Late in the Cold War, the Soviets sought to blunt the Americans’ naval advantage – specifically, powerful US aircraft carriers with their heavily-armed air wings – by building up a force of long-range bombers armed with long-range anti-ship missiles.
The idea, if actual fighting broke out in Europe, was for entire regiments of Soviet bombers to fly toward US Navy carrier battle groups in the North Atlantic and fire six-ton Kh-22 ‘Kitchen’ anti-ship cruise missiles – potentially hundreds of them at a time – from as far away as 320 miles.
The Kh-22 isn’t terribly accurate, but its one-ton warhead can do a lot of damage. The Soviets figured that if they fired hundreds of missiles at a time, a few would get past the cruisers and destroyers protecting the carrier.
That’s why, in the 1970s, the US Navy deployed a fighter-missile combination – Grumman F-14 Tomcats armed with long-ranging Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix missiles – specifically designed to defeat the Backfires before they could launch their missiles.
The old Tomcats and Phoenixes are long gone, but the threat remains – only now it’s Chinese. Which is why, this year, the US Navy belatedly introduced a new fighter-missile combo to beat Chinese bombers: Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters packing very-long-range Raytheon AIM-174B missiles. The AIM-174B is an air-launched version of the 22-foot-long Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), which is normally fired from a vertical launch tube aboard a US Navy destroyer or cruiser.
On Sept. 11, a photographer spotted a Super Hornet flying a test sortie over California with four of the big new missiles under its wings. With four of the 1,900-pound AIM-174Bs, a Super Hornet of today would match the firepower of a Cold War Tomcat, which for long-range fights usually carried four Phoenixes.
