Looking at Ukrainian battles with the Russians in the Black Sea and Houthi attacks on most of the world in the Red, it would be easy to imagine that warfare is now all about drones and that the era of the missile has passed. But it’s important to remember that a missile is, in the end, just a one-way-attack drone with more powerful propulsion and more sophisticated guidance. Missiles are still, in fact, very important.
We can see this in all the active combat theatres. The Ukrainians needed missiles to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva and have needed missiles in every case to down Russian aircraft and missiles. Most of their drone successes, both sea and land, have been against stationary targets. Drones have been used extensively by the Houthis but almost always together with missiles. In fact, 94 per cent of Houthi attacks over the last year have been missile and drone, or missile only. And the missiles have been far more successful in striking targets.
Against this background, then, it’s good news that the US has just overcome a major limitation of its own seagoing missile system – the inability to reload missiles into a warship while underway at sea. We’ll get on to the Mark 41 vertical launch cell shortly, but first I need to remember that most Telegraph readers aren’t former anti-air warfare officers like me and fill in some missile background.
There are two other major problems with modern missiles: complexity and cost.
The complexity isn’t a surprise, considering that making a missile intercept another missile (or a fast aircraft) is not unlike shooting down a bullet in mid-flight. Even so the necessary tech has, in theory, been available since the 1950s. The US and the Soviet Union/Russia have consistently produced cutting-edge offensive and defensive missiles in a never-ending spiral of cat and mouse … and cost.
SM-3s of the sort that were fired overland from US warships to intercept some of Iran’s latest missile barrage at Israel cost either $11 or $18 million a shot, depending on the variant. A Trident II D5 strategic missile costs between $30 and $37 million. Admittedly these are extreme examples but relatively workaday Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles – jet drones, you could call them – cost $1.87m, Royal Navy Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles cost £2.5 million and even the shorter-range Sea Ceptor costs over £1m.
Missiles are, indeed, not cheap. Drones can be, but their propulsion is often very slow and they often can’t guide themselves to hit anything but a set of fixed coordinates. They are, also, not usually built by major defence contractors and don’t involve classified tech – which probably tells you some more reasons why missiles cost a lot.
Then there’s the matter of how you launch your missiles, where there’s been a big change in recent decades. A lot of missiles used to be pointed roughly in the direction of the target before being launched, by swivelling and tilting the launcher. Then the launcher would return to position to have a fresh missile or missiles slid onto its launch rails from the magazine by automatic machinery.
Looking at Ukrainian battles with the Russians in the Black Sea and Houthi attacks on most of the world in the Red, it would be easy to imagine that warfare is now all about drones and that the era of the missile has passed. But it’s important to remember that a missile is, in the end, just a one-way-attack drone with more powerful propulsion and more sophisticated guidance. Missiles are still, in fact, very important.
We can see this in all the active combat theatres. The Ukrainians needed missiles to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva and have needed missiles in every case to down Russian aircraft and missiles. Most of their drone successes, both sea and land, have been against stationary targets. Drones have been used extensively by the Houthis but almost always together with missiles. In fact, 94 per cent of Houthi attacks over the last year have been missile and drone, or missile only. And the missiles have been far more successful in striking targets.
Against this background, then, it’s good news that the US has just overcome a major limitation of its own seagoing missile system – the inability to reload missiles into a warship while underway at sea. We’ll get on to the Mark 41 vertical launch cell shortly, but first I need to remember that most Telegraph readers aren’t former anti-air warfare officers like me and fill in some missile background.
There are two other major problems with modern missiles: complexity and cost.
The complexity isn’t a surprise, considering that making a missile intercept another missile (or a fast aircraft) is not unlike shooting down a bullet in mid-flight. Even so the necessary tech has, in theory, been available since the 1950s. The US and the Soviet Union/Russia have consistently produced cutting-edge offensive and defensive missiles in a never-ending spiral of cat and mouse … and cost.
SM-3s of the sort that were fired overland from US warships to intercept some of Iran’s latest missile barrage at Israel cost either $11 or $18 million a shot, depending on the variant. A Trident II D5 strategic missile costs between $30 and $37 million. Admittedly these are extreme examples but relatively workaday Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles – jet drones, you could call them – cost $1.87m, Royal Navy Aster 30 surface-to-air missiles cost £2.5 million and even the shorter-range Sea Ceptor costs over £1m.
Missiles are, indeed, not cheap. Drones can be, but their propulsion is often very slow and they often can’t guide themselves to hit anything but a set of fixed coordinates. They are, also, not usually built by major defence contractors and don’t involve classified tech – which probably tells you some more reasons why missiles cost a lot.
Then there’s the matter of how you launch your missiles, where there’s been a big change in recent decades. A lot of missiles used to be pointed roughly in the direction of the target before being launched, by swivelling and tilting the launcher. Then the launcher would return to position to have a fresh missile or missiles slid onto its launch rails from the magazine by automatic machinery.