In the 1971 Indo–Pakistan War, small 200 ton missile boats acquired from Russia attacked ships patrolling outside Karachi harbour. The radar homing heads of these liquid fuelled missiles successfully homed on, and, with two missiles, in two minutes devastated and sank a much larger and powerful 3000-ton Pakistan Navy destroyer from a range well outside the range of the destroyer’s guns. From the point of view of naval tactics, the advent of such missiles heralded a revolution in the centuries-old-tactics of battle between naval ships by transforming gun battles within visual range to missile encounters much beyond visual range. This development also transformed the nature of the threat because, without any warning, missiles could, by day or by night, regardless of weather, approach their targets at near sonic speed and inflict fatal damage. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the Pakistan Navy acquired Harpoon missiles from America and Exocet sea skimming missiles from France. Both missiles were technologically better than those used in the 1971 war because:- During the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina in the Falkland Islands, the sinking of several British warships by French Exocet sea skimming missiles fired by Argentine aircraft reiterated the urgent need for Anti Missile Defence (AMD). Read More: indiandefencereview/interviews/indian-navy-anti-missile-defence-systems/
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 04:10:48 +0000
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