Littoral Combat Ships

[Dreadnought]

Is the Griffin considered a ASBM (anti speed boat Missile)?

Some information about the Griffin.
Raytheon Griffin

[surfgun]

USN may be looking for ways to jack up the price again by modifying designs.U.S. Navy Seeks To Improve On LCS Designs | AVIATION WEEK
Besides soft targets (speed boats), what would one really expect to use a missile with a 13 pound warhead against in the marine environment?

[kato]

Besides soft targets (speed boats), what would one really expect to use a missile with a 13 pound warhead against in the marine environment?

Slow helicopters. And shoreside targets. Same reason why Germany and the US are adding the HAS mode to RAM.

[Dreadnought]

Surfguns article reference:

Both variants of the U.S. Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) are proving their worth, says Rear Adm. James Murdoch, LCS program executive officer, but there’s room for improvement.

“We’re confident we’ve got good designs,” Murdoch said during an Oct. 19 briefing with reporters. “The lead ships are pretty good.”

That said, “They’re small ships with a lot of propulsion plant in them,” Murdoch says. “There are good opportunities to make them more maintainable.” The Navy hopes to do that partly by leveraging more of the data captured by the vast array of sensors on the lightly manned and highly automated ships.

“We’ve done a good job fixing problems we saw in the first two ships,” he says.

Water-jet propulsion systems drive corrosion concerns on both ship types. What the Navy has sought, according to Murdoch, was a “more robust design in shaft seals.”

He also has been paying particular attention to the ships’ waterborne mission area, “the heart of the operations’ package.”

For example, with LCS-1, built by a team lead by Lockheed Martin, the stern doors open and a ramp comes down with “waves washing in and out,” he says, inviting salt-water corrosion. When operations are done and the doors close, he says, what’s needed is a “tight seal and a dry space.”

Another improvement the Navy would like is the ability to deploy longer boats than the 5-meter vessels slated for LCS ships, he says. But the service has to always be concerned with weight — every pound added cuts into ship speed. “Either you want a ship to go 40 knots or you don’t,” Murdoch says.

LCS-1 is just about done with its first shakedown availability. The biggest challenge, Murdoch says, was to finish the shakedown work so quickly after the program’s budget appropriations came so late. “We had a lot of work that needed to be done and we needed to fit it in a short period of time.”

LCS-2, built by the Austal USA team, is going through development testing now. “I put too many building hours in LCS-2,” Murdoch says. The hours are being reduced on LCS-4 through “better modular construction techniques.”

Sea trials scheduled this week for LCS-3 were delayed because of gale force winds. With LCS-3, the Navy is seeing more fuel capacity thanks to changes in underwater hull design. The ship has better buoyancy and performance.

While the Navy still plans to use Raytheon’s Griffin missile to replace the canceled Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) missile for surface warfare in initial LCS increments, Murdoch says he wants a better system for the second increment, which the Navy hopes to get next year.

“Increment 1 does not have quite the range, the capability NLOS has,” Murdoch says. “It does not have over-the-horizon range. You need to be laser-designated.”

By lowering the current standards, though, the Navy can deploy the first increment more quickly to battle swarm-boat threats.

[USSWisconsin]

I see one of the strengths of LCS being the ability to configure them differently: since we will (or plan to) have a significant number of them - we can change individual ships. If we want 10 meter boats, we could delete aviation from one and equip that one for larger boats, and allow her sisters to provide aviation support. For heavy NGFS - we could mount an AGS (or some other system) on the flight deck, again allowing the standard ships to support it.

The 13 # missiles? This will be relatively simple to change if need be.

[Gun Grape]

Besides soft targets (speed boats), what would one really expect to use a missile with a 13 pound warhead against in the marine environment?

The 105mm HE round M-1 contains 4.8 pounds of TNT. Its pretty effective.

13 pounds isn't something to laugh about.

[surfgun]

The 105mm HE round M-1 contains 4.8 pounds of TNT. Its pretty effective.

13 pounds isn't something to laugh about.

As long as the Griffin can take out Iranian Corvettes they are GTG!

[USSWisconsin]

The 105mm HE round M-1 contains 4.8 pounds of TNT. Its pretty effective.

13 pounds isn't something to laugh about.

Absolutely - and it is no doubt more advanced than a TNT warhead (being a missile - the reduced shock of firing, compared to a gun, permits more sensitive fillers) - with its modern design it is probably twice as effective as an equivalent weight of that venerable explosive.

