F-35 best loadout combination to penetrate Type 055 defense

You dont think Stormbreaker would get through?
Why not just jam the ships radar, and use stormbreaker or even paveway for Gods sakes?!

Stormbreaker range depend on altitude, so if we want to use it from long range, it must be released from high altitude.
In short, F-35 must to be in stealth mode to use the weapon at long range, that limit the quantity of bombs that you can release. Fewer bombs reduce the chance of bypass the air defense. Stormbreaker also have shorter range (70 km vs 140 km) and lower speed than SPEAR, because it is unpowered, that mean it increase the engagement time and easier to intercept than SPEAR. Not to mention that SPEAR can cutdown the visible time a lot by simply staying below the radar horizon because it is a cruise missile
Paveway is worse, it has the same disadvantage of Stormbreaker and with the added disadvantage of size, you can carry far fewer Paveway than you can with Stormbreaker.
Type 346B is an AESA with aperture area greater than 18.5 square meters whereas APG-81 area is about 0.35 square meters, it will be impossible to blind Type 346B radar until Paveway/Storm breaker impact. This is not the same as APG-81 jamming Type 346B to protect F-35, because F-35 can stay at long range. The further you are from the threat radar, the easier it is to jam the radar to protect yourself, because jamming signal reduce at much slower rate than skin return signal. But if you want to protect Stormbreaker/Paveway until impact, then the radar return of the bomb keep increasing while it get closer to the radar while your jamming signal from APG-81/ALE-70 keep the same magnitude because you don't want to ram Type 055 cruiser with your aircraft and you don't want them to hit you with a HoJ missile. That why the SPEAR + SPEAR-EW combo is great, because the jamming out put keep rising as SPEAR-EW get close to target so the burn through range is much shorter than having an aircraft jamming at extended range

IMO, the problem is that such games/simulators - which started with Harpoon which personally I played alot during the 1990's - are wayyyy too optimistic when it comes to Anti-missile defenses. By the way, the kind of scenario/situation that you described (all or most all group of incoming missiles being shot down) also happened in Harpoon which modeled much older anti-missile defenses (which should be even less reliable compared to modern air defense systems).
Anyway, what I'm saying here is that real Anti-missile defense are not perfect and some/many launched SAMs would actually fail hitting incoming anti-ship missiles which means that I doubt that any single modern and near future warship would be able to defend itself against something like a volley of 6 (advanced) Anti-ship missiles.

I got that missile air defense aren't perfect per say, but an F-14 with analog AWG-9 which was designed in the 1970s can track and guided AIM-54 to attack 6 target simultaneously, I don't think a shipborne radar which much greater processing power, aperture and technology can't do significantly better than that.
The second issue is how destroyer can defend itself against anything if they can only intercept 6 anti ship missiles? They will be very worthless again any type of saturation attack
Even a tiny 270 tons Skjold-class ship can carry 8 NSM missile (NSM is pretty much just a short range JSM). I think it is a bit unreasonable think that a 125 millions USD corvette like Skjold can easily destroy something like a 9000 tons -1.83 billions USD Arleigh Burke after it launch all 8 missiles

Vs

Well, that seems to be a failure/bug in that game (CMO) since at 15-25km a sea skimming LRASM or JSM would be below the horizon and as such wouldn't be (or would hardly be) detected by the ship's sensors (Radar and IR) at such ranges even if technically such missiles could be detected as those ranges (if they were in line of sight with the sensor, that is)

This is actually a failure on my part , I forgot to set the cruising altitude of LRASM and JSM to low altitude, so they approach at high altitude, let me test the scenario again

You dont think Stormbreaker would get through?
Why not just jam the ships radar, and use stormbreaker or even paveway for Gods sakes?!

Stormbreaker range depend on altitude, so if we want to use it from long range, it must be released from high altitude.
In short, F-35 must to be in stealth mode to use the weapon at long range, that limit the quantity of bombs that you can release. Fewer bombs reduce the chance of bypass the air defense. Stormbreaker also have shorter range (70 km vs 140 km) and lower speed than SPEAR, because it is unpowered, that mean it increase the engagement time and easier to intercept than SPEAR. Not to mention that SPEAR can cutdown the visible time a lot by simply staying below the radar horizon because it is a cruise missile
Paveway is worse, it has the same disadvantage of Stormbreaker and with the added disadvantage of size, you can carry far fewer Paveway than you can with Stormbreaker.
Type 346B is an AESA with aperture area greater than 18.5 square meters whereas APG-81 area is about 0.35 square meters, it will be impossible to blind Type 346B radar until Paveway/Storm breaker impact. This is not the same as APG-81 jamming Type 346B to protect F-35, because F-35 can stay at long range. The further you are from the threat radar, the easier it is to jam the radar to protect yourself, because jamming signal reduce at much slower rate than skin return signal. But if you want to protect Stormbreaker/Paveway until impact, then the radar return of the bomb keep increasing while it get closer to the radar while your jamming signal from APG-81/ALE-70 keep the same magnitude because you don't want to ram Type 055 cruiser with your aircraft and you don't want them to hit you with a HoJ missile. That why the SPEAR + SPEAR-EW combo is great, because the jamming out put keep rising as SPEAR-EW get close to target so the burn through range is much shorter than having an aircraft jamming at extended range

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I dont know Im assuming the Cruisers has a wide area search radar and a fire control radar correct?

1. We arnt talking about the surface search radar, screw that we are talking about fire control, which even when at full power still has to operate in the same band,
If the F-35 can jam ground fire control radars it should have no problem jamming the cruisers fire control.
At high altitude it only has to jamm long enough to launch the 32 Stormbreakers and then egress.
Once the external stores are away its stealtht again.
The F-35 could also use a towed decoy on egress.

