Rb04E vs. SAM

[MBot]

The player launched Rb04E anti-ship missile cruises at 9-10 meter above the sea. In DCS this makes the missile uninterceptable by SA-N-4 (Osa), SA-N-9 (Tor) and SA-N-6 (S-300). Even SM-2 launched by Aegis cannot intercept it in DCS (SAMs are launched but explode shortly after, probably because the target oscillates around the SAM's defined minimum engagement altitude).

The Rb04E cruise altitude of 10 meters seems to be correct. Now I do not have any hard data about the various naval SAM's minimum engagement altitudes. But I find it extremely hard to belief that a Swedish missile from 1975 is uninterceptable by modern warships.

rb04_vs_aegis.trk rb04_vs_s-300.trk

[Whiskey11]

On 8/5/2023 at 7:58 AM, MBot said:

The player launched Rb04E anti-ship missile cruises at 9-10 meter above the sea. In DCS this makes the missile uninterceptable by SA-N-4 (Osa), SA-N-9 (Tor) and SA-N-6 (S-300). Even SM-2 launched by Aegis cannot intercept it in DCS (SAMs are launched but explode shortly after, probably because the target oscillates around the SAM's defined minimum engagement altitude).

The Rb04E cruise altitude of 10 meters seems to be correct. Now I do not have any hard data about the various naval SAM's minimum engagement altitudes. But I find it extremely hard to belief that a Swedish missile from 1975 is uninterceptable by modern warships.

rb04_vs_aegis.trk 162.21 kB · 2 downloads rb04_vs_s-300.trk 129.21 kB · 2 downloads

The minimum engagement altitude for the S-300PS on land is 50ft AGL at the S-300 site... with the Clamshell in the group... more modern S-300 variants is down as low as 33m before things like ground clutter can't be filtered out reliably.  At sea, you actually have a lot of false positive pulse doppler returns due to wave motion and reflection off of those surfaces.

Without getting into the politics of it, a certain Russian warship, which had S-300F on board, failed to intercept what are basically a rival country's Harpoons sea skimming... so it's entirely possible, an Rb04E might make that journey to only be engaged by a ship's CIWS.

[MBot]

I have been trying to look more into the SA-N-4. Being the primary anti-aircraft system of the Grisha V and Krivak II in DCS (and a secondary system for the Slava CG), it is especially relevant as a target for the Viggen and Rb-04.

From what I could find, OSA-MA was introduced in 1979 and had a minimum target engagement altitude of 25 m. This is the capability we currently have in DCS. Though we don't realy have a specifc naval OSA. The ships simply have a copy-paste of the land system.

The improved OSA-MA2 was introduced in the mid-80s and had a minimum target engagement altitue of 5 m and was thus capable against sea skimmers.

From what I could find, the initial Krivak II were built with the earier OSA-M, the later units were built with OSA-MA.

The Grisha V were apparently build with either OSA-MA or OSA-MA2.

Slava (Moskva) was built with OSA-MA and her sisters with OSA-MA2.

I could not realy find good info to what extend these units had their OSA systems upgraded to the latest level during their service. Does anyone have any information on this? I think it would be realy interesting to know whether the ships we have in DCS should be able to intercept sea skimming anti-ship missiles.

[GGTharos]

On 8/7/2023 at 6:21 AM, Whiskey11 said:

Without getting into the politics of it, a certain Russian warship, which had S-300F on board, failed to intercept what are basically a rival country's Harpoons sea skimming... so it's entirely possible, an Rb04E might make that journey to only be engaged by a ship's CIWS.

It wasn't the the first ship to get shwacked by an anti-ship missile because they were not expecting it/prepared to face that type of threat for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with what we assume the '5/25/50/m floor' means for a given SAM.

The issue of dealing with sea-skimmers in particular has been written about since the 50's.

 

@MBot makes a very good point here, these missiles aren't 'low probability to intercept', they're next to impossible to intercept.  This is a DCS missile/SAM thing, not a an Rb04E thing though. 

Edited August 11, 2023 by GGTharos