The U.S. Navy has declared early operational capability for the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Super Hornet fighter.

LRASM is the first new American anti-ship missile in decades.

The combination of LRASM and Super Hornet will put enemy fleets at serious risk, ideally deterring them from attack.

The U.S. Navy has declared early operational capability (EOC) for Long Range Anti-Ship Missile as carried by the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The new missile, the Navy’s first new anti-ship missile in decades, is designed to infiltrate enemy defenses, skirting around them to attack key targets in enemy fleets. The pairing of Super Hornet and LRASM will give carrier battle groups a powerful anti-ship capability, allowing them to sink enemy fleets from distances of hundreds of miles.



According to U.S. Naval Institute News, the Navy has now certified the anti-ship missile for limited missions with the Super Hornet fighter. The Super Hornet can carry at least one, and likely two of the big Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs). Theoretically, this means that a carrier air wing composed of 44 F/A-18E and F/A-18F strike fighters could launch up to 88 missiles at an enemy task force, though it’s rare for all of the strike fighters on a carrier to be ready for action at once.

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LRASM is fixing a key deficiency in the Navy—namely, a lack of a capability to sink ships. After the end of the Cold War, our Navy was left the undisputed champion of naval forces worldwide, with most of the runner-ups American allies. After 9/11, the service changed course to support wars on the ground in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and the anti-ship mission atrophied. The rise of the Chinese Navy and increased tension between NATO and Russia has brought anti-ship capability back to the forefront of the Navy mission.

LRASM is a derivative of the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM. LRASM is designed to take that platform, a low-observable cruise missile powered by a turbojet engine, and turn it into a ship-killer armed with a 1,000-pound high explosive warhead. LRASM can be sent to attack enemy task forces, skirting around air defense radars it detects and plotting the least-defended way forward. Once it locates the enemy fleet, it can pick out a specific target and attack a specific part of the target—say, the location of the ship’s combat information center, or the ship’s gun or missile magazine.

The Indian-Russian Brahmos anti-ship missile. OLGA MALTSEVA Getty Images

Many anti-ship missiles, such as the Indian-Russian Brahmos, are fast and use sheer speed to overcome enemy defenses. While the speed approach is useful, especially for a Mach 2.5 missile like Brahmos, it also means the big missile has a relatively short range. LRASM takes a different tack. LRASM’s turbojet engine gives it a greater range than a rocket engine, though at the cost of speed. This allows the new missile to stay hidden as long as possible before going in for the kill.

The Navy’s deployment of LRASM on fighter jets means adversaries will have to worry about missile threats not only from surface ships, but carrier-based jets. Many of America’s guided missile destroyers, for example, are not even equipped with anti-ship missiles. In the future, an adversary will have to consider even the smallest ships and aircraft a serious threat, hopefully deterring them from starting a war to begin with.

Source: U.S. Naval Institute News

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