MTB maintain their role in an era of guided antiship missile

Khanzeer

Banned
Is it possible that somehow MTB( motor torpedo boats )can maintain their status as the prominent littoral flotilla craft in the post war period extending into the 70s and 80s ( i.e well after anti ship missiles are in widespread use)
If so how can the MTB be made to survive against Missile boats ?
Do MTB offer any advantages in the 1965 -1980 era ?
As it seems like some navies [ china , NK, DDR ] did have them in significant numbers in that period, not sure if it was by choice or circumstances
 
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SwampTiger

Banned
Once radar becomes universal, standard torpedoes lose their advantages. Have the MTB's use a rocket propelled, sonar/acoustic guided torpedo to allow longer range. Otherwise you are dead before reaching launch range. Also, the missile boat is really a modern MTB.
 

Deleted member 94680

A missile boat or missile cutter is a small fast warship armed with anti-ship missiles. Being smaller than other warships such as destroyers and frigates, missile boats are popular with nations interested in forming a navy at lower cost. They are similar in concept to the torpedo boats of World War II; in fact, the first missile boats were modified torpedo boats with the torpedo tubes replaced by missile tubes.

That’s from the intro to the wiki page on Missile Boats.

You can pretty much see it on the first ever Missile Boat, the Russian Komar class.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
That's true but the issue here is not so much the type of craft but
Antiship missile vs torpedo , and which one is a better tool to sink another warship

Does the torpedo offer any advantages over the missile in this period of 70s /80s ?
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Once radar becomes universal, standard torpedoes lose their advantages. Have the MTB's use a rocket propelled, sonar/acoustic guided torpedo to allow longer range. Otherwise you are dead before reaching launch range. Also, the missile boat is really a modern MTB.
So Missile offers longer reach? but can the torpedo boat adopt any specific tactics to close the range with their opponents
 
So Missile offers longer reach? but can the torpedo boat adopt any specific tactics to close the range with their opponents

Some sort of ASROC setup for their torpedoes? But at that point the question is kind of "Why not just skip a step and use missiles?"
 
I agree with others the MTB?MGB has been superseded by the FMB - Israel has had success, many other countries use them - though not the US probably because of the distance to any 'hot spot'.
 
So Missile offers longer reach? but can the torpedo boat adopt any specific tactics to close the range with their opponents
There’s also the small matter of a torpedo (or a torpedo boat for that matter) doing maybe 75km/h vs a missile doing 1,000kmh.
 
Torpedoes let water in, Missiles let flames out the top.

One is much faster at sinking a ship than the other

This is true, but only matters if you actually land the hit. The thing is that the effective range of anti-ship torpedoes against an alerted target is really quite short (on the order of 12 km or so) and modern weapons and fire-control systems make closing that distance in a lightly armored surface vessel extremely dangerous. Simply put, if your plan of attack requires you to be within 40mm Bofors range of a major surface combatant you may want to reconsider your plan.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
This is true, but only matters if you actually land the hit. The thing is that the effective range of anti-ship torpedoes against an alerted target is really quite short (on the order of 12 km or so) and modern weapons and fire-control systems make closing that distance in a lightly armored surface vessel extremely dangerous. Simply put, if your plan of attack requires you to be within 40mm Bofors range of a major surface combatant you may want to reconsider your plan.
Can MTB close the range in certain circumstances without being picked up by radar ?
Or can they shadow larger ships so it's hard to distinguish them from it by radar ?
 
Torpedoes let water in, Missiles let flames out the top.

One is much faster at sinking a ship than the other
That is no doubt true, yet since World War Two the use of anti surface ship torpedoes by surface ships and air craft seems to have declined significantly.
 
When the MK 24 Tigerfish torpedo project looked like it was going to remain a giant unlanced boil the British decided to invest in the Tomahawk sub launched missile as its principle Anti Ship weapon - but the much improved later marks of the MK24 and the excellent Spearfish entering service put paid to that idea.

But the MTB only survives as a concept as an MGMB by replacing the torpedo with Missiles unless a super cavitating long range torp comes into its own and perhaps the pendulum swings firmly into the Anti Missile system effectiveness over Sea skimming missiles and so long range Super cav becomes the only effective means of attacking warships.
 

MatthewB

Banned
Is it possible that somehow MTB( motor torpedo boats )can maintain their status as the prominent littoral flotilla craft in the post war period extending into the 70s and 80s ( i.e well after anti ship missiles are in widespread use)
If so how can the MTB be made to survive against Missile boats ?
Do MTB offer any advantages in the 1965 -1980 era ?
As it seems like some navies [ china , NK, DDR ] did have them in significant numbers in that period, not sure if it was by choice or circumstances
Maybe not the MTB, but the MGB still has a place in the era of missile boats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Gun_Boat

In fact, for littoral fighting, unless it has a heavy gun of its own, the missile boat is ill-suited and perhaps too expensive for anything but open water combat, while the MGB, like the Fairmile C motor gun boat can fight upriver against enemy onshore, and is cheap enough to be lost in combat, well back when men were expendable.

