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sonic anti-ship ballistic missile, a solid-fueled short-range ballistic from 150 km to over 200 km.
missile (SRBM) comparable to Russia’s Iskander SRBM. China also At DSEI Japan 2023, Kawasaki Heavy Industry
has the land-based Dong Feng-21D (DF-21D) missile for anti-ship (KHI) unveiled a scale model of a stealthy anti-
attacks. ship missile called “Island Defence anti-ship
missile.” In the research stage, the modular
Naval Strike Missile design of the missile makes it capable of a
In September 2022, the Spanish Navy selected Kongsberg’s Naval wide variety of missions, including anti-surface
warfare, electronic warfare missions and ISR
Strike Missile (NSM) as the replacement for its Harpoon missiles. missions. The missile, which will be fitted with
According to reports, the service picked NSM over MBDA’s Exocet a dual mode seeker with IR and RF, will have a
MM40 Block 3C and Saab RBS 15 Mk3+. The NSM is expected to be long range, low RCS (radar cross section), and
delivered before the Harpoon is retired from active service around high maneuverability. The company intends to
2030.
propel the missile using the KJ300, a new tur-
bofan engine it is currently developing.
The Royal Navy is expected to retire the Harpoon much earlier. In
November last year, the UK Ministry of Defence signed a deal with
Kongsberg to replace the Harpoon Block 1C missiles on 11 of its IAI Makes a Mark
warships, including Type 45 destroyers and type 23 frigates, with Proteus Advanced Systems, a joint venture
the NSM. In January this year, the service’s Type 23 frigate HMS between Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and
Somerset announced the commencement of NSM upgrade work. ST Engineering, unveiled the Blue Spear fifth
The missile, which will be ready for operations onboard the frigate generation surface-to-surface missile (5G
in the first half of 2024, is only a stop-gap solution for the Type 23 SSM), which has a combined anti-ship and land
frigates and will be replaced by the Anglo-French Future Cruise attack capability at high subsonic speed, at
Anti-Ship Weapon (FCASW), around 2028. The FCASW will also be the Singapore Airshow last year. Based on IAI’s
on Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets. Gabriel, the missile has an air-breathing turbo-
jet engine fed with liquid jet fuel, with a range of
The NSM, which is a subsonic cruise missile with a 275-pound explo- 180 miles. The missile features an active radar
sive warhead, is smaller than the Harpoon, which also has a larger seeker, accurate INS-based navigation capabil-
500-pound warhead. It however has a range of 100-plus nautical ities, maximum accuracy target acquisition, and
miles, compared to the Harpoon’s 75 nm range. A fifth-genera- a robust system immune to GPS interference. The
tion anti-ship missile, the NSM can be launched from a variety of Israeli Navy and Republic of Singapore Navy
platforms against a variety of targets on sea and land. Extremely are likely to be launch customers, but the land-
maneuverable, the missile is completely passive and has proven based variant of the Blue Spear already has an
sea-skimming capabilities. The Autonomous Target Recognition export customer – Estonia. Finland has selected
(ATR) of the seeker ensures that the correct target is detected, rec-
ognized, and hit - at sea or on land.

Produced by Kongsberg and managed in the U.S. by Raytheon. NSM
reached Initial Operational Capability on the Norwegian Fridtjof
Nansen-class frigates and the Norwegian Skjold Class corvettes in
2012. The missile is also in use by the Polish Navy in a coastal-Defence
role, the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship and Constellation-class
frigate programmes, and the U.S. Marine Corps’ NMESIS unmanned-
mobile-launch truck. The missile has also been selected by the
navies of Malaysia, Germany, Canada, Romania and Australia.

Crowded Market
The anti-ship missiles market isn’t confined to a few regions or com-
panies. In 2021, South Korea tested its first supersonic cruise missile
that has a speed of up to Mach 2-3. The anti-ship missile, which
bears a close resemblance to the Russian anti-ship missile P-800
“Onyx, is said to be capable of striking Chinese aircraft carriers
and other hostile ships in Western and Eastern Seas of the Korean
Peninsula. The cruise missiles will be placed on the next-generation
destroyer KDDX and Aegis destroyer KDX-3 Batch-2. The Republic
of Korea Navy (RoKN), which initially depended on Harpoon and
French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles, introduced the locally devel-
oped SSM 700K Haeseong (C-Star), sea-skimming, anti-ship missile
in 2005. In 2021, the service upgraded the C-Star, increasing its range © IAI
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