The Navy is adding anti-ship missiles to our submarines facing China:
As the U.S. fleet grapples with the rising threat of China’s expanding Navy, which now has more ships than the U.S. Navy’s fleet on both coasts combined, the service is packing its submarines with longer-range weapons, including the forthcoming Maritime Strike Tomahawk, Vice Adm. Daryl Caudle said.
“We’re increasing our range and how we deliver kinetic effects,” Caudle said. "Long-range torpedoes, of course, because that’s our clandestine weapon, but also bringing back Harpoon in the Pacific. We’ve tested that capability — we know it works. The weapon, as everyone knows, has limitations, but still gives us some stand-off capability. And we’re also pressing hard to get the Maritime Strike Tomahawk building as well.”
The Navy is testing the return of Harpoon missiles to its attack submarines.
It is likely this is just a proxy to test systems for some future advanced missile rather than a true return of the Harpoon to the sub fleet.
That's good. You may recall my shock that we lost that capability long ago.
I thought I would have run across that fact, but a Harpoon-equipped sub fleet was a phantom capability that I assumed had continued. My error was enabled by the fact that ships still had Harpoon even as those ships declined as new construction left them out.
All that was a result of the Cold War victory when the Navy decided that carrier aircraft could take care of any surface fleet threat.
Sadly, our SSN fleet will shrink this decade until hopefully new construction restores numbers. Until then the boats we have had best be lethal.