2. If I see 32 sdbs coming at me, its not likely that In still trying to track the now stealthy F-35. Im fighting for my life trying to maneuver or use CIWS to counter them.
The F-35 is a ghost at this point. The Cruiser has to track and engage the F-35 before bomb release. The SDB 2 has a max range of about 45 nms for a moving target. So the F-35 has to jamm for a few miles until bomb release. I would actually
Attempt to jamm the search radar 1st to close distance. But who knows.

3. If im going to attack a ship this way then I may as well use a stand off cruise weapon and I want as many as the plane will let me carry. Jassm ER and even JSM give the F-35 its 1st kill adavantage again.

My stupid tactics idea.
It make multiple missiles run side by side or crowd together and camouflage themselves as single missile.
"shot it down, but couldn't shoot it down !?" Repeat that kind of thing. Like Harassment.

pattern

I think that will just allow CIWS and Promixity warhead to get rid of them very quick

I got that missile air defense aren't perfect per say, but an F-14 with analog AWG-9 which was designed in the 1970s can track and guided AIM-54 to attack 6 target simultaneously, I don't think a shipborne radar which much greater processing power, aperture and technology can't do significantly better than that.

I wasn't talking that much about the ability to track simultaneous targets (such as 6 incoming missiles) but I was talking more about the ship's anti-missile defenses - SAMs and CIWS - PK (probability of Kill) against incoming missiles which should be quite far from being 100% specially against stealthy, passive tracking, maneuvering and sea skimming missiles such as the LRASM or JSM.
But of course tracking simultaneously something like 6 stealthily (and sea skimming) missiles should present a very big (if not huge) challenge by itself which is quite far from being able to track 6 large (non-stealth and aircraft size) high altitude flying targets that the AWG-9 could or was designed to do.

The second issue is how destroyer can defend itself against anything if they can only intercept 6 anti ship missiles? They will be very worthless again any type of saturation attack
Even a tiny 270 tons Skjold-class ship can carry 8 NSM missile (NSM is pretty much just a short range JSM). I think it is a bit unreasonable think that a 125 millions USD corvette like Skjold can easily destroy something like a 9000 tons -1.83 billions USD Arleigh Burke after it launch all 8 missiles

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I guess that we would also argue that if anti-ship missile armed and stealthy Skjold-class corvettes which are in fact designed to take on bigger warships weren't capable of successfully engaging a large destroyer such as an Arleigh Burke or that Type 055 then what's the point of developing and building such small ships/boats?
Large destroyers can also be destroyed by smaller and cheaper submarines and not to mention by my much smaller and much cheaper fighter/combat aircraft.

IMO and for what worth modern destroyers can or are able to intercept 6 or more anti ship missiles if they operate together with other similar warships as part of a battle group - more ships can engage more targets simultaneously and better yet can launch much more SAMs in the same amount of time and thus greatly increasing the PK against a volley of incoming missiles. Hence why and during armed conflicts/wars or when the threat is big you hardly or rarely see warships such as destroyers operating alone but instead working together as part of a battle group where each warship can cover the other warships and vice-versa. Heck, this isn't much different of how fighter aircraft actually operate.

So, no I don't think that any modern destroyer/warship (Arleigh Burke, Type 055, you name it...) can defend by itself or alone against something like 6 incoming and modern anti-ship missiles.

Going back to the point of Skjold-class corvettes versus modern frigate/destroyers and why the are later still being build despite being much more expensive and technically being able to be destroyed or crippled by the former there are several reason for that such as:
1- In a 'one-on-one' (which I believe we can agree that it would be rare in real life) the Destroyer would have a much better probably of winning against the a small Skjold-class style corvette since it would likely detect the small corvette first than otherwise because:
1.1- Destroyers usually carry helicopters which hugely extends the Destroyer's detection range well over the horizon.
1.2- Speaking again of the horizon, destroyers carry much higher masts which technically means that the destroyers will always have a longer detection range against smaller boats/ships, even if we exclude the onboard helicopter. This is why these modern and new corvettes like the Skjold-class are designed to be stealth.
2- A Destroyer is hugely much more multi-role capable than any small corvettes like the Skjold-class can ever be! For example, want to perform air defense for a group of ships or even a coastal asset such as a port? The destroyer can do it while the small corvette cannot. Want to perform anti-submarine operations? The destroyer can do it but not the Skjold-class corvette cannot. Want to evacuate national citizen stranded on a foreign country caught in a middle of some crisis? The destroyer can do it while the small corvette cannot. Deliver humanitarian help to any part of the globe? And I could go on and on and on...
This is why some/many countries are still more than willing to pay more for larger warships like frigates/destroyers.
Resuming, larger warships like frigates/destroyer are always better than smaller warships like corvettes but of course this comes with the cost, which is their actual cost

I wasn't talking that much about the ability to track simultaneous targets (such as 6 incoming missiles) but I was talking more about the ship's anti-missile defenses - SAMs and CIWS - PK (probability of Kill) against incoming missiles which should be quite far from being 100% specially against stealthy, passive tracking, maneuvering and sea skimming missiles such as the LRASM or JSM.
But of course tracking simultaneously something like 6 stealthily (and sea skimming) missiles should present a very big (if not huge) challenge by itself which is quite far from being able to track 6 large (non-stealth and aircraft size) high altitude flying targets that the AWG-9 could or was designed to do.

Ship radar are very powerful. For example:
SPY-1 can track and guide missiles to engage over 100 targets simultaneously, the AESA SPY-6 can track and guide missiles to engage about 30 times more than that.The big part of that power came from the fact that they don't have very tight space/weight/cooling limitation like a fighter radar. The aperture area of a shipborne radar like Type 346 is about 61 times greater than APG-81 and the average power output is 100 times greater , that translate to several order of magnitude better in detection range and tracking capability. So 6 targets is a very small quantity for them to track and engage. Eventhough stealth missiles are harder to track, the ship don't have to track and attack these missiles at long range because the missile must impact the ship eventually to have an effect, at close range they wont be too different from non stealthy missile given the considerable power of ship fire control radar
Sea skimming and terminal maneuver have existed since Harpoon were mast produced and you cant out maneuver the radar beam of an electronic scanned array radar.
Secondly, PK of SAM and CIWS against antiship missile don't have to be 100%, the destroyer carry nearly 130 SAM, even with PK of 30% only, the destroyer still have more than enough missile to intercept 6 targets because you still only need to spend 18 SAM.

