A powerful new deterrent to seaborne threats
How do you significantly boost coastal defences without investing in costly new surface warfare vessels? Saab’s new Coastal Defence Missile System delivers an affordable and highly effective anti-ship capability, built around our proven RBS15 missiles.
Global tensions are on the rise and nations across the planet are looking to strengthen their coastal defences against potential enemy attack. Solutions are needed to manage territorial waters, protect infrastructure and deter hostile forces. At the same time, many armed forces are struggling with limited budgets, material shortages and logistics challenges, making it difficult to rapidly increase the size of their naval fleets.
What’s needed is an economical and rapidly deployable way for nations to boost coastal defences and to neutralise enemies who dare to enter into their restricted territorial waters. Saab’s new Coastal Defence Missile System (CDMS) is designed to meet this crucial need, providing a land-based capability for neutralising hostile vessels at distances of out to more than 300 kilometres. Based around Saab’s proven RBS15 anti-ship missile range, the system combines advanced missile vehicles and a battery command post to deliver a highly agile deterrent to seaborne threats. The system is now on order with the Swedish Armed Forces and being actively marketed to several additional nations.
Control of the sea, from the land
While combat vessels often play a central role in defending coastal regions, land-based anti-ship solutions have also been shown time and time again to be highly effective at holding back seaborne enemies. Take the case of Ukrainian forces using two land-based missiles to destroy Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva in 2022. So impactful was the loss of the guided missile cruiser that the entire Russian Black Sea fleet subsequently retreated back from the coast, providing a major advantage to Ukraine.
Saab’s new Coastal Defence Missile System (CDMS) leverages the power of such land-based solutions and builds on the experience and knowledge gained from previous generations of RBS15 missile systems. By capitalising on advances in missile, software and sensor technology, Saab has produced an anti-ship system with far greater range as well as increased lethality resulting in an even greater likelihood of destroying enemy vessels.
CDMS is designed for use with either the RBS15 Mk3 anti-ship missile – with a range of more than 200 kilometres – or the RBS15 Mk4, which will have a range greater than 300 kilometres when deliveries begin in the late 2020s. Both missile versions are all-weather-capable, fire-and-forget solutions that travel just above the surface of the water at high-subsonic speed. They deliver a high-explosive warhead that provides a one-hit-one-kill capability. Their low and rapid sea-skimming approach makes them highly difficult for targeted vessels to identify, let alone avoid. Both versions also offer operators secondary land-attack capabilities.
Key system components
At the heart of the new CDMS system are missile systems vehicles – truck-based launchers. Each of these is equipped with four RBS15 missiles which are mounted on a specially produced launcher unit designed to have the same footprint as a 20-foot (6.1-metre) ISO Standard shipping container. These mobile launchers can be easily concealed under cover when not in use, and then rapidly positioned to engage and destroy enemy ships. A two-minute ‘shoot-and-scoot’ capability means crews can fire their missiles, pack up and move on in under 120 seconds, avoiding counter fire and increasing survivability. Saab CDMS is also vehicle agnostic, meaning customers’ preferred brand of vehicle can be converted into missile system vehicles. Each vehicle comes equipped with its own hydraulic power generator and power module, with firing possible both from within the cabin or from outside it, using remote controls.
The placement and location of the missile vehicles in each battery is coordinated via a mobile battery command post, which is turn is typically connected to a range of sensors via armed forces command. Surveillance data from platforms including aircraft, ships, drones and radars can be used to provide precise targeting data for the missile vehicles and their highly lethal RBS15 missiles. Alternatively, targeting data can be acquired by dedicated local sensor vehicles, fitted with radar or other surveillance technologies. Another potential addition to the configuration is logistic vehicles equipped with cranes and additional missiles. Using such vehicles, it can take as little as 15 minutes to swap expended missile cannisters with new ones after firing.
Freeing up combat vessels for other duties
A key benefit of the Coastal Defence Missile System is that it takes the pressure off other key coastal defence assets. Surface warfare vessels, for example, can be dispatched away from the coast for other duties, secure in the knowledge that land-based defences will repel any hostile attackers from the sea. In many respects, CDMS users receive the powerful anti-ship capabilities of a surface warfare vessel worth many hundreds of millions of dollars for just a tiny fraction of that price.
The extended range of both the RBS15 Mk3 and Mk4 missiles also means that just a handful of CDMS batteries can protect an extremely large section of coastline. Using Mk3 missiles, four missile systems vehicles could potentially provide coverage for a length of coastline covering hundreds of kilometres. CDMS batteries can be statically stationed close to important infrastructure or quickly deployed to flash points where additional protection is needed.
Another key benefit of the system is its silent loitering capability. A missile system vehicle can sit completely silent and without a noise signature while in active mode, reducing the risk of discovery by the enemy.
CDMS’s primary application is land-based coastal defence, but it’s also flexible enough to be adapted for use on vessels. While many navies have RBS15 hard mounted onto their combat vessels, vessels without it can rapidly be provided with anti-ship capabilities by bolting a CDMS missile launch unit to the container interfaces. Saab is exploring this capability for use on multi-purpose vessels (MPVs) as a separate mission module.
Another major benefit is compatibility with allies. Saab RBS15 missiles are used by a long list of nations worldwide, including many NATO members, meaning resources can be easily shared. Sweden, Finland, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia are among the global user family. Finland, Poland, Germany and Sweden’s use of RBS15 missiles means that the Baltic Sea is essentially a no-go zone for adversary vessels seeking to disrupt the peace of surrounding nations.
The RBS15 family
RBS15 is a highly optimized anti-ship missile with land attack capability, designed to give you the edge to stay ahead in increasingly complex conflict scenarios.