Please ignore members like him. I greatly appreciate your contributions. There are also many silent readers out there who benefit from your posts, so don't be dis-hearted by a few detractors.
There is no enough space on F22 for 16 SSMs. However, putting so much AsM assets on platform is also wrong. This is suitable for Russian/Chinese Saturation doctrine, where two or four missiles are fired on each target in ripple fire to overwhelm the defenses. Our Navy follows the wester Precision doctrine, where one missile one target is the norm, or there is coordinated attack between various assets towards a unitary target to overwhelm its medium and terminal defenses.
Isn't it quite normal to warships needing strong anti-ship capability, but without strong air support and VLS for AShMs?
I think the point was in the context of small ships (less than 2,000 ton displacement, shorter than 90 m in length). So, such ships -- e.g., fast attack crafts, corvettes, etc -- should have a specialized role, not be overloaded with too many subsystems.
Everything is just based on the challenges you face.
In my opinion Pakistan has wrong policy. In my opinion Pakistan should have Frigates and Destroyers which have those VLS which can carry and fire long range cruise missiles to hit targets on land as well as ships
There is a different approach with different navies amd different ships I suppose. For a navy like USN which operates multiple CBG and 67 Arleigh Burk destroyers (with 10 more 10 more ordered) and 22 Ticonderoga class cruisers means that some of the smaller ships like LCS dont need as robust of air defense. That being said, even they were critizised for being too lightly armed. That is why they are being actively equipped with better warfighting modules. For example the Saudis bought 12 Freedom class lcs which will have standard warfighting setup instead of the modular and interchangeable layout of the USN ships. It will have a 16 cells vls for either 16 SM-2 or 64 ESSM, or morell likely 8 and 32 layout. Even the standard LCS has 21 cell RAM mk 2 which is a 22km range weapon which is better than anything PN currently fields.
The range is not everything.
You are right, range is not everything. But when fighting off a missile with the speed and dimension/mass of Brahmos, speed range and kinetic force are 90%. The other issue is number of interceptors. See if a missile has a range of engagement at say 70km the ship can the engage the target at a further distance and put more missiles between the attacking missile and itself... ie it has more chances to take it out. Add to that that if that longer range missile is quad packed you have 4x the weapons at your disposal to bring it Brahmos down. Lets say all you have is 8 FM-90/HQ-7A missiles. You have 8 shots to bring down brahmos at a range of 12km for supersonic weapons. If you cant bring it down or you run out of missiles because 2-3 brahmos were likely launched at you, you are left to rely on you CIWS. At a short gun range the debris from the missile is likely to significantly damage the ship given the speed it is going even if you can destroy the missile at all. So yeah, if given the option i would take the range and more importantly the numbers of something like CAMM-ER over even HQ-16B even if CAMM-er ends up with 45km range, the number of weapons that can be brought to bear is of the utmost importance. That is why 12 ASTER 15s were replaced by 48 Sea Ceptor (CAMM) on the Daring class destroyers.
Take S-400 and HQ-9 for example. Many people think that the range of S-400 is much longer than HQ-9.