I guess that we would also argue that if anti-ship missile armed and stealthy Skjold-class corvettes which are in fact designed to take on bigger warships weren't capable of successfully engaging a large destroyer such as an Arleigh Burke or that Type 055 then what's the point of developing and building such small ships/boats?
Large destroyers can also be destroyed by smaller and cheaper submarines and not to mention by my much smaller and much cheaper fighter/combat aircraft.

IMO and for what worth modern destroyers can or are able to intercept 6 or more anti ship missiles if they operate together with other similar warships as part of a battle group - more ships can engage more targets simultaneously and better yet can launch much more SAMs in the same amount of time and thus greatly increasing the PK against a volley of incoming missiles. Hence why and during armed conflicts/wars or when the threat is big you hardly or rarely see warships such as destroyers operating alone but instead working together as part of a battle group where each warship can cover the other warships and vice-versa. Heck, this isn't much different of how fighter aircraft actually operate.

So, no I don't think that any modern destroyer/warship (Arleigh Burke, Type 055, you name it...) can defend by itself or alone against something like 6 incoming and modern anti-ship missiles.

I don't think Skjold was designed to take on a destroyer by itself, a group of Skjold might be able to do that, but not a single one. It is also much cheaper and easier to produce a group of Skjold than to produce a group of destroyers

Going back to the point of Skjold-class corvettes versus modern frigate/destroyers and why the are later still being build despite being much more expensive and technically being able to be destroyed or crippled by the former there are several reason for that such as:
1- In a 'one-on-one' (which I believe we can agree that it would be rare in real life) the Destroyer would have a much better probably of winning against the a small Skjold-class style corvette since it would likely detect the small corvette first than otherwise because:
1.1- Destroyers usually carry helicopters which hugely extends the Destroyer's detection range well over the horizon.
1.2- Speaking again of the horizon, destroyers carry much higher masts which technically means that the destroyers will always have a longer detection range against smaller boats/ships, even if we exclude the onboard helicopter. This is why these modern and new corvettes like the Skjold-class are designed to be stealth.

1.1 Skjold is a stealth ship, so I kinda doubt the ability of helicopter to find it,and helicopter also doesn't have great endurance
1.2 Radar horizon is pretty much the line of sight rule, if you can see them, they can see you, so the two side see each other at the sametime

Ship radar are very powerful. For example:
SPY-1 can track and guide missiles to engage over 100 targets simultaneously, the AESA SPY-6 can track and guide missiles to engage about 30 times more than that.The big part of that power came from the fact that they don't have very tight space/weight/cooling limitation like a fighter radar. The aperture area of a shipborne radar like Type 346 is about 61 times greater than APG-81 and the average power output is 100 times greater , that translate to several order of magnitude better in detection range and tracking capability. So 6 targets is a very small quantity for them to track and engage. Eventhough stealth missiles are harder to track, the ship don't have to track and attack these missiles at long range because the missile must impact the ship eventually to have an effect, at close range they wont be too different from non stealthy missile given the considerable power of ship fire control radar
Sea skimming and terminal maneuver have existed since Harpoon were mast produced and you cant out maneuver the radar beam of an electronic scanned array radar.
Secondly, PK of SAM and CIWS against antiship missile don't have to be 100%, the destroyer carry nearly 130 SAM, even with PK of 30% only, the destroyer still have more than enough missile to intercept 6 targets because you still only need to spend 18 SAM.

The Pk against VLO missiles is going to be lower than .3 first of all. Secondly, 130 VLS cells, doesn't necessarily mean they're all loaded with SAMs. A certain percentage of the cells will be cruise missiles or for anti-sub purposes.

Ship radar are very powerful. For example:
SPY-1 can track and guide missiles to engage over 100 targets simultaneously, the AESA SPY-6 can track and guide missiles to engage about 30 times more than that.

It doesn't matter how powerful a warship radar is, if the missile isn't in line of sight with incoming missiles it won't detect them, simple as that! This means that incoming sea skimming anti-ship missiles will only be detected at very short ranges (likely less than 15km) which means that and with the high speed that such missiles will travel while being completely passive, the ship's engagement window will be very short.

Eventhough stealth missiles are harder to track, the ship don't have to track and attack these missiles at long range because the missile must impact the ship eventually to have an effect, at close range they wont be too different from non stealthy missile given the considerable power of ship fire control radar

Again, the shorter the engagements window is the less probable is for the warship to intercept all incoming missiles.

Sea skimming and terminal maneuver have existed since Harpoon were mast produced and you cant out maneuver the radar beam of an electronic scanned array radar.

Yes, but the Harpoon and other missiles of the era (like the Exocet for instance) are active radar guided which means that the enemy ship's ESM will very soon and even before all other sensors pick up the incoming missiles which means that in this case the ship will inevitable have a somehow bigger window of opportunity to engage these missiles as opposed to passive guided missiles like the JSM or LRASM.

Secondly, PK of SAM and CIWS against antiship missile don't have to be 100%, the destroyer carry nearly 130 SAM, even with PK of 30% only, the destroyer still have more than enough missile to intercept 6 targets because you still only need to spend 18 SAM.

