Threats to surface fleet vessels are more numerous and potentially devastating than at any time in naval history, with a ship’s survivability a fundamental consideration that begins at the concept and design stages of a vessel’s existence.
Watching the horizon. Today’s threats to surface ships will come from all directions, fast, and in potentially high-density numbers. It will require an effective mission architecture for all disparate defensive weapon systems and decoys to work in harmony to defeat such threats… and not simply a pair of binoculars. Pictured: USS Dewey, Philippine Sea Oct 2021. (Credit USN.)
This article considers some of the threats endangering the survival of today’s surface ships and looks at various aspects of ship survivability.
Threats to surface ship survival
In the operationally-active waters of the Black Sea, Russia’s war against Ukraine has seen a huge increase in threats to surface vessels, including a considerable rise in the use of autonomous surface vessels never seen before, particularly by Ukraine against Russia’s fleet, as well as the use of mines, torpedoes, and Russia’s use of cruise missiles against surface ships.
Indeed, test-launching its anti-ship missile capabilities has been a regular undertaking for Russia in the Barents Sea, even before the war; in a latest event, however, on 19 June 2024, it was reported by Russia’s TASS news agency that Kalibr and Granit cruise missiles had been launched during naval exercises by two of Russia’s Northern Fleet’s nuclear-powered submarines – the Severodvinsk and the Orel – against surface ship targets some 170 km away and configured to simulate a detachment of enemy landing ships. As one would expect, a statement indicated the live-firing exercise had been completed successfully. Such test launches by the Russians against surface ships highlight the threat posed to allied vessels. Back in October 2021, another such launch saw a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile take around three minutes to cover 450 km at Mach 8, before destroying its surface ship target just about 10 seconds after the missile appeared on the horizon.
And Russia is by no means alone, with China having built up a vast arsenal of anti-ship missiles itself. According to the Center for International Maritime Security in a recent report on China’s anti-ship firepower, it cites the YJ-12, YJ-18, YJ-83, DF-21, and DF-26 as the main, or preferred, missiles in the country’s anti-ship inventory. Means of delivery sees the former YJ-12 deployed by bombers and coastal launchers, the YJ-18 by submarines and surface vessels, the YJ-83 by multirole fighter jets and smaller warships, with the latter two DF-21 and DF-26 ballistic missiles – the DF-21D nicknamed by some as ‘carrier killer’ – the country’s longest range, land-based anti-ship systems, and launched from mobile launchers.
Indeed, in August 2021, China test fired a DF-21D into the South China Sea, to prove its potential effectiveness against a targeted moving aircraft carrier out to 1,500 km, with the missile traveling at speeds, allegedly, up to Mach 10 during parts of its trajectory, which is certainly in excess of those of Russia’s Zircon. Its accuracy is said to be 20 m CEP. DF-21s have terminal trajectories also near the vertical, making them extremely difficult for effective, last-ditch defensive measures by surface ships.
However, adding to the threats from above the surface, it is worth noting that 42 nations around the globe now have submarine capabilities, with over 50 submarines currently on the order books of Asian shipyards. This includes China, with its current tally of 50 submarines, predicted by the Pentagon to expand that number to 80 vessels by 2035, which will pose an immense threat to allied surface vessels operating in the Pacific, especially contested regions such as the South China Sea and the waters around Taiwan. And with air-independent propulsion, conventional submarines can stay below for extended periods making them hard to detect; armed with today’s heavyweight torpedoes and effective from ranges of over 50 km, the threat such submarines pose from below the surface, must also be factored into the defensive mix, if surface ships are to survive.
Thankfully, allied anti-ship systems are also, in play, to threaten the surface ships of any potential adversary. The US Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a USD 3.2 billion contract for AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASM) as part of a deal that also includes AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missiles (JASSM) in September 2024. Based on the JASSM, LRASM is designed to penetrate surface ship defences and destroy vessels from stand-off ranges of some 80 km. The missiles use precision routing and guidance, navigating from very long ranges, semi-autonomously, to a surface-vessel target, stationary or underway. In early April 2024, four LRASMs were simultaneously flight-tested by the USN and Lockheed Martin in their twelfth integrated test event of the missile, and successfully destroyed their surface target. LRASMs operate from USAF B-1Bs and USN F/A-18E/Fs, as well as F-35s, with a surface-ship-launch variant for use with the vertical launch system used by the USN.
With such missiles hugely expensive, USAF demonstration in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2024 of a low-cost capability to defeat surface vessels from the air is worth noting. Called Quicksink and developed by the USAF Research Laboratory (AFRL) Munitions Directorate at Eglin AFB in Florida, the weapon system is a low-cost, air-delivered method designed to defeat surface ships. In partnership with the USN, the lab operates an ongoing maritime weapon programme to develop anti-ship lethality with air-launched weapons and Quicksink has, according to an AFRL statement, been developed in answer to ‘an urgent need to quickly neutralise maritime threats over massive expanses of ocean around the world’.
The system is a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) to defeat maritime surface vessels at a low-cost, with a weapon open systems architecture (WOSA) seeker developed by AFRL to enable precision targeting. The weapon uses an existing guidance kit integrated with the new seeker and methods to achieve the same anti-ship, on-target effects as a heavyweight MK-48 torpedo are being explored, but using less costly, air-launched weapons instead, such as modified 2,000-lb-class, precision-guided bombs. One added benefit of such a capability is avoiding a submarine having to give away its position by launching a torpedo.
