Sea-based Anti-Ballastic Missile Intercept System (SABMIS)

[Sea Skimmer]

It is very likely that both nuclear and dirt burning versions of this concept were studied at the same time, just as nuclear power and diesels were studied for land based hardened ABM sites.
This ship most likely would not have Mk95 radars as designed though, the launchers are the big boxes for BPDMS and it would surely have had the Mk 115 manned illuminators. I believe those are the objects found on the small bridge wing like protrusions seen in that artists concept of the ship.
Mk 95 came with NATO Sea Sparrow which only entered service in the later half of the 1970s. That is well after SABMIS would have needed to be in the water to compete with the SAFEGUARD ABM system, intended to counter a moderate scale attack from China. That was opposed to the full scale SENTINEL system which was to counter a full scale Soviet attack but using the same components.
I'm not sure if any ships ever got Mk 95 without also replacing the BPDMS box launchers with the NATO Sea Sparrow box. The smaller NATO launcher was much easier to reload and less weight.

 

[TomS]

Tzoli:

Sorry, I hadn't noticed the space in the superstructure on that drawing. I suppose a hangar is possible in that case. It does look like there's a sizable bow sonar, which would help justify an helicopter (or a DASH drone hangar, possibly).

 

[Tzoli]

It is very likely that both nuclear and dirt burning versions of this concept were studied at the same time, just as nuclear power and diesels were studied for land based hardened ABM sites.
This ship most likely would not have Mk95 radars as designed though, the launchers are the big boxes for BPDMS and it would surely have had the Mk 115 manned illuminators. I believe those are the objects found on the small bridge wing like protrusions seen in that artists concept of the ship.
Mk 95 came with NATO Sea Sparrow which only entered service in the later half of the 1970s. That is well after SABMIS would have needed to be in the water to compete with the SAFEGUARD ABM system, intended to counter a moderate scale attack from China. That was opposed to the full scale SENTINEL system which was to counter a full scale Soviet attack but using the same components.
I'm not sure if any ships ever got Mk 95 without also replacing the BPDMS box launchers with the NATO Sea Sparrow box. The smaller NATO launcher was much easier to reload and less weight.

That is indeed likely that both Nuclear and regular powered versions considered, but Diesel engines do not require such large funnels, so it would be either Nuclear or Steam or COSAG/COGAS.
As for the date of these ships service. I would say the earliest is the late 70's as the missiles intended to be used by these were ready in 1975, the LIM-49A Spartan so for a naval variant say LIM-49B I would give a few years of research. So the Illuminator Radars were quite logical.

 

[Tzoli]

Even if the proposed missile was the LIM-49 Nike Zeus (weird that both missiles have the same designation! ) the ships would be ready I think as early as the mid 70's and such by the time the Spartan got developed, which could result in a cooperation between the design teams resulting in a ship which could launch Nike Zeus or the new Spartan missiles.

 

[Tzoli]

In my opinion this is how the ship would look like in the 80's-90's after a modernization:

 

[Yellow Palace]

No way you'd shoehorn those 5" guns in - the magazine and gunbay would take up huge amounts of space, add a lot of topweight, be structurally challenging, and add almost nothing to the ballistic missile defence mission.

 

[Tzoli]

No way you'd shoehorn those 5" guns in - the magazine and gunbay would take up huge amounts of space, add a lot of topweight, be structurally challenging, and add almost nothing to the ballistic missile defence mission.

You have right in only two thing:
No added balistic defence and the guns take up place.
Everything other your are wrong.
This is a big ship with around 20-30 kilotons of displacement so around the size of the WW2 Alaskas or Des Moineses, those 3 guns on the first deck absolutely does not make issues with topweight. It isn't challanging too as the Long Beach too recieved guns two sides in the middle of the ship near the ASROC launcher. as only the Soviet Kirovs carry armour it is not matters where you put the magazines for the guns. And they would provide anti air and anti surface defence for the ship, if the escorts would be overwhelmed!

 

[donnage99]

Sorry for my ignorance but how does this ship better than Flight III Burke class with AESA and SM-3? Doesn't the point of building such a large craft with such a large radar become obsolete after the introduction of AESA which would achieve space tracking with a much smaller radar? And how does the proposed missiles for the SABMIS better than the SM-3? Longer range?


I'm not knowledgable with naval systems so sorry for my ignorance. Thank you.

