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Anti-surface warfare (ASuW or ASUW) is the branch of
naval warfare Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace involving a major body of water such as a large lake or wide river. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years. Even in the interior of large la ...
concerned with the suppression of
surface combatant Surface combatants (or surface ships or surface vessels) are a subset of naval warships which are designed for warfare on the surface of the water, with their own weapons and armed forces. They are generally ships built to fight other ships, subma ...
s. More generally, it is any weapons, sensors, or operations intended to attack or limit the effectiveness of an adversary's surface ships. Before the adoption of the submarine and naval aviation, all naval warfare consisted of anti-surface warfare. The distinct concept of an anti-surface warfare capability emerged after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, and literature on the subject as a distinct discipline is inherently dominated by the dynamics of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
.


Categories of anti-surface warfare

Anti-surface warfare can be divided into four categories based on the platform from which weapons are launched: * Air (or aviation): Anti-surface warfare conducted by
aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...
. Historically, this was conducted primarily through level- or
dive-bombing A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughou ...
,
strafing Strafing is the military practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft using aircraft-mounted automatic weapons. Less commonly, the term is used by extension to describe high-speed firing runs by any land or naval craft such ...
runs or air-launching torpedoes (and in some cases by suicide attacks). Today, air ASuW is generally conducted by stand-off attacks using air-launched examples of
cruise missiles A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead ...
(ALCM) or
anti-ship missile An anti-ship missile (AShM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. A good ...
s (AShM). * Surface: Anti-surface warfare conducted by
warship A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster a ...
s. These vessels can use
torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...
es,
guns A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washing, pr ...
, surface-to-surface
missiles In military terminology, a missile is a guided airborne ranged weapon capable of self-propelled flight usually by a jet engine or rocket motor. Missiles are thus also called guided missiles or guided rockets (when a previously unguided rocket i ...
, or mines.
Unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...
s (UAVs) represent an emerging technology. Asymmetric methods include the suicide boat. * Submarine: Anti-surface warfare conducted by
submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s. Historically, this was conducted using torpedoes and deck guns. More recently, the
submarine-launched cruise missile A submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM) is a cruise missile that is launched from a submarine (especially a SSG or SSGN). Current versions are typically standoff weapons known as land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), which are used to attack p ...
(SLCM) has become a preferred anti-ship weapon, offering a significantly longer range. * Shore/Space: Historically, this refers to shore bombardment from
coastal artillery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of c ...
, including cannons. Shore-based cruise or
ballistic missiles A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within the ...
are more common. Further, ground-controlled satellites may provide data on fleet movements. Anti-ship missiles include the
Harpoon A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument and tool used in fishing, whaling, seal hunting, sealing, and other marine hunting to catch and injure large fish or marine mammals such as seals and whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the t ...
,
RBS-15 The RBS 15 (Robotsystem 15) is a long-range fire-and-forget surface-to-surface and air-to-surface anti-ship missile. The later version Mk. III has the ability to attack land targets as well. The missile was developed by the Swedish company Saab ...
,
P-500 Bazalt The P-500 ''Bazalt'' (russian: П-500 «Базальт»; en, basalt) is a turbojet-powered, supersonic cruise missile used by the Soviet and Russian navies. Its GRAU designation is 4K80 and its NATO reporting name is SS-N-12 ''Sandbox'', its up ...
,
Penguin Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...
and
Exocet The Exocet () is a French-built anti-ship missile whose various versions can be launched from surface vessels, submarines, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Etymology The missile's name was given by M. Guillot, then the technical director ...
.