This is just a snapshot of the overall threat picture facing surface vessels, without space to discuss the added threats from autonomous vessels, cyber attacks, drone swarms, and fast inshore attack craft, to name but a few. Nevertheless, it is clear that from carrier strike groups downwards, surface ships face more technologically sophisticated threats, and in greater numbers, than ever.
Survivability considerations
And so, to survivability, which, no matter the vessel type, effectively means not only a ship’s ability to both transit through a hostile environment, but also to actively operate in the same domain, if required. It must be able to defend itself and defeat a wide range of threats, remaining afloat and serviceable if attacked and/or damaged, and with a sufficient percentage of its on-board systems remaining operative for it to continue to perform as an effective asset to its fleet. Surface vessels come in all shapes, sizes, and categories, are combatants or non-combatants, include carriers, destroyers, frigates, littoral vessels, patrol craft, auxiliary ships such as replenishment oilers, and more. In just a single carrier strike or battle group, an aircraft carrier will be accompanied by an array of escort vessels, likely including cruisers, destroyers, frigates, as well as several logistics and resupply ships, with the composition of such groups dependant on the navy involved. But all are on someone’s target list.
And the structural design attributes of these ships, which will also impact their survivability in one way or another, include some, for instance, being steel-hulled, some monohulled, or maybe of a three-hulled catamaran design. Others are steel-hulled with greater or lesser aluminium alloy substructures in their construction, some are aluminium-hulled, and some, often smaller vessel classes, glass reinforced plastic (GRP). But even before a keel is laid, along with those early concepts and designs, the ship’s ultimate survivability will have been at the forefront of the customer’s and marine/naval architect’s minds and blueprints.
From concept to construct
Indeed, no matter whether a carrier or a patrol boat, destroyer or frigate, parameters impacting a surface ship’s survival are set out at a platform’s concept stage and will include considerations for delivering optimum manoeuvrability for the design, as well as giving the vessel stealth attributes, perhaps through the inclusion of certain RF, thermal and acoustic technologies. The selection of weapon systems, too, is, of course, a crucial part of the survival matrix and, depending on vessel type, may include guns, missile systems, as well as laser/directed energy weapons (DEW), close-in weapon systems (CIWS), and more.
Then, adding further to a ship’s survivability in a threat environment, RF and infra-red (IR) jamming systems will be selected, or considered, at design stage, (budgets are the wild cards, which can impact final equipment selections). Intended to jam an enemy’s use of GPS guidance datalinks of their incoming weapons, they can, potentially, also impact the altimeters of incoming weapons, such as sea-skimming missiles, resulting in their ending up in the sea before they reach their target.
Decoys are also becoming more prevalent as passive systems to help direct an incoming weapon away from the real platform, but even older, traditional countermeasures, such as chaff-dispensers to distract anti-radar missiles from the target, are expected to have a key role in ship defences and ultimate survivability for many years to come. Beyond these onboard systems, off-board land and air platforms coordinating critically with a vessel, provide technological resilience through the provision of real-time intelligence and support, and include anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft and those on combat air patrol, as well as allied airborne surveillance from AWACS, providing vessels with real-time information on most shore-based, and/or over-the-horizon (OTH) launches and incoming threats, at the earliest possible time.
On their own, all these systems have little chance to make a difference against today’s threats, but all of them working together in a coordinated way across a defensive network delivers a comprehensive survivability solution with much greater chance of success. This is where a mission architecture, such as the Combat Systems Highway from UK defence company, SEA, comes in, by providing the backbone to a broader architecture; the system is in service with several navies, including the UK’s Royal Navy (RN), where it is used aboard both Type 23 frigates, as well as with some elements of the system on Type 45 destroyers and the HMS QE aircraft carrier. The backbone is divided into a number of functional areas with scalability inbuilt, so that new capabilities, including latest weapon, surveillance and decoy systems, can be added quickly and a ship’s survivability can adapt to constantly-evolving threats.
An example of one such system playing a key role in surface ship survivability, is the trainable decoy launcher, Ancilia, from Cohort Group company, Systems Engineering & Assessment (SEA) in the UK. In the pipeline for several years, a GBP135-million contract was awarded to SEA in March 2024, procured for the RN by the UK’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) as part of the UK’s Maritime Electronic Warfare Programme (MEWP), to progressively update RN surface ship electronic surveillance, electronic warfare command and control, and countermeasures capabilities to 2045.
According to the company, the new decoy launchers will equip Type 31 and Type 26 frigates and Type 45 destroyers and are designed to respond with speed and agility to counter missile, (including hypersonic and ballistic), and drone threats, including in the Red Sea where Houthi missile attacks on shipping are ongoing, including attacks on HMS Diamond and HMS Richmond in early 2024.
The sister company to SEA, Chess Dynamics, has developed the trainable base for Ancilia, which, with its positioning technology, has been specifically designed to operate accurately, even during high sea states. And where previous decoy and chaff dispenser technology typically required a vessel to alter course and manoeuvre in order to face the direction of a threat, the ability to train Ancilia towards an incoming threat confirms that is now redundant.
Final word
There are a wide range of new and emerging threats to surface fleets, as has been discussed, many of which are more technologically complex than has ever been experienced on the high seas. These developments – together with the convoluted geopolitics of today – have made the maritime environment a much more contested space in which allied navies must operate. Facing such technologically sophisticated threats as anti-ship ballistic and cruise missile systems, amongst others, it is how allied naval forces make use of technology to defend their naval platforms that will enable them to overcome hostile technologies and threats and, ultimately, survive.
Tim Guest