 

[Yellow Palace]

This is a big ship with around 20-30 kilotons of displacement so around the size of the WW2 Alaskas or Des Moineses, those 3 guns on the first deck absolutely does not make issues with topweight. It isn't challanging too as the Long Beach too recieved guns two sides in the middle of the ship near the ASROC launcher. as only the Soviet Kirovs carry armour it is not matters where you put the magazines for the guns. And they would provide anti air and anti surface defence for the ship, if the escorts would be overwhelmed!

It was feasible on the Long Beach because the space and weight for the Polaris installation was available; on the other ships, the guns were designed in from Day One. This ship has four very large phased arrays, very high up, so it's likely she would be topweight-critical - if she's nuclear powered, there's no ability to shift fluids to maintain the CG, so would be even more sensitive to additions and alterations. The magazines inherently have to be close to the gun, and with your proposed arrangement they'd have to be above the machinery too. With the guns at 01 Deck, the gunbay would be at 1 Deck level, and the magazines at 2 Deck - the ammunition and magazine armour (this is not exclusive to the Kirovs at all) would be a very significant weight addition high up in the ship.

It's true that they'd provide air and surface defence in the event of the escort being overcome, but the Sea Sparrow and CIWS fit would be more useful against the air threat. These ships would be operating in blue water, so FACs can pretty much be discounted as a threat, leaving the surface threat (in this era) as anti-ship missiles launched from outside gun range. The 5"/54 doesn't add any useful capability, and does so at very considerable cost.

Donnage - this ship was proposed in the 1970s to carry very large strategic ABMs, similar to the LIM-49 Spartan; she's a generation or two earlier technologically than the Aegis/SM-3 combination and trying to accomplish a mission an order of magnitude more difficult.

 

[donnage99]

what's the difference between the missions of this ship vs that of flight III Burke?

 

[Sea Skimmer]

SM-3 has functionally zero capability against ICBMs and no capability what so ever for a boost phase intercept. AESA really doesn't change much about the power aperture of a radar which defines its gross ability to do long range volume search. It does improve multitasking and certain detail tasks such as discrimination through superior beam control. DDG-51 Flight III will not be capable of a full range of BMD missions, it is an option chosen for affordability not capability. The desired system for full capability was a set of 30ft diameter radars on a CG(X) hull in the range of 25,000 tons and using the KEI interceptor. All of that was cancelled because it looked like the ships would cost nearly as much as CVNs. Its not that different though from the size of SABMIS.


As for this notional SABMIS upgrade retrofitting a 5in mark 45 to an existing ship involves piercing several decks and is highly unrealistic, as well as pointless. Mk45 is not a useful anti aircraft weapon, this is after all the reason for the weight and ROF reduction from Mark 42, and its far inferior to a rack of harpoon missiles for any reasonable anti ship mission, Sea Sparrow can destroy very surface targets already. See the Turkish destroyer two of them gutted. Heck if your going to pierce decks give the ship Mark 13 missile launchers or something real for AAW. Also I see no 5 inch control, SPG-60 would be most likely in that era, and I tend to think the rules of this forum indicate that speculative drawings should not be in threads on actual projects anyway.

 

[donnage99]

yeah if I recall correctly, the CG(X) were to be divided into 2 classes in the program's early days - a slightly larger version of the ddg(x) for air defense against aircraft and cruise missiles and a behemoth close to SABMIS for BMD

 

[Grey Havoc]

A possibly related project:

Yet another interesting image recently posted by the San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) at their Flickr site. It is a General Dynamics - Convair Division presentation slide entitled "SATSLAM System."

It features what appears to be an ICBM launched in one direction apparently being detected by a satellite, which is communicating with a ground station at the "target", which in turn is communicating with a ballistic missile sub that has apparently launched an ABM toward the ICBM. The caption accompanying the slide states, "Title:GD/Astronautics Charts Details: SatSlam System - Slide for Presentation Date: 11/21/1967."

Googled "SATSLAM" like crazy. Only hit I got was Googling "SATSLAM" and "submarine" which led to five "hits" - all on Russian-language glossary pages(for lack of a better description). (https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22SatSLAM%22+%22submarine%22)

There "Satellite-Tracked Submarine Launched Antmissile" comes up for the acronym.

Again, perhaps my Googling-skills are weak, but I did find it interesting that the only legitimate hits I got for the acronym were on a handful of Russian-language web-pages. In fact, if there's one site I thought where the system and/or it's acronym would be found, would be here!