And how many SAM's can you launch simultaneously from those VLS against 6 incoming missiles?? And how many of those SAM's can a warship like the Type 055 guide simultaneously?? And against how many targets/incoming missiles simultaneously??
And again don't forget that the missiles that you already detected around 15km in a best case scenario are flying at high speed against your warship! So and with all the above you better have a PK close to 100% (which we can agree that this won't be the case) you else the Destroyer is toasted!
And also like wrightwing said, not all those 130 VLS Cells on the Type 055 will be carrying SAMs. A considerable number of Cells will be carrying cruise land attack and anti-ship missiles, others could eventually or probably carry anti-submarine missiles/rockets while many of them will carry long range SAM's which aren't the most effective SAM type against very close incoming missiles. So the number of close range SAM's which will be the most effective weapon will be less than you'll expect.
Regarding CIWS, if more than one missile of the incoming volley gets very close to the ship don't expect the CIWS to destroy more than a single missile which means that the other missile or missiles will inevitably hit the ship!

I don't think Skjold was designed to take on a destroyer by itself, a group of Skjold might be able to do that, but not a single one. It is also much cheaper and easier to produce a group of Skjold than to produce a group of destroyers

And guess what?? Neither a Destroyer was designed to single handily engage a volley of several incoming missiles and yet we're talking about one-on-one scenarios, aren't we?

1.1 Skjold is a stealth ship, so I kinda doubt the ability of helicopter to find it,and helicopter also doesn't have great endurance

What???
Don't get me wrong but you need to learn much more about naval warfare or else you wouldn't be minimizing the role of the onboard maritime helicopter! It's with a very good reason that the vast majority if not all major modern warships carry onboard helicopters! Did you know that for instance the Type 055 that you're so much praising here carries two (2) of these helicopters including the hangar and facilities to operate them? I would like to see you downplaying the role of a onboard maritime helicopter to a Submarine commander! And I can guarantee you that a Submarine is much, much stealthier than a Skjold!
Nevertheless and about what you said above:
The Skjold is a 'stealthy' (emphasis on the 'y') not a 'stealth' ship. You can't have the same or similar level of stealth on a ship like the Skjold or any other ship for that matter like you have in a fighter aircraft like the F-35. There are several reasons for that including for example the wake that any ship produces on the water which can be detected by radars. For instance:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.03309.pdf

Moreover applying the same level of stealth measure on a ship that you apply on a F-35 would probably make the ship (even a small one like the Skjold) cost prohibitive while at the same time being always less stealth than the aircraft (see paragraph above).

On top of all that did you know that Maritime onboard helicopters can also carry FLIR? I'm very sure that a high or higher flying helicopter with a modern FLIR set could definitely detect a Skjold at a considerable long distance. Moreover many helicopters can employ their own weapons including longer range guided missiles which means that in this case the helicopter can even engage and destroy a Skjold without any intervention from the 'mothership' (by the way, another reason why modern and bigger warships are more expensive).

In terms of helicopter endurance, the US, Australian and other navies operate the MH-60R which has an endurance of 3.30 hours which is by no means small like you seem to imply. Here:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/ ... rifold.pdf

And of course there are Navies like Canada or the UK that operate even heavier/bigger helicopters from their warships like the CH-148 and Merlin respectively which have longer range and more endurance than the MH-60R.

1.2 Radar horizon is pretty much the line of sight rule, if you can see them, they can see you, so the two side see each other at the sametime

Here, I believe that you're talking about ship versus ship and their respective masts. Well the ship with the higher mast will see the other ship (completely) while the other ship will only see in theory the opposing's ship top part of the mast. Is seeing only the other's ship top part of the mast sufficient for a detection and fire solution? I wouldn't bet on that! Actually claiming otherwise is like saying that a surface warship can easily detect a Submarine's pericope in up position just as well or easily as the submarine with the periscope up can detect the warship which or course is nonsense.

Before I go on, thanks everyone for the discussion, it is nice to have a thought provoking discussion once a while

It doesn't matter how powerful a warship radar is, if the missile isn't in line of sight with incoming missiles it won't detect them, simple as that! This means that incoming sea skimming anti-ship missiles will only be detected at very short ranges (likely less than 15km) which means that and with the high speed that such missiles will travel while being completely passive, the ship's engagement window will be very short.
Again, the shorter the engagements window is the less probable is for the warship to intercept all incoming missiles.

I did some calculation,
Type 055 radar mass is at 27 meters above the sea surface, that mean the radar horizon against a missile skimming at 1 meter above the sea surface is 25.5 km and the radar horizon against a F-35 loiter 50 meters above the sea is 50.5 km
At speed of Mach 0.9, LRASM and JSM will takes 83 seconds from the time they pop up from radar horizon until impact.
For comparison, supersonic missile such as Rocks and AARGM-ER can't sea skimming, they either climb or fly a direct path to target. So they are detected the same time as F-35 rise up from the horizon. At Mach 4 against a target 50.5 km away, AARGM-ER will give Type 055 37 seconds of warning till impact. Whereas, at Mach 5, Rocks will give the destroyer 29 seconds of warning till impact. So supersonic missiles still seem to give less warning time to enemy
These time are short but still isn't outside the capability of defensive system to react, I mean simple active hard kill protection on MBT can react within milliseconds, the far more complex ship radar should be at least as good

Yes, but the Harpoon and other missiles of the era (like the Exocet for instance) are active radar guided which means that the enemy ship's ESM will very soon and even before all other sensors pick up the incoming missiles which means that in this case the ship will inevitable have a somehow bigger window of opportunity to engage these missiles as opposed to passive guided missiles like the JSM or LRASM.

I agree that Harpoon and Exocet are much easier to detect than LRASM and JSM, but when they are below radar horizon, they aren't much different from LRASM and JSM because there is no line of sight for radar to detect them anyway.

And how many SAM's can you launch simultaneously from those VLS against 6 incoming missiles?? And how many of those SAM's can a warship like the Type 055 guide simultaneously?? And against how many targets/incoming missiles simultaneously??

