Thursday, July 21, 2016

Back to the Future: Harpoon Missiles on a High Speed, Minimally Manned Combatant?

Sometimes you just have to laugh instead of crying - here's the caption of the nearby photo:
USS Coronado (LCS 4), an Independence-variant littoral combat ship, launches the first over-the-horizon missile engagement using a Harpoon Block 1C missile. *** U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Bryce Hadley (Released)
Roughly a zillion years ago we had high speed, minimally manned warships firing Harpoon missiles:


As set out here, the Pegasus-class PHMs carried 2 quad Harpoon launchers - 39 years ago.

So, good move, LCS masters, on bringing the LCS up to 1977 weapons standards- sorta.
Above are 6 PHMs zipping along - presumably with 48 Harpoon missiles available. Something tells me all 6 cost less that a single LCs. Probably much less.

According to Defense News, Coronado's deployment configuration will be one quad box launcher.

I guess it's a start.

Update: fixed a math error and Harpoons entered the fleet in 1977.

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