[surfgun]

The perspective is that an AIM-7 has an 88 pound warhead, the RAM has a 26 pound warhead, and even the AIM-9 has a 21 pound warhead.

[Dreadnought]

The 105mm HE round M-1 contains 4.8 pounds of TNT. Its pretty effective.

13 pounds isn't something to laugh about.

Agreed with GG, Your looking at the same size charge or slighly over or under in black powder used to propell the conventional 5"/38 round to 10 miles of range and they can do plenty of damage. Now your talking a modern explosive and no doubt a new age engineered explosive. Big trouble for any Iranian fast boat IMO. What adds to this is the velocity it strikes at.

[kato]

Oh please. Let's talk it like it is: The warhead of a Griffin is comparable to a Naval 76mm HE round in weight and terminal effect.

Any other anti-ship missile in service or in development with any country worldwide packs at minimum 50% more than that, commonly at least twice that. For small Western systems starting with Hellfire at 18 lbs via RAM HAS at 24 lbs to SS.12 and Sea Skua at 60 lbs each. The only comparable missile by warhead size is the Soviet 9K114 Shturm at 12 lbs, which may be used against small naval targets.

[Chunder]

The perspective is that an AIM-7 has an 88 pound warhead, the RAM has a 26 pound warhead, and even the AIM-9 has a 21 pound warhead.

Surfgun - I point you towards the fuses those weapons have - and as such the weight of explosive carried.

They aren't even close to the way something lime Brimstone works...

[surfgun]

I agree Chunder. Just pointing out that the Griffin has just about the smallest missile warhead in the western world, outside of the shoulder launched variety. The Griffin warhead is a considerably larger than an RPG-7 warhead 4+ - 9+ pounds.

[Dreadnought]

Oh please. Let's talk it like it is: The warhead of a Griffin is comparable to a Naval 76mm HE round in weight and terminal effect.

Any other anti-ship missile in service or in development with any country worldwide packs at minimum 50% more than that, commonly at least twice that. For small Western systems starting with Hellfire at 18 lbs via RAM HAS at 24 lbs to SS.12 and Sea Skua at 60 lbs each. The only comparable missile by warhead size is the Soviet 9K114 Shturm at 12 lbs, which may be used against small naval targets.

And what happens when that missle punches a hole on the side of that ship (which we all know isint even close to being armored) and then the explosive goes off interior of the ship. Presently, they are laser guided, which means they could pretty much "guide" it to any point of impact. Including above deck ordinance, the bridge or any other point of strategic intrest such as the radars themselves.

These are their ships,
Iran launches assault boats with warning - Another World Is Possible

World Defence

Now, which one of those fast missle boats even remotely has the capability to defend itself from a missle/missles launched over the horizion?

*And now ask yourself how effective their "ambassadors of death" (rather pathetic name for any weapons system and stinks of their ignorance) would possibly be without being in earshot of their guidance installations in Iran itself while the USN's are floating out in space. Or could even be given midcoarse correction from either an airborn platform or even another ship.

The size of the warhead makes little difference when it penetrates a vital area of a ship. You hit the bridge chances are you just killed the command structure. You penetrate the hull and chances are they are going dead in the water including the radars and weapons. Very doubtful those "boats" have the redundancy of USN ships. They are nowhere near big enough to incorparate those backups.

As the aricle mentions these missles are not strickly for being used against boats which means pending the variation would determine their effectiveness.

Penetration and explosion does more then explosion on contact.

What happens if a laser guided one hit those exposed launchers?

Now, who do you think has higher capability radar and guidance systems, Iran or the USN?

Iran is very well know to boast capabilities that they dont have.

Not a pissing contest, just raising some very valid points of interest to your post.

[USSWisconsin]

Oh please. Let's talk it like it is: The warhead of a Griffin is comparable to a Naval 76mm HE round in weight and terminal effect.

Any other anti-ship missile in service or in development with any country worldwide packs at minimum 50% more than that, commonly at least twice that. For small Western systems starting with Hellfire at 18 lbs via RAM HAS at 24 lbs to SS.12 and Sea Skua at 60 lbs each. The only comparable missile by warhead size is the Soviet 9K114 Shturm at 12 lbs, which may be used against small naval targets.

A 76mm projectile? This one has 1.7# of filler:
Italian 76 mm/62 (3") Compact, SR and USA 76 mm/62 (3") Mark 75
Griffin in small for AShM but not that small...
If I was on an Iranian gun boat, I'd rather take a 3" gun hit than a Griffin missile hit. Neither would be very survivable with a well placed hit - but the smaller explosive charge would still be easier to survive, IMO.