Each VLS group can ripple fire 3 missiles near simultaneously, so with 2 VLS group, one at the front, one at the back, I expect that Type 055 can launch 6 missiles simultaneously from the two VLS group every 2 second.

About the number of target that they can track: anti air destroyer like Type 055 and Alerigh Burke can track and attacks over 100 targets at the same times so 6 targets shouldn't be a big challenge for them. I mean the aperture area of a shipborne radar like SPY-1, Type 346 is pretty much the same as 68 APG-81 putting together, so you can image their potency

And again don't forget that the missiles that you already detected around 15km in a best case scenario are flying at high speed against your warship! So and with all the above you better have a PK close to 100% (which we can agree that this won't be the case) you else the Destroyer is toasted!

Even when the sea skimming missile is only about 1 meter above the ocean, the radar horizon is 25.5 km, with the subsonic speed of LRASM and JSM, the destroyer have about 83 seconds, that is enough for the destroyer to intercept the missiles group several time over

And guess what?? Neither a Destroyer was designed to single handily engage a volley of several incoming missile

Anti air destroyer such as Alerigh Burke, Type 055 are designed to do exactly that to provide air defense bubble for the battle group

What???
Don't get me wrong but you need to learn much more about naval warfare or else you wouldn't be minimizing the role of the onboard maritime helicopter! It's with a very good reason that the vast majority if not all major modern warships carry onboard helicopters! Did you know that for instance the Type 055 that you're so much praising here carries two (2) of these helicopters including the hangar and facilities to operate them? I would like to see you downplaying the role of a onboard maritime helicopter to a Submarine commander! And I can guarantee you that a Submarine is much, much stealthier than a Skjold!
Nevertheless and about what you said above:
The Skjold is a 'stealthy' (emphasis on the 'y') not a 'stealth' ship. You can't have the same or similar level of stealth on a ship like the Skjold or any other ship for that matter like you have in a fighter aircraft like the F-35. There are several reasons for that including for example the wake that any ship produces on the water which can be detected by radars. For instance:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.03309.pdf

Moreover applying the same level of stealth measure on a ship that you apply on a F-35 would probably make the ship (even a small one like the Skjold) cost prohibitive while at the same time being always less stealth than the aircraft (see paragraph above).

On top of all that did you know that Maritime onboard helicopters can also carry FLIR? I'm very sure that a high or higher flying helicopter with a modern FLIR set could definitely detect a Skjold at a considerable long distance. Moreover many helicopters can employ their own weapons including longer range guided missiles which means that in this case the helicopter can even engage and destroy a Skjold without any intervention from the 'mothership' (by the way, another reason why modern and bigger warships are more expensive).

In terms of helicopter endurance, the US, Australian and other navies operate the MH-60R which has an endurance of 3.30 hours which is by no means small like you seem to imply. Here:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/ ... rifold.pdf

And of course there are Navies like Canada or the UK that operate even heavier/bigger helicopters from their warships like the CH-148 and Merlin respectively which have longer range and more endurance than the MH-60R.

Firstly, I didn't try to down play the role of helicopter, I understand they are very important especially for anti submarine and anti mine. I only mentioned that the radar of helicopter will have a hard time tracking a small stealth corvette such as Skjold. Tracking ship movement through wave isn't always doable especially in higher sea stage condition, and to be fair, stealth aircraft also have contrail

Secondly, 3.5 hours endurance is quite short for recon assets

Here, I believe that you're talking about ship versus ship and their respective masts. Well the ship with the higher mast will see the other ship (completely) while the other ship will only see in theory the opposing's ship top part of the mast. Is seeing only the other's ship top part of the mast sufficient for a detection and fire solution? I wouldn't bet on that! Actually claiming otherwise is like saying that a surface warship can easily detect a Submarine's pericope in up position just as well or easily as the submarine with the periscope up can detect the warship which or course is nonsense.

The top part of a destroyer mass only include the 2D surface search radar, the fire control radar is located at much lower height at its center of mass

I dont know Im assuming the Cruisers has a wide area search radar and a fire control radar correct?

1. We arnt talking about the surface search radar, screw that we are talking about fire control, which even when at full power still has to operate in the same band,
If the F-35 can jam ground fire control radars it should have no problem jamming the cruisers fire control.
At high altitude it only has to jamm long enough to launch the 32 Stormbreakers and then egress.
Once the external stores are away its stealtht again.
The F-35 could also use a towed decoy on egress.

2. If I see 32 sdbs coming at me, its not likely that In still trying to track the now stealthy F-35. Im fighting for my life trying to maneuver or use CIWS to counter them.
The F-35 is a ghost at this point. The Cruiser has to track and engage the F-35 before bomb release. The SDB 2 has a max range of about 45 nms for a moving target. So the F-35 has to jamm for a few miles until bomb release. I would actually
Attempt to jamm the search radar 1st to close distance. But who knows.

3. If im going to attack a ship this way then I may as well use a stand off cruise weapon and I want as many as the plane will let me carry. Jassm ER and even JSM give the F-35 its 1st kill adavantage again.

1. F-35 in stealth configuration can jam the destroyer radar to protect itself. When it is in beast mode then RCS is much higher and jamming is several order of magnitude harder. Secondly SDB also have much shorter range than SPEAR, in beast mode with SDB, your F-35 must stay only 70 km from the destroyer, stay at high altitude within radar line of sight. That is too dangerous
2. F-35 can only carry 24 SDB not 32 SDB
3. Destroyer can track many more than 32 targets though

I dont know Im assuming the Cruisers has a wide area search radar and a fire control radar correct?

1. We arnt talking about the surface search radar, screw that we are talking about fire control, which even when at full power still has to operate in the same band,
If the F-35 can jam ground fire control radars it should have no problem jamming the cruisers fire control.
At high altitude it only has to jamm long enough to launch the 32 Stormbreakers and then egress.
Once the external stores are away its stealtht again.
The F-35 could also use a towed decoy on egress.