History

Following the results of the
Battle of Taranto The Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11–12 November 1940 during the Second World War between British naval forces, under Admiral Andrew Cunningham, and Italian naval forces, under Admiral Inigo Campioni. The Royal Navy launched ...
and the
Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Adm ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, the primary combatant ship type was the fleet
aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
. After World War II, the ASuW concept primarily involved the multiple
carrier battle group A carrier battle group (CVBG) is a naval fleet consisting of an aircraft carrier capital ship and its large number of escorts, together defining the group. The ''CV'' in ''CVBG'' is the United States Navy hull classification code for an airc ...
s fielded by the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
, against which the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
designed specialized strategies that did not equate to a 1:1 match of designs. Broadly speaking, military planners in the US after World War II envisioned that a
Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
invasion of Western Europe would require a massive convoy effort to Europe to supply allied forces in theatre. Against this necessity of logistical and combat support, the Soviet Union expanded its submarine fleet, which in the event of hostilities may have been sufficient to deny the supply of material to the theatre. As military strategists often design counter-strategies to meet the capabilities of the rival force, the Western then responded with the construction of
SOSUS The Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was a submarine detection system based on passive sonar developed by the United States Navy to track Soviet submarines. The system's true nature was classified with the name and acronym SOSUS themselves classi ...
lines to track Soviet submarines. From the air, Soviet naval aviation had ASuW capabilities. The
Tupolev Tu-16 The Tupolev Tu-16 ( NATO reporting name: Badger) is a twin-engined jet strategic heavy bomber used by the Soviet Union. It has been flown for almost 70 years, and the Chinese license-built Xian H-6 remains in service with the People's Liberatio ...
Badger G was armed with anti-ship missiles, followed by the
Tupolev Tu-22M The Tupolev Tu-22M (russian: Туполев Ту-22М; NATO reporting name: Backfire) is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber developed by the Tupolev, Tupolev Design Bureau in the 1960s. According ...
Backfire supersonic maritime strike bomber. Even the prop-driven
Tu-142 The Tupolev Tu-142 (russian: Туполев Ту-142; NATO reporting name: Bear F/J) is a Soviet/Russian maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft derived from the Tu-95 turboprop strategic bomber. A specialised commun ...
, primarily designed for
anti-submarine warfare Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, submarines, or other platforms, to find, track, and deter, damage, or destroy enemy submarines. Such operations are t ...
(ASW), could and was armed with anti-ship missiles. Following the end of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, ASuW still involves asymmetries, which may for now be more pronounced.


Air ASuW

After the development of reliable, long-range, guided missiles, air ASuW was imagined to consist of a mass attack by high-speed jet aircraft launching a sufficient number of missiles to overwhelm the air defences of a fleet. Some commentators believed that this capability was consistently underestimated. Exocet anti-ship missile strikes against the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
during the
Falklands War The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...
