Most Firepower: US Navy comes second....

Sorry for the sensational thread title.


I'm pretty much done with cataloging the world's main navies, adding up their anti-ship missiles and basically calculating who has the most firepower. This is just an expansion of the methodology put forward in the IndiaPakistan thread to include loads more countries.

The results:


As you can see, Russia wins by a substantial margin. Both the US and Russia's figures are probably exaggerated to similar extents – in general Russian anti-ship missiles have a longer range, bigger warhead and travel MUCH faster than the American Harpoon family. I’ve over-counted Harpoons by assuming that carrier air wings carry enough rounds to load every Hornet with two, and also that the attack subs carry four each when in fact they are rarely deployed.

But the general indication, that the Russian Navy has more readily available anti-ship missile firepower is very fair. Anti-ship warfare seems not to be the USNs priority, whereas Russia is still, at least in procurement terms, more concerned with having the ability to counter the US’s huge advantage in carriers.

Surprise results
Aside from US coming in second, despite Russia’s declining fleet, there were several results I wasn’t expecting:

China rising; the Chinese fleet is increasingly modernized, with most destroyers now carrying a whopping sixteen anti-ship missiles compared to the more typical four or eight. India is following this trend also. The sixteen-missile punch allows saturation attacks with several missiles being launched in place of one – somewhat making up for the slightly lesser technology of the mainstream Chinese missiles.

UK still OK. OK, so the Royal Navy is no longer ruler of the waves, but with the retirement of the Sea Eagle anti-ship missile which equipped to Tornado GR.4 squadrons, I expected the UK to come out worse than they did.

Australia Does so well mainly because of the large number of Harpoon equipped air force (RAAF) Hornets, F-111 and Orion aircraft. The RAN itself provides a puny anti-ship punch without the RAAF.

France, home of the Exocet, does so poorly because it has hardly updated its missile stocks. The basic MM-38/40 Exocet is comparatively short ranged and less sophisticated than the Harpoon. Whilst there are more up to date turbo-jet versions, the actual Exocets in French service are still MM-38 (10 ships), MM-40 (14 Ships) and the equivalent SM-39 submarine launched and AS-39 air launched versions. As far as I am aware the super-sonic replacement (ANS?) has been shelved. The French habit of carrying only 4 Exocets on many combatants also eats into their firepower rating.

Other highly regarded navies like Italy, Spain and Netherlands have clearly felt the post-cold-war bite and sunk low. Chile, a country which pioneered the use of torpedoes in the 1900s is now somewhat toothless, as is Brazil despite their 35,000ton aircraft carrier.

Talking of carrier operators, here’s an interesting observation:

Imagine that, most countries that operate aircraft carriers don’t equip their carrier fighters with anti-ship missiles(!).


[edit on 30-6-2006 by planeman]

Did you factor in Nuclear weapons of each Navy? They could clearly be used for anti-ship roles example - nuclear tipped cruise missles launched from navy ships could take out fleets.

Those would I imagine put Russia and the US much farther into a class of their own in terms of anti-ship Naval firepower.

[edit on 30-6-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Ah, nice title, now, I’m really surprised that Taiwan placed so high up on the list, their priorities seem to be in order they will need quite a lot of anti ship missiles if they are to maintain somewhat of a balance between the straight. Well, good info Planeman very informative (this and the other thread).

The US has ALWAYS been behind the Soviet Union/Russia in terms of absolute firepower. The US philosophy has been quality over quantity, where the Russians has always been quantity over quality. They've always built cheaper with higher numbers, since WWII.

Shadow, I left nuclear weapons off the list because only a moron would start WW3 with an ICBM for the sake of destroying a boat.

Only Russia seems to deploy any missiles that could fairly be described as "nuclear anti-ship missiles" and I have no idea whether they are still operational. I've also left non-specialised missiles, such as SAMs fired at nearby ships, off the list. Etc.



Westy, re Taiwan. Yeah, my thoughts too. Their high score comes down to two main factors:
* The large fleet of 48 small missile boats which even though each only has two compariatively unremarkable Hsiung feng I (think Gabriel II) missiles, adds up to a lot.
* The stated ability of the Ching Kuo to carry 3 (I've counted 2) Hsiung Feng II missiles. I've had to assume that Taiwan has sufficient stocks.

Here's my basic quantification of Taiwan's punch:

Just to add to what Zap said, people also have to keep in mind that the majority of US anti-ship delivery systems are aircraft, for the Russians its ships, and that's a major difference in terms of the philosophy of these two navies.

----

Yeah, Taiwan has no need for large multipurpose ships, for their situations, fast and small missile boats each carrying 2 or more ASM is ideal for the confined littoral/costal areas they have to defend. If they could build 100 of these boats each with 2 ASM than they will have considerable capability.

Originally posted by planeman
Shadow, I left nuclear weapons off the list because only a moron would start WW3 with an ICBM for the sake of destroying a boat.

Only Russia seems to deploy any missiles that could fairly be described as "nuclear anti-ship missiles" and I have no idea whether they are still operational. I've also left non-specialised missiles, such as SAMs fired at nearby ships, off the list. Etc.