Anyway, here's the image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/29014019213/

There were a few interesting ideas of different deployments of ABM systems at that time (inter-service rivalry). 1967 fits in with SABMIS (http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,8305.0.html) which according AWST (July 17,1967) was to a initially be a surface based system with eventual submarine launched interceptors. A Polaris based ASAT system was also being pursued as well even earlier (AWST Sep 28, 1964).

The USAF also had proposals to use Minuteman missiles as an ABM system as well (AWST March 31, 1969), even to the point of having C-5s on airborne alert as an ABM system.

However, this is a topic for other threads. The slide is an interesting find.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Apparently SABMIS was revived in the 1980s, though I don't have any real details unfortunately.

 

[Forest Green]

Apparently SABMIS was revived in the 1980s, though I don't have any real details unfortunately.

Possibly something the CG(X) was due to carry in the shape of the KEI (Kinetic Energy Interceptor), which was a smaller pre-GBI interceptor.

Kinetic Energy Interceptor - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mentioned here:

CG(X) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and here:

CG(X) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sferrin]

Possibly something the CG(X) was due to carry in the shape of the KEI (Kinetic Energy Interceptor), which was a smaller pre-GBI interceptor.

KEI was not a forerunner of GBI. It actually came after GBI and they would have served at the same time.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Sorry for the long pause, I've forgot about this topic. I've now post my recent drawings.

First a true never were design the USN's proposed Anti Ballistic Missile Warship:

It would be the naval and mobile equivalent of the abortive safeguard program featuring more economic friendly and better solution for the problems assigned to the Chinese and Soviet eastern ICBM sites.

 

[Tzoli]

As I'm doing the Long Beach Preliminaries and almost all designs had the large SPS-32/33 Radar Systems I often think back to this proposal of Anti Ballistic Missile Ship. Quesion what are those large SPS-32 looking radars on the blockhouse surfaces? A naval version of the AN/FPQ-16 PARCS???

 

[uk 75]

The original article from 1969/70 Jane's Fighting Ships about SABMIS.

 

[Archibald]

Can't help thinking Japan could make such ships real 60 years later...

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/japan-20000t-spy-7-guided-missile-destroyer-cruiser.40010/

Would be fun to compare them ! One thing is sure: ABM at sea needs HUGE ships, even today.

 

[Bruno Anthony]

It is very likely that both nuclear and dirt burning versions of this concept were studied at the same time, just as nuclear power and diesels were studied for land based hardened ABM sites.
This ship most likely would not have Mk95 radars as designed though, the launchers are the big boxes for BPDMS and it would surely have had the Mk 115 manned illuminators. I believe those are the objects found on the small bridge wing like protrusions seen in that artists concept of the ship.
Mk 95 came with NATO Sea Sparrow which only entered service in the later half of the 1970s. That is well after SABMIS would have needed to be in the water to compete with the SAFEGUARD ABM system, intended to counter a moderate scale attack from China. That was opposed to the full scale SENTINEL system which was to counter a full scale Soviet attack but using the same components.
I'm not sure if any ships ever got Mk 95 without also replacing the BPDMS box launchers with the NATO Sea Sparrow box. The smaller NATO launcher was much easier to reload and less weight.

Sentinel was to provide a thin screen defense for US population centers primarily from the “Nth country threat” aka the PRC. Safeguard was to provide a thin screen defense for the SAC retaliation forces.

 

[Forest Green]

Can't help thinking Japan could make such ships real 60 years later...

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/japan-20000t-spy-7-guided-missile-destroyer-cruiser.40010/

Would be fun to compare them ! One thing is sure: ABM at sea needs HUGE ships, even today.

 

[CIC-TAO]

poor version
v

 

[Archibald]

Is that drawing serious ? aircraft have crosswinds limits at takeoff and landing, but this ship may have similar limits as soon as the wind start blowing a bit strongly...

 

[TomS]

Is that drawing serious ? aircraft have crosswinds limits at takeoff and landing, but this ship may have similar limits as soon as the wind start blowing a bit strongly...

It does look to be an open bedstead sort of antenna, so the drag might not have been unmanageable.

I think the hull is a WW2 surplus Cimarron oiler or something similar. I think there was talk of Victory ship hulls being used, but the stack in this drawing is too far aft for that.