even resulted in the adoption of 'Exocet' as a slang term for a 'sharp, devastating and surprising attack.' The USS ''Stark'' incident showed a medium-sized power could significantly damage a modern frigate, with the attack of a single plane on a single ship capable of inflicting heavy damage, let alone the scenario of a multi-ship flight. The same advantages that made planes so successful against surface ships in World War II are largely still existent. Aircraft can attack in large numbers with little warning and can carry multiple weapons that are each capable of disabling a ship. While warships are able to carry powerful defensive technologies the need to destroy every incoming missile leaves them at a disadvantage. Missiles and supersonic aircraft are very difficult targets to hit and even the most advanced systems cannot provide certainty of interception. During the Cold War the gulf was at its most pronounced, with saturation missile attacks a major concern but the gulf has closed a little in recent time. The advent of
phased array radar A phaser is an electronic sound processor used to filter a signal, and it has a series of troughs in its frequency-attenutation graph. The position (in Hz) of the peaks and troughs are typically modulated by an internal low-frequency oscillat ...
on ships allow them to track and target a far larger number of targets at one time, increasing the number of missiles needed to saturate defences. The arrival of vertical launching systems allow for dozens of SAMs to be launched almost simultaneously from each ship, a substantial advance over older missile launchers that could only fire one or two missiles before reloading. Should salvoes of SAMs fail to destroy a saturation attack, 'soft kill' countermeasures are complemented by the invention of the point-defence
close-in weapon system A close-in weapon system (CIWS ) is a point-defense weapon system for detecting and destroying short-range incoming missiles and enemy aircraft which have penetrated the outer defenses, typically mounted on a naval ship. Nearly all classes of ...
(CIWS), usually a rapid-fire autocannon sometimes paired with a missile system as a last line of defence. Finally the arrival of networked fleet level defence direction using many radars and many launch platforms together to intercept a cloud of missiles allows for better use of defence resources. Previously each ship would have to act individually against a coordinated attack which leads to defensive fire being wasted on the same targets. Networking also brings information from airborne radar, giving vastly longer range than any ship board radar could achieve due to the radar horizon. Additionally modern communication and intelligence tools make carrier fleets harder to attack than in previous decades. The challenge for a carrier in the 1970s was in effectively using its air arm against incoming bombers. Fighters could cause huge casualties in a bomber force, but their comparatively low range and loiter time made it impossible to keep a constant
combat air patrol Combat air patrol (CAP) is a type of flying mission for fighter aircraft. A combat air patrol is an aircraft patrol provided over an objective area, over the force protected, over the critical area of a combat zone, or over an air defense area, ...
over hundreds of miles of ocean. The range of anti-ship missiles also typically put bombers out of range of fighters launching once a raid was detected, nullifying a major part of the fleets anti-air defences. The ability to bring real time intelligence from long range radars and satellite imaging to the fleet better allows fighters to be used against attackers in the air. These improvements do not make a fleet impervious to missile attack but do increase a fleet's ability to defend itself and the number of attackers needed to saturate defences. Attackers retain the advantage because a fleet is still relatively static and needs to be successful against every incoming missile to avoid significant losses while attackers only need to achieve a few hits to make an attack successful. The major change is that attackers now need to invest more resources into each attack. Larger formations of aircraft are needed to successfully saturate defences, but if this can be achieved then the aircraft will cause very significant damage. Even a single missile may be able to penetrate defences and sink a ship and even the most successful defence systems cannot guarantee an interception, simply a higher likelihood of one.