I thought you described your method in the other thread as if each navy lined up everything it had and let go with it all at once? as one way of thinking about it.

In that case I would assume they would use nuclear equiped missiles as well since thats pretty much would be WW3. I couldnt see the US holding back its W80 sea launched cruise missile or Russia not using its nuclear Kh-55SM missiles.

[edit on 30-6-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by Zaphod58
The US has ALWAYS been behind the Soviet Union/Russia in terms of absolute firepower. The US philosophy has been quality over quantity, where the Russians has always been quantity over quality. They've always built cheaper with higher numbers, since WWII.

Actually, russia has fewer missiles (by this method) than US and only about half as many launch platforms (basically the carrier aircraft):

Planeman, can you do one with china?

Originally posted by chinawhite
Planeman, can you do one with china?

Before you ask, the JH-7 figure is what the guys on Sino-defence think the PLAN strength is - about another 20 JH-7s are in PLAAF service and not thought to be tasked with anti-shipping. Ju-11 is tricky, I ended up leaving it out.

Yeah, the US has more overall missiles than Russia, but look at the relative SIZES of the warheads, and the fact that the US has three types, whereas the Russians have what, 9? 10? Some of theirs are huge, and they're faster than the ones the US uses, in some cases by far.

The areas your missing are submarine lanuched missiles, the PLAN patrol boats and the 24 S-30MKK2 stationed with the PLANAF which is armed with Kh-31 missiles

Originally posted by chinawhite
The areas your missing are submarine lanuched missiles, the PLAN patrol boats and the 24 S-30MKK2 stationed with the PLANAF which is armed with Kh-31 missiles

Mistake re subs noted.

Is it fair to say that the Song Class have 4 YJ-8s (source: www.sinodefence.com... )? -(or JY-82s/YJ-83s???)

Also, re Klub. My guess is that it is not yet deployed. Whenb it is it will probably be on board the Kilos and probably in the land-attack rather than anti-ship version - any details?


Re the Ju-11s. Aren't the Kh-31s the anti-radiation version? (source: www.sinodefence.com... )

[edit on 30-6-2006 by planeman]

Four missiles for the Song seem to be a good estimate. DongFeng keeps a good site but some of the pages are outdated because its a hard job for one person alone

From all reports it does seem to say that the Project 636 submarines will be armed with the Club-S system which comprises three missiles. I'm thinking that the Kilo submarines were purchases as part of the PLAs assains mace program to defeat a american carrier so it would be more of a surface attack ship rather than a cruise missile carrier


The Kh-31A has been speculated to be fitted to the Su-30MK2. My mistake beforehand. But it would seem strange for a airplane in the PLAN not fitted with any anti-ship missiles.

The Su-30MKK has been seen fitted with the AS-18 missile


You probaly know this but the J-11 and Su-30MKK are different planes. The J-11 is the single seat Su-27SK made under license and the Su-30MKK is the twin seat fighter. The Su-30MK2 added anti-shipping modes to its N001VEP radar

This article is quite good.
Link

Planeman nice graphs, but the new 051C DOES NOT CARRY 16 Anti-Ships. Go look at the pictures you posted you clearly see 8 Anti-Ships.

How is Russia placed first on the Carrier list if it has 1 carrier and the US has 12?

I mean, 12 Carrier Battle Groups, that's like what? I don't know exactly how many aircraft each carrier has, so I can't do the math, but still that's 12 times what Russia has.

But all the other charts are very nice, US does have alot of missiles and focuses on aerial power over ships.

I agree on this assertion, Quality over Quantity.

Shattered OUT...

There is another difference between world Navies.

American Production technology is best in the world. But for fighting a sustained war, Russian tech beats the world.

Because it works in mud, in the cold, when wet, under wartime conditions. American tech is great, but the maintenance is incredibly high, and the war in Iraq is draining maintenance budgets at 300 % what the pentagon estimated in 2002, and spare parts are becoming scarce.

In a full scale war i would say Russia has a practical advantage for this reason alone, let alone energy independance that must be taken into account.

How did Israel come above Iran,France,Pakistan.

Iran has the highest quantity of anti-ship missiles in the middle east not only in qantity but diversity.

no offence but there is no way that Israel is above either France or Iran in Firepower. Israel navy is almost non-existant. Although these are not 100% accurate to the exact firepower they do give a basic outline of how the navies of each country are :

Israel Navy :
www.globalsecurity.org...

Iran navy :
www.globalsecurity.org...


And when it comes anti-ship missiles the Iranians cannot be touched by Israel in any way by the sheer quantity of them that Iran has.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
The US has ALWAYS been behind the Soviet Union/Russia in terms of absolute firepower. The US philosophy has been quality over quantity, where the Russians has always been quantity over quality. They've always built cheaper with higher numbers, since WWII.

I agree with Zap... 50% of their ships are wrecks...

Why are people so picky about this? I don't think Planeman purposely misplaced certain countries, the facts speak for themselves. So before you get too hyped up remember this only measures the theoretical absolute firepower of navies in terms of anti ship missiles, its not supposed to be a measure of who can beat who.