Which one is stronger in anti-ship missiles, you really don't need to go to Lan Xiang for this. However, China's exports of anti-ship missiles do account for the world's largest share. Because of the large number of exports, it is natural that there will be practical combat applications in the combat zone. The anti-ship missiles we exported cannot be said to be completely devoid of combat results in combat application, but on the whole, the results are average, and none of them hit the United States. So the question is, since the performance of China's anti-ship missiles in actual combat is so average, why is it still sitting on the throne of the largest exporter of anti-ship missiles?What is the reason why the performance of China's foreign trade anti-ship missiles is not good?What is the matter with the attack on the US Aegis ship by foreign trade missiles?From the process of the US military coping with the scramble, what experience and methods can we find to attack the US Aegis system?
Guided missiles appeared after World War II, and guidance technology was quickly applied to anti-ship warfare. In 1967, in the Mediterranean Operation, Egypt relied on the Mosquito-class missile boats imported from the Soviet Union carrying the Styx anti-ship missile, sinking the Israeli destroyer, and for the first time made people aware of the anti-ship missile, which is enough to change the rules of naval warfare. It was also from this time that the rules of naval warfare dominated by artillery began to shift to guidance. After the Battle of the Falklands in 1982, anti-ship missiles began to truly become the core of the dominant naval warfare**.
China's anti-ship missile technology was first established with the assistance of the Soviet Union, and the earliest anti-ship missile was the upstream 1 anti-ship missile copied from the former Soviet Union's Styx missile. The Styx missile has such weaknesses as backward radar seeker performance, insufficient sensitivity, short range, and low speed, and by the 70s of the last century, it could no longer meet the needs of operations. The most famous example of the war still occurred in the Mediterranean, where Egypt fired 54 Styx anti-ship missiles at Israel, but in the end they were jammed by Israeli electronic jamming methods and none of them hit the target.
From the perspective of our coastal defense needs, after the end of the Sino-US honeymoon period in the 90s, the pressure on China's coastal defense has increased sharply. In order to cope with the increasing operational pressure on the ocean, China has begun to increase investment in the research and development of anti-ship missiles. Today, China already has a complete range of different types of anti-ship missiles with powerful power and a range that covers medium, short, long, and even transcontinental ranges. Moreover, China's complete range of anti-ship missiles also has the ability to be launched from various platforms such as land, sea, air and submarine.
The real start of foreign trade anti-ship missiles began with the sinking of the Sheffield destroyer by a French Exocet missile in 1982. After the Exocet missile became famous in the Falklands War, it began to enter the stage of hot sales. The outstanding actual combat performance has pushed the Exocet missile to a very high level. The C801 anti-ship missile launched by China in 1984 is the first generation of our domestic YJ-8 anti-ship missile. The performance is similar to the French Exocet missile, but it is only half of the Exocet, and after serving in the army, it quickly became a hot seller in the international arms trade market.
In China's C801 export competition, buyers said that they needed to go through actual combat target shooting before they could choose to buy. At that time, the main competitor of China's C801 was France's Exocet missile, because of the buyer's distrust, so China promised to verify the performance of the missile by targeting. After we expressed our willingness to do a target test, the French backed down, saying that they did not have permission to target the missile. In this competition, because the French Exocet missile did not dare to compete with China's C801, China's C801 finally won orders from many countries. The successful export of C801 can be regarded as the origin of China's advanced domestic anti-ship missile exports. Although these early anti-ship missiles of the Upstream Sea Hawk have also been exported, most of them are copied from the former Soviet Union and cannot be regarded as real domestic missiles.
Seriously, the YJ-8 was originally a rocket engine and had a very limited range, only 40 kilometers. Although the adaptability of this missile is very good, it can also be launched on the later 039 submarine in our country, and the range of the YJ-87 is only 40 kilometers, which seems to be insufficient. Naturally, the export version of the YJ-8 C801 is no better.
The range of anti-ship missiles began to take off, and it was gradually completed along with the evolution of technology. The missiles that we see now have a range of several hundred kilometers at every turn, and they are all realized on the basis of replacing the engines or making the missiles extremely huge. Super missiles like the former Soviet Union's Granite and Basalt, although they also use rocket engines, can hit hundreds of kilometers, not because their engines are fuel-efficient, but because the missile weight is ten times greater than that of the C801 to achieve a doubling of the range.
