US Marines launch rocket from amphibious ship to destroy land target 70 km away

Interesting. The US Marines fired a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System aka HIMARS from the deck of the USS Anchorage. It hit a target 70 km's away. If they use the MGM-140 ATACMS they could have a notional range of 160km which would give them a decent shore bombardment capacity in support of an amphibious landing. The Egyptian Navy earlier this year placed Stinger equipped HUMVEE's on their new Mistral class phibs, so its not unprecedented

www.militarytimes.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: FredT

Per article..

Not only are Russia and China developing long-range cruise missiles, but the terrorist group Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen have successfully used cruise missiles to attack ships. Both groups are backed by Iran. In October 2016, several cruise missiles were fired at the destroyer Mason off Yemen’s coast, but the ship was not hit.

Terrorist Groups were provided these missiles maybe? Hmmmm
Think we should have a talk with them.

a reply to: Bigburgh

Yeah I really didn't understand the point about the cruise missiles. There range generally would exceeded that of the artillery and no doubt they would be well back from the shore. You would use the F-35's and other assets like tomahawks to take out the cruise missile launchers and use the Aegis to protect the phibs.

Plus you simply don't lob a ASM cruise missile in a general direction and hope for the best, they do require cuing and have to be shot in a fairly close direction unless they have alot of loiter time and can receive location changes in flight which are generally going to be a high level nation state not Houthi rebels. The whole attack there IMHO is fishy to say the least