MIM-104 Patriot Questions and What-if Ideas

[dy031101]

One of the Shipbucket's "Things that help drawing" pictures contains the graphics representing a Ship Launched Patriot Missile system...... reminds me that long ago I heard of some kind of an idea floating around on navalizing Taiwan's Sky Bow series of AD systems in case AEGIS proved not forthcoming in the end.

Anyway, I am thinking about piecing together a Shipbucket drawing that uses something like the SLPM...... but does anyone know how the SLPM launcher is reloaded?

And what kind of ships should I look at as a basis?  I kind of think that it'll have to be at least a large destroyer or above......

[GTX]

Can't help on the Naval side, but there have been proposals for air-launched Patriots:



See here.

Regards,

Greg

[ChernayaAkula]

Patriots from Eagles! Cool!

[dy031101]

Well then...... let's go from another direction.

The way I've figured, it'd make no sense putting radar and command-and-control modules on different vessels.  If, say, I am correct in thinking so, should I also pack the ship (for anti-ballistic missile defense, backed by naval AD weapons and escorting vessels) with firepower the equivalent of a land-based battery?  Or are things not that simple?

[Hobbes]

Well, take a look at current US anti-air ships. They pack 96 or 128 VLS cells, all of which could be used for antiballistic missiles, although a mix of ESSM, Standard and SM-3 ABM is more likely. If you're going to do ABM, you want a decent battery (unless your sole concern is a terrorist group launching a single missile).

[dy031101]

If you're going to do ABM, you want a decent battery (unless your sole concern is a terrorist group launching a single missile).

How many out of the, say, 96 missiles should be the ABM in order to serve as an adequate ABM ship?

I want to use Shipbucket's navalized box launchers, with non-ABM weapons being the standard-fare Standard/Sea-Sparrow/ASROC......

[Hobbes]

A typical US Patriot batallion has 6-8 launchers with 16 missiles each. But it really depends on the mission. Against the USSR, you want all the missiles you can get. Ballistic missiles are pretty big, so you can probably get a rough idea of how many missiles your enemy has.

[dy031101]

Which emplacement would make more sense?  Concentrating all the launchers and the fire control centre onto one big ship, or having smaller ships carrying one or two launchers each and operating with a command ship that has the centralized fire control?

Two ideas in my mind: one is something like a Moskva class cruiser, with four launchers forward, two launchers amidship, and a big helicopter deck aft; the other would be like this, maybe based on a frigate or destroyer class vessel?

[Hobbes]

Patriot missiles aren't much bigger than Standards, so you could probably fit them in a Mk 41 VLS. For a ship, using VLS would be more practical than carrying those Patriot launch containers: with VLS, you can get more missiles into the same deck space than using a container.

Once you have a ship with VLS, you can carry plenty of Patriots on one ship, incl. its guidance radars. That would be a more flexible solution than having one ship rely on the radars of another.

[dy031101]

Patriot missiles aren't much bigger than Standards, so you could probably fit them in a Mk 41 VLS. For a ship, using VLS would be more practical than carrying those Patriot launch containers: with VLS, you can get more missiles into the same deck space than using a container.

Looks like it's longer than VL-ASROC and shorter than Tomahawk with booster, too.  Does the US export Strike Length Mk 41 as widely as Tactical Length type?

[Thiel]

Patriot missiles aren't much bigger than Standards, so you could probably fit them in a Mk 41 VLS. For a ship, using VLS would be more practical than carrying those Patriot launch containers: with VLS, you can get more missiles into the same deck space than using a container.

Looks like it's longer than VL-ASROC and shorter than Tomahawk with booster, too.  Does the US export Strike Length Mk 41 as widely as Tactical Length type?

Yes, though the market is smaller.

[KJ_Lesnick]

Each missile weighs 2,000 pounds about so it's a rather heavy beast of a weapon (the AIM-54 was around 1,000)

[Iranian F-14A]

Can't help on the Naval side, but there have been proposals for air-launched Patriots:



See here.

Regards,

Greg

Reminds me of how Iran modified their MIM-23 HAWKs into AIM-23s to be carried by F-14s and their RIM-66 Standards into AIM-66s to be carried by F-4s

Reminds