Surface ASuW

Most naval vessels today are equipped with long range anti-surface missiles such as Harpoon and Exocet which are capable of crippling or destroying enemy ships with a single hit. These can be fired from
vertical launch system A vertical launching system (VLS) is an advanced system for holding and firing missiles on mobile naval platforms, such as surface ships and submarines. Each vertical launch system consists of a number of ''cells'', which can hold one or mor ...
s or from stand alone launch tubes and are designed to attack other warships. Smaller ships such as the US Navy's
littoral combat ship The littoral combat ship (LCS) is either of two classes of relatively small surface vessels designed for operations near shore by the United States Navy. It was "envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeat ...
make use of smaller missiles, such as the
AGM-114 Hellfire The AGM-114 Hellfire is an air-to-ground missile (AGM) first developed for anti-armor use, later developed for precision drone strikes against other target types, especially high-value targets. It was originally developed under the name '' Heli ...
, in the surface-to-surface role that are less suited to attack warships but are still dangerous against
fast attack craft A fast attack craft (FAC) is a small, fast, agile, offensive, often affordable warship armed with anti-ship missiles, gun or torpedoes. FACs are usually operated in close proximity to land as they lack both the seakeeping and all-round defensive ...
or smugglers and
pirates Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
as well as land targets. A surface ship has several key disadvantages as ship to ship missile platform compared to other combatants. Being close to the surface substantially reduces radar range due to the
radar horizon The radar horizon is a critical area of performance for aircraft detection systems that is defined by the distance at which the radar beam rises enough above the Earth's surface to make detection of a target at low level impossible. It is associ ...
which makes it harder to find targets and decreases the maximum range that a missile could be usefully launched at. Also, launching from low altitude costs more fuel than air launch, further decreasing a missile's potential range. However ships can carry far more missiles than any other platform and are thus able to attack more targets or continue an engagement for longer than other platforms. While ships do retain a robust anti-ship missile armament the ubiquity of such missiles makes an engagement with anti-ship missiles between surface ships fairly unlikely because for one ship to launch its missiles it would have to bring itself within range of the enemies missiles. Even with surprise the flight time of such missiles is long enough for an enemy to return fire before being hit making such an engagement extremely dangerous without some additional advantage. The
Battle of Latakia The Battle of Latakia ( ar, معركة اللاذقية; he, קרב לטקיה) was a small but revolutionary naval action of the Yom Kippur War, fought on 7 October 1973 between Israel and Syria. It was the first naval battle in history to se ...
during the
Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egy ...
saw Israeli missile boats sink an equal number of Syrian boats by using
electronic counter measures An electronic countermeasure (ECM) is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar, or other detection systems, like infrared (IR) or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting info ...
and
chaff Chaff (; ) is the dry, scaly protective casing of the seeds of cereal grains or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material (such as scaly parts of flowers or finely chopped straw). Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it. In agri ...
to successfully avoid missile fire but modern missiles typically have additional guidance systems that make such defences much less effective. In a modern conflict anti-surface missiles would more likely be used against merchant shipping or auxiliary ships and only against similarly armed vessels when no other weapons are available. The arrival of networked weapon systems do potentially offer surface to surface missiles way to launch, using radar data from an aircraft or UAV to target missiles over the horizon and engage ships without exposing the launcher to retaliation although such systems are yet to be deployed. One recent advance in surface to surface weaponry is the modification of
RIM-66 Standard The RIM-66 Standard MR (SM-1MR/SM-2MR) is a medium-range surface-to-air missile (SAM), with a secondary role as an anti-ship missile, originally developed for the United States Navy (USN). A member of the Standard Missile family of weapons, the ...
anti-air missiles to attack surface targets. Although not as powerful as a dedicated anti-ship missile they are extremely fast and agile and better able to penetrate anti-missile defences. Additionally as many more surface to air missiles are typically carried on every vessel this increases a ships potential firepower many times over. While an typically carries eight Harpoons ready to fire, it carries forty or more Standard missiles in its vertical launch cells. This also presents a Standard armed ship with the potential to attack a long range target without necessarily trying to sink it, something very valuable against non-military targets. While naval guns have largely been supplanted by missiles, guns remain a part of many ships weaponry. Weapons such as the 5-inch Mark 45 gun remain in service to provide artillery support against land targets but also with a function against surface ships. Missiles are typically a better weapon in terms of their destructive potential but cannon shells are much harder (if not impossible) to intercept with anti-missile defence systems and likely will not be seen on the defenders radar, providing a potential advantage for a surprise attacker. Equally guns do not require a radar lock to fire, giving them utility against stealth vessels or those too small to be detected.


Submarine ASuW

Undersea versus fleet action is commonly described as a "cat-and-mouse" game, where submarines seek to escape detection long enough to engage in a punishing strike against the much more valuable aircraft carrier fleet groups. Early Soviet submarine designs could be heard "across the Atlantic," but by the late 1980s, many advanced designs were approaching sound-output equivalent to a body of water the size of the sub.
P-3 Orion The Lockheed P-3 Orion is a four-engined, turboprop anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft developed for the United States Navy and introduced in the 1960s. Lockheed based it on the L-188 Electra commercial airliner.
s or disposable
sonobuoy A sonobuoy (a portmanteau of sonar and buoy) is a relatively small buoy – typically diameter and long – expendable sonar system that is dropped/ejected from aircraft or ships conducting anti-submarine warfare or underwater acoustic resea ...
s, against which the concept of a submarine firing a SAM was generally considered a poor trade-off (the revelation of the submarine's location was not generally considered worth the possible hit on a single plane). However, the concept of the submarine firing on the plane has been revived with Germany's Type 209 diesel submarines. Submarines seeking to engage in ASuW can also be targeted by other submarines, resulting in wholly undersea combat.


Shore/Space ASuW

Shore-based assets may have provided the decisive edge in surface warriors, with constraints imposed by range of such assets. Furthermore, satellites controlled from ground stations could provide information on enemy fleet movements.


Post Cold-War

In the post-Cold War era, UAVs and asymmetric threats such as the suicide boat are adding additional complexity to the ASuW discipline. {{DEFAULTSORT:Anti-Surface Warfare Naval warfare