2. If I see 32 sdbs coming at me, its not likely that In still trying to track the now stealthy F-35. Im fighting for my life trying to maneuver or use CIWS to counter them.
The F-35 is a ghost at this point. The Cruiser has to track and engage the F-35 before bomb release. The SDB 2 has a max range of about 45 nms for a moving target. So the F-35 has to jamm for a few miles until bomb release. I would actually
Attempt to jamm the search radar 1st to close distance. But who knows.

3. If im going to attack a ship this way then I may as well use a stand off cruise weapon and I want as many as the plane will let me carry. Jassm ER and even JSM give the F-35 its 1st kill adavantage again.

1. F-35 in stealth configuration can jam the destroyer radar to protect itself. When it is in beast mode then RCS is much higher and jamming is several order of magnitude harder. Secondly SDB also have much shorter range than SPEAR, in beast mode with SDB, your F-35 must stay only 70 km from the destroyer, stay at high altitude within radar line of sight. That is too dangerous
2. F-35 can only carry 24 SDB not 32 SDB
3. Destroyer can track many more than 32 targets though

The F-35 can also use EW/EA to mask the incoming weapons.

I did some calculation,
Type 055 radar mass is at 27 meters above the sea surface, that mean the radar horizon against a missile skimming at 1 meter above the sea surface is 25.5 km and the radar horizon against a F-35 loiter 50 meters above the sea is 50.5 km
At speed of Mach 0.9, LRASM and JSM will takes 83 seconds from the time they pop up from radar horizon until impact.

Your line of sight calculation doesn't seem accurate. According to this calculator:
http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm

the distance to horizon on a 27 meter mast is 18.6 kilometers and a 1 meter altitude flying missile should be 'seen' at a slightly farther range (1 kilomoter more or even less perhaps?) but anyway not the 25.5km as you claim which alone reduces the time on target to something like 64 seconds.

Moreover and since "an image is worth a thousand words", look here:


Which means that the detection range of the incoming missiles by the Type 055 destroyer is even much lower than the numbers mentioned above which by its turn means a much short reaction time (again the incoming missiles)

For comparison, supersonic missile such as Rocks and AARGM-ER can't sea skimming, they either climb or fly a direct path to target. So they are detected the same time as F-35 rise up from the horizon. At Mach 4 against a target 50.5 km away, AARGM-ER will give Type 055 37 seconds of warning till impact. Whereas, at Mach 5, Rocks will give the destroyer 29 seconds of warning till impact.

Look, if what you said was completely accurate nobody (in this case and namely the US and Norway) would develop subsonic sea skimming missiles like the LRASM or JSM and would instead develop those 'magical' supersonic missiles instead, wouldn't they?

So supersonic missiles still seem to give less warning time to enemy
These time are short but still isn't outside the capability of defensive system to react, I mean simple active hard kill protection on MBT can react within milliseconds, the far more complex ship radar should be at least as good

Capture.PNG

Comparing the active defense system of an armored vehicle with VLS launcher in terms of reaction time is very odd at best. For instance the active defense system of the ground vehicle shoots straight at the incoming missile while the VLS SAMs are launched vertically, fly straight upward in order to clear themselves from the VLS and then start turning towards the incoming missiles and so here you will lose some more precious few seconds.

Each VLS group can ripple fire 3 missiles near simultaneously, so with 2 VLS group, one at the front, one at the back, I expect that Type 055 can launch 6 missiles simultaneously from the two VLS group every 2 second.

MK 41 VLS launcher.png

A 'quick sequence' is NOT 'simultaneously'! From the picture on the document that you share it seems that there's at least a (1) second between each missile launch sequence. So a ripple fire of 3 missiles takes around 3 seconds to complete (and again does not happen instantaneously).

About the number of target that they can track: anti air destroyer like Type 055 and Alerigh Burke can track and attacks over 100 targets at the same times so 6 targets shouldn't be a big challenge for them. I mean the aperture area of a shipborne radar like SPY-1, Type 346 is pretty much the same as 68 APG-81 putting together, so you can image their potency

Yeah, and how many missiles can be guided at the same time?

Anti air destroyer such as Alerigh Burke, Type 055 are designed to do exactly that to provide air defense bubble for the battle group

Yes they are. But again not designed to do that alone but instead as part of a battle group together with other ships of the same class or other similar warships.

Firstly, I didn't try to down play the role of helicopter, I understand they are very important especially for anti submarine and anti mine. I only mentioned that the radar of helicopter will have a hard time tracking a small stealth corvette such as Skjold. Tracking ship movement through wave isn't always doable especially in higher sea stage condition, and to be fair, stealth aircraft also have contrail

main-qimg-cb193e4c0fb7ac96def399bb35e5360c.png

Independently if you are or not 'downplaying' the role of the helicopter, you certainly are 'up-playing' or more precisely exagerating the RCS of a Skjold-class corvette that's for sure! As I said in my last post, the stealthy ship like the Skjold will never have a RCS of a F-35 which is smaller than a golf ball. The RCS of the Skjold is the size of small yacht or barge. Read here:
https://www.defencetalk.com/skjold-clas ... tte-66398/

the smaller Radar Cross-Section (RCS) of the Skjold can be easily misidentified as a small yacht or barge.

And the radars of maritime helicopter don't have much difficulty or hard time in detecting small yachts or barges.
And again, you seem to have 'forgotten' the FLIR sensors which these helicopter also carry and which can also detect these ships at considerable long ranges.

Finally, I'm really puzzled that you compared the detection of a ship's wake on the water with the aircraft contrails!
I'm sure that you know or should know that the radar waves do penetrate and does NOT bounce back on small/thin clouds or vapor trails but instead the same radar waves will NOT penetrate and will bounce back on water surfaces including wakes.
Moreover, I believe that the radar waves will/should also bounce between the wakes and the ship's hull which should make it somehow more detectable.
Anyway, as you can see the Skjold's RCS while obviously much lower than a non-stealthy ship of its size/class, its RCS (which is small yacht or barge size) is not remotely comparable with what we have on stealth aircraft.