Because of the short range, the C801, which achieved export results for the first time, quickly reequipped the rocket engine, and after replacing the rocket engine with a turbojet engine, the range was increased to 120 km, and then after the fuel and engine were improved, the range was further increased to 180 km, and the warhead charge was also improved because of the performance improvement of the engine, reaching 190 kg, and the newly improved foreign trade missile was named C802. That is, the foreign trade model of our domestic YJ-83 anti-ship missile. The YJ-83 is considered to be the leading multi-platform anti-ship missile in China, which can be equipped for use in the first place, and land-based launchers and submarine torpedo tubes can also be launched. Even among the air-launched missiles used in aircraft, the YJ-83K has a place. China's H-6K uses composite pylons, and one aircraft can carry 12 YJ-83K anti-ship missiles, and in naval warfare, only one H-6K can form a super-saturation attack on non-aircraft carrier surface ships.
This missile, which weighs only more than 600 kilograms, compared to the performance of the C801, in addition to the increase in range, has also been upgraded in guidance and route. For example, the sea-skimming flight altitude is lower, the route planning ability is stronger, and the radar can be turned on intermittently, which means that the missile can be blindly fired without knowing the approximate location of the opponent. The powerful combination allowed the missile to quickly become a star product in the international arms market, and subsequently, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan, as well as some African countries, all purchased C802 anti-ship missiles in varying quantities.
At present, the range of China's own version of the YJ-83 has been able to reach 280 kilometers, based on the domestic use of the YJ-83, China has improved the C802 submarine-launched missile, which is specially used to equip China's export submarines. The improved missile was designated CM708 and did not have major changes in dimensions, mainly to accommodate the use of submarine 533-mm torpedo tubes. After 2014, the dimensions of the improved version of this missile did not change, the weight did not change, the warhead charge was slightly less, only 155 kg, but after the optimization of extreme aerodynamic performance, the firing range actually reached 290 km. The fact that a missile of six or seven hundred kilograms has such a range is already a very remarkable achievement.
The anti-ship missiles derived from the YJ-8 can now only be regarded as medium and light missiles, and the characteristics of such missiles are that they have a short range, a small warhead charge, and limited power. For large **, you can't kill with one hit. But this kind of ** also has an advantage, that is, it is cheap and suitable for large-scale equipment. There are pros and cons to this, but I feel that the Eagle Strike 83 and its foreign trade version have achieved such a result.
The C802 missile was used in actual combat to achieve results and attacked the US Aegis destroyer. The production line of this missile was bought by the Iranians to produce the Nour missile produced in Iran. Yemen has attacked the US Aegis destroyer with this missile, and I will describe this attack in detail below.
Of course, in addition to the C802 missile, our country also has a place for heavy anti-ship missiles in the foreign trade version. This is the more powerful C602 anti-ship missile, which we will introduce next. Such missiles have a long range and a powerful warhead charge, which leads to quite high prices. Mainly facing the export of oil-rich countries in the Middle East, the representative model of this is the C602 anti-ship missile.
The domestic equipment model of the C602 is the YJ-62, which is called the Red Tomahawk by my **fan, which is very similar to the American Tomahawk anti-ship version. The YJ-62 has a range of up to 500 km, a small jet engine and a speed of 0About Mach 8, it can fly over the sea for a long time. The cruising altitude can be 30 meters close to the surface of the water, and it can be used to attack in a jumping empowerment attack at the end, or it can be attacked at an ultra-low sea-skimming altitude of as low as 7 meters. What is different from everyone's expectation is that the technology of this missile ** is not the American Tomahawk missile, but the Russian Alpha cruise missile, or it can also be a club missile without a supersonic module.
In China, such missiles are generally deployed on shore-based launch vehicles for coastal anti-ship defense operations. **It seems that there is only equipment on 052C, two quadruple inclined launchers, and the number of equipment for each ** is 8. However, in terms of penetration capability and comprehensive performance, the YJ-18 far exceeds the YJ-62, and it is estimated that the YJ-62 anti-ship missile on the 052C will be replaced by the YJ-18 in the next modification. Most of the YJ-62 will be deployed on shore-based missile launchers and will no longer be on front-line combat duty.
The YJ-62 has fallen significantly behind in our anti-ship missile arsenal, because this missile originally came from a cruise missile, and with a slight modification, this missile can be used as a cruise missile for land attack, so the performance of this missile determines its wide application.
Because the export range is limited by international conventions, the maximum range of the C602 export model is only 290 km. But as a heavy missile C602, the weight is up to 15 tons, the warhead charge is nearly 500 kilograms, against a 10,000-ton destroyer, one can make it incapacitated, and two are enough to send a Burke-class to the bottom of the sea to feed fish.
