I understand that people use what is available but....
Aircraft have limited duration in the air and are at the mercy of the weather. They spend most of their time in a hangar at an airfield with miles of asphalt and cement that is regularly swept by those people not actively engaged in finding spare parts to keep some portion of the fleet fit to fly.
Once over the area of interest then they have to find the target of interest before they run out of gas. Ditching a P8 with 9 crew on board is not an option. Ditching an uncrewed Valkyrie costing 3 MCAD is an option.
To extend time in the air it is best to maximize fuel which means minimizing weapons. Better to keep your aircraft unarmed and your kill shots on the ground. Range is your friend.
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A ship on patrol, assuming there is one available has to steam to the area of interest at 25 knots or so and get close enough to start launching helicopters and boats and find the target. It also has to close with the target to engage it. And a non lethal boarding party requires very close engagement indeed.
If the target is disinclined to be boarded tbe options need to include eliminating the target.
Once again, sending a kill shot from land is preferable to using a round from the ship's magazine as the ship may need that round for its own survival before it can return to a port and replenish.
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Nobody is arguing for replcements here.
We are all arguing for layers, for depth, for insurance....at least cost.
My opinion, for what little it is worth, is that there is value in a mix of 1500 km precision guided anti-ship missiles and 5600 km rocket launched UAVs covering the maritime approaches to Canada in all three oceans.
I also think it makes sense to continue the NORAD/Northcom A2AD trend of melding air, naval and ground domains into one comprehensive defenc(s)e plan. NORAD is now facing new long range aerial threats, missiles and quadcopters.
They are the primary threats and best managed with an air defence plan. Part of that plan has to be ability to engage launch platforms at point of launch, rapidly, in any weather. That is why I propose nesting a long range surface to surface capability in a regional air defence regiment.
Much like the US Army is proposing in their Multi Domain Task Forces and the USMC is proposing in their Littoral Combat Regiments.
If nothing else, adding a ground domain capability will extend the useful lives of both air and sea domain assets.
Your post makes no sense. You’re utterly conflating find/fix/strike as it those are all the same phase and the same platform. You’re also bouncing randomly back and forth between different types of threats. If you’re launching a land based missile at a target, you already know where it is and that it’s enough of a threat to warrant a missile to the face. Assuming you’re talking about shooting a PrSM LBASM, you’ve got probably a bit over 1000km range. With tactical aircraft carrying air launched anti ship missiles, you’ve got a much larger bubble than that.
Any obviously military vessel is being observed much farther out than that my various means, and we would have indicators of hostile state intent by other means that are completely different still.
If we’re talking about a hostile enemy maritime task force, we’re talking a conventional war. Odds are they get picked off well beyond the range of any land based rocket artillery.
If, conversely, we’re talking about something that’s
not a clear military threat, then we aren’t shooting a missile at it. There would be a ton of all source intelligence focus on defining just what it is, and then likely an interception and boarding well out to sea. If a vessel should fall into a particular threat profile where it IS a threat legally justifying forcible interdiction, it doesn’t call for warheads on foreheads,
but they’re forcibly resisting boarding, then you’re probably talking about a CANSOFCOM led operation to disable and/or eventually forcibly board it, and probably handing over to law enforcement once secured.
Start with identifying and defining the threat, figure out the applicable legal situation, determine if it’s a military or law enforcement response, and then use the time, space, resources and capabilities at hand. But no conversation on this can make sense if you don’t decide what threat you’re actually taking about and staying in that lane. Shooting a PrSM at a ship off the coast of Canada can basically only happen in a conventional war setting.
