@gambit Sir, watch the video in the opening post and give us your insight.
What do you think of this achievement by a developing state like Pakistan?
It is an excellent weapons platform. Personally, I have always been a fan of the cruise missile.
The cruise missile is the first UAV. Like all missile, it is a one-way weapon. Its subsonic speed is not a flaw and if the aircraft is sophisticated enough to have terrain following and terrain avoidance (TF/TA) capabilities, subsonic flight is an advantage because this speed level allows much greater time for the flight navigation system to create better flight profile over varying terrain.
On the tactical front, the cruise missile have an inherent low detectability index, meaning its launch is difficult to detect. Against an enemy that do not have high altitude monitoring capability, such satellites or AWACS, the flight of the cruise missile also have low detectibility index.
A cruise missile wave attack can, and usually will, soften up the hard defenses of a heavily defended target area, creating defense gaps where smaller and softer targets are vulnerable to precision guided weapons but required human adjudication before destruction. In other words, the cruise missiles exposes those softer targets where I can better use my 2,000 lbs bombs.
How complex/not-so-complex it is to launch a cruise missile from under water and all?
Not at all. The torpedo is launched via high pressured sea water. The problem is not this process but lies in how to change the torpedo from being a submarine into an aircraft.
A vertical launch of a ballistic missile boosts the missile out of the water and into the air in a few seconds. There is no transition to speak of. On the other hand, the torpedo, which is a submarine, must travels underwater for some distance, for safety reasons, before it must change into an aircraft. How do you design such a system ? What kind of sensors would you need to detect water and air ? What kind of timing mechanisms ? These questions are essentially outside of the sub.
