Naval defenses to counter P-800 Oniks and SS-N-22?

[HellTriX]

While browsing the recent news articles and looking up more information, I came across the following:
"The Fifth Fleet was involved with the Millennium Challenge 2002 live exercises and computer simulations. The operations were one of the largest wargames ever conducted. At the end of the exercises, designed to test defences from new anti-ship cruise missiles such as the P-800 Oniks and the SS-N-22, the Fifth Fleet was sunk."
Quoted from wikipedia.

If this information is true only 6 years ago these cruise missiles pose a great threat to the US battle groups.

My question:
1. Is this true?
2. Do we have the technology now (2008-2009) to counter these ship sinkers yet?
3. With our battle-groups staged so close to shore do they have enough time to respond to these high speed missiles with evasion technology?

Tnx.

[Abraham Gubler]

Yes and no. The type of missile beyond a sea skimmer wasn't that important in the MC02 exercise. What was important is the red force was able to achieve complete surprise against the blue force with a massive barrage of sea skimming missiles. That is the first thing they knew about it was lots of missiles in the air and the blue force was not postured to deal with it.

The red force achieved this by using constrained geography, ie the Persian Gulf and a lack of intel capability on behalf of the blue force. This is the advantage of exercises is that they often start from a clean slate perspective unlike the real Persian Gulf where 30 years of intensive survilliance provides the USN and their allies with a strong picture of the threat.

In terms of direct countermeasures to the SUNBURN and other supersonic sea skimmer ASMs. The ESSM system is probably the best then seductive decoys and RAM. Conventional CIWS like Phalanx and Goalkeeper are not that good against liquid fuel rockets. Because of the high speed of the SUNBURN (45 seconds from crossing the radar horizon or 1/4 the time of an Exocet) to impact most engagement systems only get one opportunity to intercept. So it is much easier to swamp the target with threats. Also why new defences like the RAN's ANZAC frigate upgrade will have five channels of fire control for ESSM, including four with phased arrays for rapid moving from one target to another.

[AegisFC]

The thing you have to realize about wargames is that the main mission is to train one side or the other (or both). Rules are in place to make it easier or harder for one side or the other (must stay in a preset coordinate box or a narrow straights transit, equipment may have artificial limitations to simulate another Radar or other combat system for examples) and often times one side or the other will not use their equipment to its full capacity as not to reveal their full capabilities.