a powerful weapon, swarms of cruise missiles are exponentially more powerful. The Navy is demonstrating cruise missile swarms. In a test this year, 4 LRASMs were launched together, adjusting to each other as they flew toward the target.
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The U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin recently conducted a test in which a pair of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets launched four AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, or LRASMs, which then flew on simultaneously. Described as “historic,” this appears to be a first-of-its-kind event and one that is more representative of how these weapons would be employed in combat, especially in a future higher-end conflict, compared to just launching a single missile at a time.
. . . “The configuration being tested is the latest evolution of the LRASM weapon system, offering a solution that establishes the warfighter’s anti-surface dominance in any region,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson told The War Zone when asked. “The superior range, survivability, and targeting capabilities of LRASM provide real Distributed Lethality and ability to pace the threat far into the future.”
There are currently two main subvariants of the stealthy AGM-158C, the C-1 (also known as LRASM 1.1), which is in service now, and the still-in-development C-3 (now also referred to as the LRASM-Extended Range or LRASM-ER). The core LRASM design is derived from that of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family of land-attack cruise missiles.
-- The War Zone
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The range of the LRASM has increased from roughly 600 miles to over 1,000 miles. That means if China were to start an amphibious invasion fleet across the Taiwan Strait, the invasion force could be quickly shelled by LRASM cruise missile swarms. Planes could lift off from Kadena AFB Japan and from the former Clark Air Base Philippines and immediately fire on China's ships in the Taiwan straits. Then, planes taking off from Guam and elsewhere could quickly join the fight. This does not even consider what strikes from Naval ships and subs could do to China’s invasion fleet.
Unfortunately, if China were to stage an amphibious attack on Taiwan, Marine Stand-in-Forces on isolated islands would most likely be out of position and out of the fight. In addition, Marine missile units in the Pacific would not be able to quickly change missions and arrive at any other global clime and place to fulfill the crisis response mission. Marine forces would be invisible and irrelevant.
Swarms of small inexpensive kamikaze drones are a powerful weapon, but swarms of cruise missiles are exponentially more powerful. But neither drone swarms nor swarms of cruise missiles, as powerful as they are, can ever do what a Marine MAGTF can do.
There are some things that neither the LRASM nor even the future hypersonic boost-glide missile, the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) can ever do. No LRASM or CPS can ever do what can be done by a Marine MAGTF. No missile can arrive off the coast of a troubled country and deter a conflict from erupting just by being offshore. No missile can respond to a humanitarian crisis. No missile can evacuate endangered civilians. And, above all, no missile can land a highly trained, equipped, and capable force of Marines relentlessly moving to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy assault by fire and close combat.
For some missions, it is best to have some advanced long range missile. But for many other missions, there is no substitute for a force of Marines capable of arriving quickly to any spot on the globe to assist, deter, and fight. Compass Points salutes all those helping to rebuild and rebalance the Marine Air Ground (Logistics) Task Force.
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The War Zone - 04/04/2024
Four Stealthy AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles Flew Together In “Historic” Test
Two F/A-18E/F Super Hornets fired the quartet of AGM-158C missiles, a reflection of how these weapons would be employed in actual combat.
By Joseph Trevithick
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The Debrief - 04/05/2024
DARPA’s Devastating New Stealth Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) Just Completed a Historic U.S. Navy Test
By Micah Hanks
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Naval News - 04/04/2023
First View of LRASM Missile Aboard a US Navy P-8A Poseidon
Naval News obtained from the US Navy the first images showing the LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) fitted on a P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA).
By Xavier Vavasseur
In some good news, 24 MEU is on station in the Med. A great glass of water in the capability desert. Thank you to the Marines and Sailors of the Wasp ARG doing Gator squares.
The former Commandant obviously did not read or consult with other services before he "war gamed" this fiasco and embarked on the disastrous FD2030. He planned this entire cataclysmic change to the very culture of our Corps in a vacuum, thinking the Corps was the only ones thinking this way.
He consulted no Combatant Commander, it appears he read no Oplans that deal with how the Marine Corps is to SUPPORT the COMBINED war fighting effort. He took the Corps straight back to the early 20th century where there were no Joint Chiefs of Staff, there were no combatant commanders, and every service planned itself in a vacuum.