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From: nanis@llex.ll.mit.edu ( Jeff Nanis)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Missile pods on Soviet warships
Message-ID: <1991Jun21.014650.15430@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 21 Jun 91 01:46:50 GMT
References: <1991Jun20.020943.1923@cbnews.cb.att.com>
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Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
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From: nanis@llex.ll.mit.edu ( Jeff Nanis)
In article <1991Jun20.020943.1923@cbnews.cb.att.com> R2RS1%AKRONVM@vm1.cc.UAKRON.EDU (Suku) writes:

>Sometime back I was looking at photographs of Guided missile ships of
>Soviet make and saw that most of them have their SSM pods mounted
>externally on either side of the superstructure. Doesnt that make them
>very vulnerable. 

	Yes. Much of Soviet ship design philosophy, though, was driven by
a) the humongous size of their SSMs, and b) the philosophy, espoused by
Adm. Gorshkov, of the "battle of the first salvo" as the important tactical
moment. Basically, the plan was to fire everything at the enemy. If that
didn't work, his carrier air would make the issue of at sea reloading moot.

>Does it not make sense to have vertical launched missile magazines situated 
>inside the ship hulls giving a little more protection and survivability ?

	Yes, a number of their SAMs are housed and launched vertically. It's
just that up till now, at least, they have favored the big monster variant
of SSM versus the small, low-flyerr that U.S. technical expertise has allowed.
(All information from Combat Fleets of the World and Jane's.)
--
Jeff Nanis                            Radars 'r' us.  
nanis@ll.mit.edu                      An official opinion? Not on my life.