

VA-111 Shkval - gcv
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval

======
gcv
In honor of military hardware week on HN — some naval technology instead of
aviation, though.

I'm pretty sure a motivated non-state actor can arrange to buy a few of these.
A surface ship is a sitting duck against something so fast.

~~~
hga
How much more so a sitting duck compared to slower but still rather fast
torpedoes?

Especially depending on the quality of the newer terminal guidance, per the
article, the initial version used inertial guidance and a nuclear warhead.
Also, is the newer guidance and fuzing system able to do a under the ship keel
attack?

As for "siting duck", our naval ships can be outfitted with Nixie decoys:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SLQ-25_Nixie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SLQ-25_Nixie)
Don't think, well, any of these weapons have been put to the test outside of
techno-thrillers; the history of early WWII torpedoes prompts a bit of
skepticism.

~~~
mpyne
Well, the Japanese WWII torpedoes should prompt a lot of fear. They were the
best Naval torpedo of any world power during the _entirety_ of WWII, and were
part of the reason for the massive damage at Pearl Harbor; U.S. Naval officers
assumed torpedoes couldn't operate in a harbor that shallow, but the Japanese
had developed a way around it.

Likewise once the Americans fixed their own multiple torpedo flaws by summer
1943, American submarines became very deadly in the Pacific.

However your questions regarding the VA-111 are valid. The flow noise
generated from moving so fast (and with a gas bubble to boot) means that the
VA-111 should not be able to hear the target to move in on it. This would
require guidance from the launching platform's sonar, but I don't know of any
guidance wire that would survive that trip.

Instead the torpedo seems to require a very good firing solution _before_ the
shot is made, to allow the INS to bring the torpedo to the target before they
can evade. Even then you'll likely miss, which seems to be why the nuclear
warhead option was chosen.

With modern non-nuclear versions it would seem that terminal guidance would
require a separate (much slower) phase of operations, which might very well be
susceptible to acoustic countermeasures.

Additionally it was created as an ASW weapon, not ASUW, so the warhead
capacity seems to be too small for a high probability of kill against a
surface ship, unless they can indeed detonate it right under a keel. On the
other hand it would be easier to get a good target solution for a surface
warship since it's a 2-D geometry instead of 3-D.

------
cjbenedikt
[http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?48501-Ba...](http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?48501-Barracuda-
new-German-supercav-torpedo)

