South Korea developing an ASW missile

June 30, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized 

090622_p04_SKoreaAccording to the Korea Times, S. Korea is developing a stand-off ASW missile similar in some respect to VL-ASROC:

The state-funded Agency for Defense Development (ADD) announced Monday it has completed the development of a precision-guided light torpedo that can travel about 20 kilometers in the air before dropping into waters to track and destroy a target.
The Navy’s KDX-II/III destroyers will be equipped with anti-submarine missile, or Hongsangeo (Red Shark) torpedo beginning next year as part of efforts to beef up the country’s naval defense against North Korea, ADD officials said.

Hat tip: Kobus

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Comments

3 Responses to “South Korea developing an ASW missile”

  1. rkoelbach on July 4th, 2009 9:29 am

    Is the VL-Asroc in service? Or hasn´t the whole Asroc project been cancelled? If so, why? And what improvements have been made by S. Korea?

  2. Dimitris on July 4th, 2009 10:03 am

    AFAIK the VL-ASROC is in service at least in the USN. In fact the weapon has been improved with the introduction of the shallow water-optimized Mk46 variant (RUM-139B).

    My understanding is that the S.Korean weapon is a from-scratch system rather than an evolution on the VLA (though of course reverse-engineering is always possible). I haven’t found any sources mentioning in what respects this weapon may be superior (or simply different) to VLA.

  3. SlamEagleF15K on July 5th, 2009 7:20 am

    The origins of the program came from a US Congress refusal for exporting the VLA for the KD-2,3 destroyers,although the reasons are not clear,seems to be linked to tech security. Concept from the VLA,but from scratch as the Red Shark(Korean VLA) uses a another domestic torp,the “Blue Shark”(Which is known to ressemble UK LWTs in specs rather than the US LWT),and has the capability to utilize both the Russian Style Cold Launch and the Western Warm Launch systems.

    One thing that is misunderstood is that actually the Red Shark has a range of 40 kilometers rather than 22 kilos,and as everyone would predict,is raising the question of practical issues, as getting a targetting solution from such a range would be impossible by the ship itself,and also has no reason to risk a time lag by sending a rocket over 40 kilometers rather than calling the nearest ASW Helo to pin-point and localize to take out the Sub.

    The main idea of the rather “over-ranged” weapon is probably due to the number of Subs around the seas and not very large Air Wing,with the future expectations of the ROK Navy to develop a working ASW combat network in the near,or far future.

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