Secondly, 3.5 hours endurance is quite short for recon assets

I completely and totally disagree with you above but here lets agree to disagree...

Before I go on, thanks everyone for the discussion, it is nice to have a thought provoking discussion once a while

It doesn't matter how powerful a warship radar is, if the missile isn't in line of sight with incoming missiles it won't detect them, simple as that! This means that incoming sea skimming anti-ship missiles will only be detected at very short ranges (likely less than 15km) which means that and with the high speed that such missiles will travel while being completely passive, the ship's engagement window will be very short.
Again, the shorter the engagements window is the less probable is for the warship to intercept all incoming missiles.

I did some calculation,
Type 055 radar mass is at 27 meters above the sea surface, that mean the radar horizon against a missile skimming at 1 meter above the sea surface is 25.5 km and the radar horizon against a F-35 loiter 50 meters above the sea is 50.5 km
At speed of Mach 0.9, LRASM and JSM will takes 83 seconds from the time they pop up from radar horizon until impact.
For comparison, supersonic missile such as Rocks and AARGM-ER can't sea skimming, they either climb or fly a direct path to target. So they are detected the same time as F-35 rise up from the horizon. At Mach 4 against a target 50.5 km away, AARGM-ER will give Type 055 37 seconds of warning till impact. Whereas, at Mach 5, Rocks will give the destroyer 29 seconds of warning till impact. So supersonic missiles still seem to give less warning time to enemy
These time are short but still isn't outside the capability of defensive system to react, I mean simple active hard kill protection on MBT can react within milliseconds, the far more complex ship radar should be at least as good

Capture.PNG

Yes, but the Harpoon and other missiles of the era (like the Exocet for instance) are active radar guided which means that the enemy ship's ESM will very soon and even before all other sensors pick up the incoming missiles which means that in this case the ship will inevitable have a somehow bigger window of opportunity to engage these missiles as opposed to passive guided missiles like the JSM or LRASM.

I agree that Harpoon and Exocet are much easier to detect than LRASM and JSM, but when they are below radar horizon, they aren't much different from LRASM and JSM because there is no line of sight for radar to detect them anyway.

And how many SAM's can you launch simultaneously from those VLS against 6 incoming missiles?? And how many of those SAM's can a warship like the Type 055 guide simultaneously?? And against how many targets/incoming missiles simultaneously??

Each VLS group can ripple fire 3 missiles near simultaneously, so with 2 VLS group, one at the front, one at the back, I expect that Type 055 can launch 6 missiles simultaneously from the two VLS group every 2 second.

MK 41 VLS launcher.png

About the number of target that they can track: anti air destroyer like Type 055 and Alerigh Burke can track and attacks over 100 targets at the same times so 6 targets shouldn't be a big challenge for them. I mean the aperture area of a shipborne radar like SPY-1, Type 346 is pretty much the same as 68 APG-81 putting together, so you can image their potency

And again don't forget that the missiles that you already detected around 15km in a best case scenario are flying at high speed against your warship! So and with all the above you better have a PK close to 100% (which we can agree that this won't be the case) you else the Destroyer is toasted!

Even when the sea skimming missile is only about 1 meter above the ocean, the radar horizon is 25.5 km, with the subsonic speed of LRASM and JSM, the destroyer have about 83 seconds, that is enough for the destroyer to intercept the missiles group several time over

And guess what?? Neither a Destroyer was designed to single handily engage a volley of several incoming missile

Anti air destroyer such as Alerigh Burke, Type 055 are designed to do exactly that to provide air defense bubble for the battle group

What???
Don't get me wrong but you need to learn much more about naval warfare or else you wouldn't be minimizing the role of the onboard maritime helicopter! It's with a very good reason that the vast majority if not all major modern warships carry onboard helicopters! Did you know that for instance the Type 055 that you're so much praising here carries two (2) of these helicopters including the hangar and facilities to operate them? I would like to see you downplaying the role of a onboard maritime helicopter to a Submarine commander! And I can guarantee you that a Submarine is much, much stealthier than a Skjold!
Nevertheless and about what you said above:
The Skjold is a 'stealthy' (emphasis on the 'y') not a 'stealth' ship. You can't have the same or similar level of stealth on a ship like the Skjold or any other ship for that matter like you have in a fighter aircraft like the F-35. There are several reasons for that including for example the wake that any ship produces on the water which can be detected by radars. For instance:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.03309.pdf

Moreover applying the same level of stealth measure on a ship that you apply on a F-35 would probably make the ship (even a small one like the Skjold) cost prohibitive while at the same time being always less stealth than the aircraft (see paragraph above).

On top of all that did you know that Maritime onboard helicopters can also carry FLIR? I'm very sure that a high or higher flying helicopter with a modern FLIR set could definitely detect a Skjold at a considerable long distance. Moreover many helicopters can employ their own weapons including longer range guided missiles which means that in this case the helicopter can even engage and destroy a Skjold without any intervention from the 'mothership' (by the way, another reason why modern and bigger warships are more expensive).

In terms of helicopter endurance, the US, Australian and other navies operate the MH-60R which has an endurance of 3.30 hours which is by no means small like you seem to imply. Here:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/ ... rifold.pdf

And of course there are Navies like Canada or the UK that operate even heavier/bigger helicopters from their warships like the CH-148 and Merlin respectively which have longer range and more endurance than the MH-60R.

