• keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Are antiship missiles substantially different to cruise missiles? I think most are a type of cruise missile with the ability to make targeting adjustments on the way in

    • Biggay [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Not a military expert but most antiship missiles I’ve heard of tend to fly low and fast to strike the side of the ship and make it sink; as opposed to ballistic missiles which are fired in tall unguided arcs that impact the target from a steep angle which can make them penetrate bunkers and destroy buildings more effectively.

      • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, “cruise” in cruise missile refers to flying like a plane, which modern ones tend to fly low to evade RADAR. Typically cruise missiles are much much slower than ballistic missiles, but everyone is throwing money at hypersonic descent cruise missiles (basically, the last dozen miles the missile accelerates and jinks to make it hard for defenders to shoot down). Anti-ship missiles I think are just cruise missiles that can track a target (traditionally, buildings and ammo dumps don’t move to evade fire)

        (also, idk why I wound up being the missile nerd in the war nerd thread. I think people have lost interest in it since the first year of the Ukraine war as Ukraine has run out of missiles to shoot with or shoot down with)