Soviet Admirals Laughed at the Harpoon Missile Until It Sank Their Corvettes in 38 Seconds

Описание: When Soviet admirals first saw the Harpoon missile's specifications in the late 1970s, they laughed. Subsonic speed? Against their Mach 2+ rockets? The Americans had built a slow, unimpressive anti-ship missile that looked pathetic on paper.
Then the Falklands War happened. HMS Sheffield burned for six days after a single subsonic Exocet missile punched through her defenses. Soviet naval intelligence went into emergency assessment mode overnight—because if a modern British destroyer couldn't stop one subsonic missile, what did that say about their corvettes facing Harpoons?
The answer was worse than anyone in Moscow imagined. McDonnell Douglas had designed something fundamentally different: a missile that flew 15 feet above the waves, appeared late on radar, and gave defending ships approximately 38 seconds from detection to impact. Thirty-eight seconds to detect, verify, lock, launch, and intercept—or die.
Soviet Nanuchka-class corvettes ran the math and discovered their defensive systems couldn't handle the timeline. SA-N-4 missiles needed 40-45 seconds minimum for successful intercept. Against Harpoons detected at 8-12 nautical miles in rough seas, there was no margin for error. None.
This is the story of how American engineers won a naval arms race by making their missile slower, how physics defeated Soviet doctrine, and how combat data from Iran, Libya, and NATO exercises proved the Harpoon could sink corvettes faster than Soviet defensive systems could react. From initial mockery to emergency retrofits, this is how subsonic American engineering humiliated Soviet naval supremacy—38 seconds at a time.

#falklandswar #navalwarfare #antishipmissile #san4missile #harpoonmissile #coldwar #coldwartechnology #hmssheffield

PRIMARY SOURCES

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings archives (1977-1991) - Harpoon development and deployment analysis
Jane's Fighting Ships (1980-1990 editions) - Soviet Nanuchka-class specifications and capabilities
Declassified CIA Naval Intelligence reports on Soviet surface combatant capabilities (1982-1989)
British Ministry of Defence Falklands War official inquiry (1982) - HMS Sheffield incident analysis
McDonnell Douglas AGM-84 Harpoon technical documentation and development history
U.S. Navy weapons systems specifications for AGM-84/RGM-84/UGM-84 variants
Soviet/Russian naval doctrine publications translated by U.S. Naval Intelligence
Operation Morvarid engagement reports (Iranian Navy, 1980)
NATO exercise data from 1980s naval war games (declassified reports)
Norman Friedman, "The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems" (multiple editions 1980s-1990s)
Admiral Sergey Gorshkov published works on Soviet naval strategy
Gulf of Sidra incident documentation (U.S. Navy historical records, 1986)