Here’s a MGB of the modern age, Brazil’s Grajaú-class.

NPa_Grajaú_%28P-40%29.jpg


Some modern day MGB bereft of either missiles or torpedoes include:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack-class_patrol_boat
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armidale-class_patrol_boat
 
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Khanzeer

Banned
When the MK 24 Tigerfish torpedo project looked like it was going to remain a giant unlanced boil the British decided to invest in the Tomahawk sub launched missile as its principle Anti Ship weapon - but the much improved later marks of the MK24 and the excellent Spearfish entering service put paid to that idea.

But the MTB only survives as a concept as an MGMB by replacing the torpedo with Missiles unless a super cavitating long range torp comes into its own and perhaps the pendulum swings firmly into the Anti Missile system effectiveness over Sea skimming missiles and so long range Super cav becomes the only effective means of attacking warships.
But if there was no place for regular torpedo what did the Chinese, vietnamese, NK and east German planned to do with such large inventories of torpedo boats in their navies ?If im.not mistaken and frequently I am I recall Norwegian and Danish navies operated some in the 70s and 80s too
 
That's true but the issue here is not so much the type of craft but
Antiship missile vs torpedo , and which one is a better tool to sink another warship

Does the torpedo offer any advantages over the missile in this period of 70s /80s ?
Nope. Missiles all the way.

So Missile offers longer reach? but can the torpedo boat adopt any specific tactics to close the range with their opponents
Can MTB close the range in certain circumstances without being picked up by radar ?
Or can they shadow larger ships so it's hard to distinguish them from it by radar ?
There are very specific circumstances in which torpedo boats can close with larger ships. However, even in WWII in the Solomon Islands chain torpedo boats were startlingly ineffective at actually torpedoing anything, and that's about as ideal an environment as it gets. Radar systems have only gotten better since, and counter-fire more accurate.

But if there was no place for regular torpedo what did the Chinese, vietnamese, NK and east German planned to do with such large inventories of torpedo boats in their navies ?If im.not mistaken and frequently I am I recall Norwegian and Danish navies operated some in the 70s and 80s too
Most East German torpedo boats were either converted to patrol ships by the 1970s or else could swap out the torpedo tubes for mines or commandoes, all roles they could actually do something in.

China kept them around as a swarm tactic for inshore coastal defense. Here they're intended to be covered by other assets. In many ways they're the old "People's War" concept the ground forces adhered to for so long and began to move away from in the 1990s.

North Korea is one of the few countries with an actual use case: tangling with South Korean patrol boats near the sea-based DMZ line.

Most Vietnamese torpedo boats were 60s relics that they held onto for lack of any better options, and when they got their hands on a bunch of OSA II missile boats discarded most of them.

Similarly, Norway's boats were all from the 1950s, before proper antiship missiles, and they switched to missile boats as soon as the Penguin missile was available. Same with Denmark. Kept 'em around because they're small navies that can't afford to be constantly recapitalizing their navies, and torpedo boats are better than nothing.
 
Torpedoes let water in, Missiles let flames out the top.

One is much faster at sinking a ship than the other
Maybe a consideration for those competing in the Olympic freestyle speed-sinking category, but in the real world it seems that most navies are satisfied with just having the enemy ship dead in the water and on fire, if it eventually sinks that’s bonus points.
 
Maybe a consideration for those competing in the Olympic freestyle speed-sinking category, but in the real world it seems that most navies are satisfied with just having the enemy ship dead in the water and on fire, if it eventually sinks that’s bonus points.

That's the problem.
Torpedoes are awesome with killing ships.
Problem is getting the launching platform close enough to use them.
 
But if there was no place for regular torpedo what did the Chinese, vietnamese, NK and east German planned to do with such large inventories of torpedo boats in their navies ?If im.not mistaken and frequently I am I recall Norwegian and Danish navies operated some in the 70s and 80s too

Geography (Very very Littoral) and money (ie not a lot of it)
 
That's the problem.
Torpedoes are awesome with killing ships.
Problem is getting the launching platform close enough to use them.
This is the problem.

Once helicopters armed with lightweight anti-ship missiles become common, the Fast Attack Craft is as about as survivable as a dinosaur. They're basically too small to mount an effective anti-aircraft fit and will get slaughtered by stand-off missiles.
 
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