Firstly, I didn't try to down play the role of helicopter, I understand they are very important especially for anti submarine and anti mine. I only mentioned that the radar of helicopter will have a hard time tracking a small stealth corvette such as Skjold. Tracking ship movement through wave isn't always doable especially in higher sea stage condition, and to be fair, stealth aircraft also have contrail

main-qimg-cb193e4c0fb7ac96def399bb35e5360c.png

Secondly, 3.5 hours endurance is quite short for recon assets

Here, I believe that you're talking about ship versus ship and their respective masts. Well the ship with the higher mast will see the other ship (completely) while the other ship will only see in theory the opposing's ship top part of the mast. Is seeing only the other's ship top part of the mast sufficient for a detection and fire solution? I wouldn't bet on that! Actually claiming otherwise is like saying that a surface warship can easily detect a Submarine's pericope in up position just as well or easily as the submarine with the periscope up can detect the warship which or course is nonsense.

The top part of a destroyer mass only include the 2D surface search radar, the fire control radar is located at much lower height at its center of mass

Alerigh Burke destroyer.jpeg

You're making a number of assumptions here.

1) the Type 055 has comparable capabilities to an Arleigh Burke class (especially recent versions.)
2) the VLS cells have the same capabilities.
3) the Type 055 will see the F-35 or the incoming missiles at the radar horizon.
4) the Type 055 will have the full 29 to 83 seconds to start engaging the incoming missiles.
5) the Pk versus stealthy weapons will be sufficient to be impenetrable.

And what about the towed decoy? Does this only come in handy on egress? I think the biggest question is can the F-35 fire all external weapons and return to stealth mode,
While still successfully breaking the type 55s kill chain.
My bet is on the F-35s jamming.
Its almost unfair like the F-35 is fighting with its hands tied.
Any way
I thought the F-35 stations 10,9,3,2 are all rated for
2500lbs this should be enough for 8 sdb on each station correct? Or am I missing somthing?
Also since we have to close the gap in Beast mode
I want 2 Mald jammers in my internal bay and 4 Jassm-er on the wings. The double wammy of jamming decoys + the APG-81 would almost guarentee a kill.
How big is MALD? Can you fit more that 1? Could you put in 1 mald J + a 500lb Jdam on each side?
The Jdam would be the finishing blow.

Your line of sight calculation doesn't seem accurate. According to this calculator:
http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm
the distance to horizon on a 27 meter mast is 18.6 kilometers and a 1 meter altitude flying missile should be 'seen' at a slightly farther range (1 kilomoter more or even less perhaps?) but anyway not the 25.5km as you claim which alone reduces the time on target to something like 64 seconds.

Radar horizon is slightly longer than visual horizon because radar wave refracted slightly more than the visual spectrum

I used this calculator
http://members.home.nl/7seas/radcalc.htm
The visual horizon on a 27 meters mast to the surface is 18.55 km, the radar horizon on 27 meters mast to the surface is 21.4 km
The visual horizon from the 27 meters mast to missile 1 meter above the surface is 22 km and the radar horizon to the same target is 25.5 km

Moreover and since "an image is worth a thousand words", look here:


Which means that the detection range of the incoming missiles by the Type 055 destroyer is even much lower than the numbers mentioned above which by its turn means a much short reaction time (again the incoming missiles)

Good point, so for a more accurate estimation I put the image in paint with scale ruler
Type 055 is 180 meters in length and it takes up 1220 units so each unit represent 0.147 meters
The destroyer has 4 Type 346 S/C-band radars, the 2 front Type 346 radar are at lower position, start at unit 80 and end at unit 105, so it start at 11.8 meters and end at 15.4 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 18.2-20.3 km => LRASM/JSM need 59-66 seconds to fly this distance
The 2 type 346 radar at the back are at slightly higher position, start at unit 100 and end at unit 130, so it start at 14.7 meter and end at 19.18 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 19.9-22.1 km=> LRASM/JSM need 65-72 seconds to fly this distance
The X-band low altitude search/fire control radar is at higher position, start at unit 160 and end at unit 170, so it start at 23.6 meter and end at 25 meters
So the radar horizon to a missile 1 meters above sea surface is 24.1-24.7 km => LRASM/JSM need 79-81 seconds to fly this distance

Look, if what you said was completely accurate nobody (in this case and namely the US and Norway) would develop subsonic sea skimming missiles like the LRASM or JSM and would instead develop those 'magical' supersonic missiles instead, wouldn't they?

I think that has to do a lot with the fact that traditionally supersonic missile are either much bigger or have much shorter range than subsonic missiles. For example: SLAM-ER range is 280 km while HARM range is only 150 km. To attack a surface fleet with AEW&C, it probably safer to stay at long range

Comparing the active defense system of an armored vehicle with VLS launcher in terms of reaction time is very odd at best. For instance the active defense system of the ground vehicle shoots straight at the incoming missile while the VLS SAMs are launched vertically, fly straight upward in order to clear themselves from the VLS and then start turning towards the incoming missiles and so here you will lose some more precious few seconds.

I was talking about the reaction rate of the radar and launcher. But some tank active hard kill protection do follow the same sequences as VLS launched missile

A 'quick sequence' is NOT 'simultaneously'! From the picture on the document that you share it seems that there's at least a (1) second between each missile launch sequence. So a ripple fire of 3 missiles takes around 3 seconds to complete (and again does not happen instantaneously).

It seem that you are right, so every second, Type 055 can launch 1 missile from the front VLS group and 1 missile from the rear VLS group, when target is closer than 10 km it can launch 1 additional missile from FL-3000L launcher. So total 3 missiles/second.From our radar horizon calculation above, in best case scenario, LRASM/JSM need about 60 seconds from when pop up above radar horizon till impact. In that amount of time, the 2 VLS groups can launch 120 missiles

Yeah, and how many missiles can be guided at the same time?

I would assume it can guide at least as many missiles as the number of target it can attack at the same time. HQ-9B and HQ-9C have an active radar seeker and IIR seeker so there is no need for CW illuminator