 

[Yellow Palace]

The forward missile launchers also don't have nearly enough hull depth. It looks to me a lot like the artist had a general description of what was being proposed, but no engineering information to use for reference.

 

[that_person]

poor version
View attachment 695073vView attachment 695074

Just... absolutely no context or source?

 

[JFC Fuller]

SABMIS was to have used the Nike-X radar and guidance elements coupled with a modified Poseidon (and presumably its launch tube) as the missile. I can't find anything on the warhead but presumably it would have used the warhead (W71) element of SPARTAN. The idea was to add an additional outer layer to the Nike-X system that would thin out the incoming warheads, in the "early mid-course" phase of their flight before they reached the engagement envelope of the land-based systems. Combining the entire system in a single hull provided significant flexibility and references were made to being able to forward deploy it and use it to protect allies, but a trawl of various congressional testimony form 1967-69 suggest the ships were really meant to be deployed close to the US coast (e.g. near Portland and Boston, potentially even inside Puget Sound or Cape Cod), and certainly not close enough to the Soviet coast to provide boost phase intercept.

 

[that_person]

SABMIS was to have used the Nike-X radar and guidance elements coupled with a modified Poseidon (and presumably its launch tube) as the missile. I can't find anything on the warhead but presumably it would have used the warhead (W71) element of SPARTAN. The idea was to add an additional outer layer to the Nike-X system that would thin out the incoming warheads, in the "early mid-course" phase of their flight before they reached the engagement envelope of the land-based systems. Combining the entire system in a single hull provided significant flexibility and references were made to being able to forward deploy it and use it to protect allies but a trawl of various congressional testimony form 1967-69 suggest the ships were really meant to be deployed close to the US coast (e.g. near Portland and Boston, potentially even inside Puget Sound or Cape Cod), and certainly not close enough to the Soviet coast to provide boost phase intercept.

One thing that jumps out to me. They keep referring to SABMIS as some kind of weapons system (like AEGIS), rather than the actual ship. This is especially vivid in the final picture you uploaded; "As I understand this system, It would require that naval ships deploying with the SABMIS system would have to be deployed to forward areas..." I know it's not that significant, but I do find it odd.

 

[TomS]

SABMIS was to have used the Nike-X radar and guidance elements coupled with a modified Poseidon (and presumably its launch tube) as the missile. I can't find anything on the warhead but presumably it would have used the warhead (W71) element of SPARTAN. The idea was to add an additional outer layer to the Nike-X system that would thin out the incoming warheads, in the "early mid-course" phase of their flight before they reached the engagement envelope of the land-based systems. Combining the entire system in a single hull provided significant flexibility and references were made to being able to forward deploy it and use it to protect allies but a trawl of various congressional testimony form 1967-69 suggest the ships were really meant to be deployed close to the US coast (e.g. near Portland and Boston, potentially even inside Puget Sound or Cape Cod), and certainly not close enough to the Soviet coast to provide boost phase intercept.

One thing that jumps out to me. They keep referring to SABMIS as some kind of weapons system (like AEGIS), rather than the actual ship. This is especially vivid in the final picture you uploaded; "As I understand this system, It would require that naval ships deploying with the SABMIS system would have to be deployed to forward areas..." I know it's not that significant, but I do find it odd.

I'm not sure why that's odd. The AEGIS example is on-point -- AEGIS was a combat system that was considered for deployment on all sorts of different ships, as was Typhon before it. But we still talk about AEGIS ships being ships that carry the AEGIS combat system, the same way a SABMIS ship is a ship that carries SABMIS.

It seems that SABMIS could have been fielded in a variety of ways -- surface ships, submarine (harder, thanks to the radar issues), or possibly even land-based. It also looks like Strom Thurmond (or his staff) was a bit confused and could not grasp the idea of using a Polaris booster for a different weapon system and kept assuming that the launchers would be interchangeable. Just having the same types of launch tubes would not be enough to deploy offensive Polaris missiles on a SABMIS ships -- you'd need the equivalent of SINS for navigation, the whole platform alignment setup, etc.

They were also not keeping up with the evolution that made SABMIS into what we'd now call a mid-course interceptor instead of a boost-phase one, which is why he assumes the SABMIS platforms would be pushed out near Soviet territory and the Navy has to explain that no, that's not happening and it's going to be (probably) mid-ocean.