"US Navy Needs Coastal Defense Cruise Missiles?" Topic

The best way to get back in the game is to rapidly upgrade the quality and quantity of our antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs). While the offensive antisurface warfare (OASuW) program is assessing three candidates to replace the Harpoon by 2024, the U.S. Navy needs to add a coastal defense cruise missile (CDCM) component to inexpensively present our competitors with an asymmetric threat. CDCMs are a critical force multiplier in confronting a near-peer competitor such as China because they compress an enemy's available sea space and can sink any naval forcesthat come within effective range.

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I would tend to agree with the good major… err, commander.

Those CDCMs look like artillery to a ground pounder like me in that they can lay off at a distance and provide fire support for the maneuver forces, err.. fleet! Plus they can deny a pretty decent area of sea from the enemy too and at a cost that is much lower than a full warship. The Philippines could do with a few hundred of the things mounted on trucks. Especially if there was one with say a 500 mile range.
China could have the sand castles, but not total control, over the South China Sea.

Back those up with few diesel fast attack boats, some real multi-role jet fighters, and the Philippines would have a credible navy.

TGunner, A commander is a LtCol equivalent.

Hopefully the US will not need these anytime soon. But having them in the arsenal to provide to allies (including the Philippines) would make sense.

Would make sense to "containerize" existing SSM's and the related sensor and C4I packages so that they could be moved easily. Both making them deployable and more survivable. Looking like just another of thousands of containers actually has value.

I think that would also allow them to be employed from 'ships of opportunity.'

You don't want to start arming merchant ships, Apache 6. That gets into Laws of the Sea issues.

But yeah, the US could probably build a few dozen antiship missile platforms and make good use of them.

The PI could really use them, as could everyone else in the South China Sea.

However, the Missile Control Agreement gets in the way of 1000km range missiles, the best you're going to get for export is 300km.

I agree with the author's idea but he starts drifting into "a new weapon is needed" territory. With the current fiscal goofs the brakes should be applied.

Frankly, just deploying more Harpoons would be a good start. Yeah, they're subsonic, but that's not a fatal flaw. Update the seeker and add video to the radar, add a datalink (from the SLAM-ER) so you can say, "wait, that 'destroyer' looks too much like a cruise ship, ABORT!"

I'd really like to borrow some tech from the Meteor AAM, that ramrocket would be great for getting some supersonic ASuW missiles quickly.