The export anti-ship missiles we have introduced above are all subsonic missiles. In the foreign trade version of supersonic anti-ship missiles, we also have two more famous ones. They are the CM302 supersonic cruise missile and the YJ-21E hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile.
The CM302 anti-ship missile uses a ramjet engine, and the technology ** should be our YJ-12 supersonic anti-ship missile. The YJ-12 technology is again the Sunburn anti-ship missile exported to us from Russia. From here, in addition to the range of less than 300 kilometers, the technical performance of the CM302 should not be much different from our own YJ-12. In addition, India's BrahMos, which also belongs to the category of such anti-ship missiles in terms of performance, has also won some orders in the foreign trade market.
China's CM302 foreign trade missile has a range of 290 kilometers and a warhead charge of 250 kg, which can be maintained throughout the course 2The speed of Mach 5 for supersonic penetration, compared to the speed of our own model YJ-12 at Mach 4, the speed is slightly weakened. Because of the speed advantage and the huge inertial kinetic energy, although this missile only has a 250 kg warhead, its damage power to ** can be comparable to those heavy anti-ship missiles with a warhead charge of 500 kg. CM302 has great power and excellent performance, but it is expensive and has rarely been won in the foreign trade market for many years. Algeria bought this missile is publicly known to everyone, and there is also an interconnection *** said that the 054AP we exported to Pakistan is also equipped with this missile, because it has not been confirmed by official information, so I dare not jump to conclusions. In addition to the ** factor, in fact, the vast majority of countries in the world do not have the operational needs for large-scale ** assaults, which is also the reason why this missile does not sell well.
As for the export case of the successful export of the YJ-21E to Saudi Arabia this year, it is a relatively alternative export case of anti-ship missiles. Saudi Arabia's diplomatic strategy has historically been to rely on the strong. The typical feature is to purchase the best equipment from the powerful countries. In the past era of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia was one-sidedly dependent on the United States, and together with the United States, it defeated the Soviet Union's oil **. In the past, Saudi Arabia did not buy the Soviet Union, but judging from the current performance of Saudi Arabia, it is more favorable to China, which is indeed a change.
From the perspective of Saudi Arabia's operational needs, he does not have the application needs of the YJ-21E. So the biggest possibility of buying this kind of ** is to use it as a hypersonic ** land attack. Just like the reason that the Dongfeng-3 was imported from China in the 80s of the last century, Saudi Arabia did not buy it for anti-ship combat use. In the future, with the rise of China's influence in the Middle East, there is a high probability that China's J-10C fighters, J-35 foreign trade fighters and more Chinese ** will enter service in the Saudi army because of the influence of Pakistan. At that time, Saudi Arabia's equipment composition will change from the current state of the United States as the main and Europe as the auxiliary, to the United States and China as the mainstay, and Europe as the auxiliary.
In fact, the export of high-performance anti-ship missiles is not very good for any country, for the reasons we have said above, the first is that there is no need, the second is expensive, and most of the advanced people are unwilling to transfer technology. Therefore, this is not an optimal solution for some countries that urgently need to improve their technical performance.
In addition to the above-mentioned anti-ship missiles, among the foreign-trade anti-ship missiles exported by China, there are also some small anti-ship missiles, with a range of more than 10 kilometers to more than 100 kilometers, and the little ones with warhead charges ranging from tens of kilograms to hundreds of kilograms are also on the export list. These can be loaded on a number of small boats, and small ones to strike at small surface targets. This is the anti-ship missiles of the C7 family that we export. Because the combat performance of these missiles is limited, they are now also developing in the direction of lightweight, for example, the C705 has evolved to the extent that it has a range of 140 kilometers and a warhead charge of 120 kilograms. From this point of view, it is somewhat similar to the combat capabilities of an anti-ship missile like Uranus. At present, in addition to Iran's equipment, this missile has also been purchased by Indonesia and equipped for use on Indonesia's missile boats.
China exports a wide variety of anti-ship missiles, and Iran buys the most of them; as early as the era of Seahawk shore-to-ship missiles, Iran purchased several hundred of China's anti-ship missiles at a time. Later, the C801 also bought a lot, but what really supported the backbone of Iran's anti-ship combat power was to buy the production line of the C802 missile from us and make it compatible with Iran's ** system. However, because Iran's basic industry is poor, and the precision parts used for the precision guidance of missiles cannot be processed, there is a big gap between the hitting accuracy of the Nuer missiles produced by Iran and our own YJ-83.
