Long relegated to the status of an antique, anti-aircraft artillery has, in recent years, found favor with the world's major armies. In the United States, after the US Army's MDACS program, it is the turn of Northrop Grumman, the third largest American defense company, to communicate on a new anti-aircraft artillery program.
Called Cannon-Based Air Defense, or CBAD, this aims to design nothing less than a multi-layer anti-aircraft system, using exclusively anti-aircraft guns, and specially designed to respond to the threat posed today by attacks from saturation combining cruise missiles, attack drones and stand-off munitions.
To do this, the American industrialist wants to design artillery ammunition technology with certain characteristics for guiding surface-to-air missiles, and of different calibers, to neutralize all threats, including the most numerous.
In this section:
The saturation of air defenses, the great weakness of land and naval forces today
The saturation of defense means, in particular concerning ground-air defense, has represented, for many decades, both the greatest fear of defenders, and the greatest opportunity of attackers.
It is in particular to respond to this type of threat, more precisely attacks carried out by several dozen Soviet long-range bombers such as the Badger, the Blinder and the Backfire, and their supersonic anti-ship missiles, that the US Navy developed the Ticonderoga cruiser, the AEGIS system and the F-14 + AIM-54 Phoenix pair.
For nearly 60 years, the missile has established itself as the only option compared to combat aircraft and anti-ship missiles. And it was therefore necessary to take on board ever more and more efficient missiles, guided by ever more powerful radars, on board ever more expensive ships, to resist it.
Thus, today, an Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyer, which carries 96 vertical missile silos, costs more than €2,5 billion, missilery included, or the price of an 80-ton Forrestal-class aircraft carrier. , entered service in 000, at the price inflation compensated of $221 million x 1067% = $2,36 billion.
The arrival of cruise missiles, first, then attack drones, more recently, has, however, profoundly disrupted the status quo that prevailed until then. Indeed, where anti-aircraft missiles had a clear advantage over the target in terms of costs, with a price ranging from 0,2 to 3 million $, for combat planes from 10 to 100 million $, and helicopters from 5 at $30 million, it was below parity compared to cruise missiles, costing around $2 million, even though more than one missile per target is often required.
This gap has widened further with the arrival of attack drones, such as the infamous Shahed-136, with a range of more than 1500 km, and whose price does not exceed $40, putting it at the reach of all budgets, sometimes in very large quantities.
The Limitations of Missiles and Directed Energy Weapons
So, as mentioned in a previous article, a model of attack drone like the Shahed, with a range of 2000 km, carrying 50 kg of military load, and produced at $30k each, would allow any country to acquire a fleet of 30.000 units, sufficient to heavily damage the entire civil and military infrastructure of a country like France, for an entry ticket equivalent to the price of a submarine, a frigate or ten combat planes, i.e. less than $1 billion.
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