Since anti-ship missiles entered the core equipment of anti-ship equipment, a large number of anti-ship missiles have been developed by countries around the world. But there are very few types of anti-ship missiles that are used in real combat. The main reason is that the world as a whole was in a state of peace after World War II. However, the Noor missile has been repeatedly engaged in actual combat in the Middle East.
Iran has damaged an Israeli frigate with a Noor missile, and the Houthis have sunk a UAE frigate and transport ship with a Noor missile. Yemen's Houthi rebels have hit U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Al-Nur anti-ship missiles aided by Iran.
The sinking of the UAE corvette by Noor happened relatively recently, and in 2016, the Houthis used the method of reconnaissance by the former personnel to send back the target location information of the UAE. The Noor missile was then launched and flew towards **. At a distance of only 15 km, the missile guidance radar is turned on, and after locking on to the target, it begins to climb and dive to attack. Smash into the UAE frigate in an almost vertical manner. The UAE frigate discovered the incoming Noor missile, but because its anti-missile and electronic jamming capabilities were still decades ago, the Noor missile easily broke through the protection of the first and sank it directly.
The Yemeni Houthi attack on the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the Red Sea is as follows, and the Yemeni Houthis rely on the old shore-based radar to spot the USS Mason, a US ** ship in the Red Sea. It looks like it's about a few tens of kilometers from the coastline. Because the detection accuracy of the old radar is not high, it can only know the approximate location of the Mason. So the Houthis fired two Noor anti-ship missiles according to the approximate location of the target. How can you rely on missiles to sink ** without locking?The Houthis intended to use the radar's terminal guidance radar to search autonomously, and the attack was in fact a blind fire of an anti-ship missile.
Because of the curvature of the earth, destroyers have a limited detection range of sea-skimming anti-ship missiles. When the incoming missile was detected, it was only about 30 kilometers away from the American destroyer. The Mason was also fast enough to quickly launch two standard missiles into the air to intercept them, but they were not stopped. At this time, the Nur missile is only 15 kilometers away from **. The U.S. military then sent another Sea Sparrow to intercept the incoming missile, but it failed again.
At the same time as the Sea Sparrow lifted into the air, the Mason activated electronic jamming to jam the seeker of the incoming missile. The chaff jammer fires the chaff, causing the missile to miscalculate. The guidance technology of the Noor missile is an early single-pulse radar seeker technology, and Iran was unable to upgrade its technology at that time.
After this incident, the US military can be said to have been shocked into a cold sweat. Because the Houthis have limited missile launch capabilities, the Arleigh Burke class, known as the world's strongest anti-missile interception system, was almost hit by two old anti-ship missiles. If the Houthis attack had launched not two missiles, but four, or even more, or two or three waves against the US destroyer, it would have been lying on the bottom of the sea for several years. A blind firing by chance almost buried the most powerful Burke-A destroyer at the bottom of the sea, which shows how stretched the fighting power of the anti-missile system blown out by the US military in the face of anti-ship missiles.
Judging from the fact that Noor attacked the US ** ship this time, and then the US ** ship intercepted it and finally got out of danger, the US military's anti-missile system is not as powerful as the US military boasted in the face of a sudden attack of missiles. Not to mention dealing with the saturation attack of supersonic hypersonic missiles, even the old missiles with backward technology in the last century are so difficult to deal with, which shows that the US military's Aegis system is not unbreakable. I believe that with our current level of anti-ship missile technology, combined with super-saturated, multi-wave, multi-directional, and other tactical applications, the US military's anti-missile interception network will be like a leaky sieve, full of loopholes.
From the point of view, the technological development of anti-ship missiles is moving towards higher anti-jamming capabilities and more powerful penetration capabilities. Although China's anti-ship missiles are average in actual combat, most of them use outdated and outdated technology to attack the latest technology combat systems. Under such conditions, they can still achieve results, but they are tired of dealing with the US Navy. Wouldn't our latest anti-ship missile combat capability be even stronger?This is the reason why China's foreign trade market for anti-ship missiles occupies a place.
As for the Western anti-ship missiles, they do not sell as well as ours, it is nothing more than their **higher, and they will be accompanied by airplanes, **, etc.**. There may also be a political rider to the country of purchase. That's why our anti-ship missiles are able to stand out. I now have a hunch that although China's foreign trade is improving every year, the change in the overall perception of the outside world may start with anti-ship missiles. After all, there has been no peace in the world recently, and there has been a resurgence of wolf smoke in various places. Once China's exports of old-fashioned anti-ship missiles in the future achieve results against advanced ships, especially against US ships, China's advanced equipment will inevitably usher in a new outbreak in the foreign trade market